HUH?

There are probably 100's of variations of black. Match is an issue.

 

Harley's paint is proprietary. Just ask any body shop that does Harley repairs and they'll tell ya you can't get it anywhere but from the dealer.

I just did my front fender and tank with a Dupli-color base coat/clear coat and I can tell ya even people at the traffic light next to me can tell the difference

 

That was you?

 

hey guys,

thanks for the info. i have sprayed a few small things with "gloss black" can't remember the brand, but it is definitely not the same black.

i will check the dealer. any idea how much is needed to do a fender?

 

enuf, that's how much.

 

HD uses PPG paints

 

You can get HD colors from a PPG dealer! I did. It may take the dealer a couple days but you will end up with the mix instructions the PPG dealer uses to formulate the paint. I have painted two HD bikes using this approach. The paint is not cheap. I think I spent a little over $130 for paint, clearcoat and reducer.

 

Not unless there's a metallic or pearl, or unless you get a blush in it from shooting too cold or something.

I put myself through college as a painter's helper in a body shop and I still have a full complement of tools. I've touched up "vivid" black with any number of brands of black and as long as I got a good match on the texture, ie not too much or too little orange peel, etc., it matches.

Every body man I've ever talked to taught me that black is black.

 

The formulas are available from their paint supplier, usually. I know in the Sherwin-Williams automotive paint system, you can just look up HD, and get a whole list of colors and formulas that have been matched. If you don't find them there, you can call the help line, and they have a few more. If nothing else, you can always send a color sample off to the lab to be matched.

Harley colors seem to be far more readily available than the import bikes. They seem to use a lot more tri-stage colors.

 

I can print you out a few dozen formulas if you like. It's pretty rare to mix a black and have it just be a bunch of black tint dumped into the container. Some have a bit of violet, blue, yellow, red, white, green, or some combination of the above, in the mix. A very deep black will run about 2% violet. That's just talking color. Then you can add in varying degrees of gloss and opacity. I had a customer who just wanted black, black, and had to make a custom formula that was just black tint with nothing else in it.


Yeah... body men are a great source of bad paint advice. You should have talked to the painter.