Mold release damage - matching Red paint

[billjr212]

I'm generally happy with the quality of the gel coat since I will eventually be painting the car, but wondering if anyone has matched up the Red paint yet. As I've been pulling off the tape, I'm finding that my corners are pretty beat up (and someone obviously recognized this from the factory as well since they "painted" over the beat up areas. I think it's repairable if I were going to stay in the gel coat permanently, so I'm not complaining, just looking for a temporary solution until I paint.

Wide angle


Bumper - in general pretty darn good


Corners - not so much


Please don't turn this thread into a bunch of complaining. Looking for solutions (ie, HSRF + abc car paint code 1234 touch up paint).

[xxguitarist]

Since FFR had a gelcoat repair kit for the white, I'd hope they have one for the red also. Then you can fill & "paint" in one go?

[Scargo]

I would ask FFR for a paint color code. Surely the color is a standard gel-coat red and they may have already had it matched for something standard, like a urethane, enamel or lacquer. With that code you can probably get it matched or crossed over to whatever you want to use. Worse case, take a piece of the body to an automotive paint supply house and let them color-match it. Main thing is to deal with a commercial, automotive paint supply house.
Sorry if you already know all this. I was in the prototyping biz and dealt with Sherwin-Williams and at one time was right next door to a auto paint supplier who was part of the biggest chain in Dallas. They mixed lots of stuff for me.

[billjr212]

i dug deep into the memory bank and remembered factory five did a "cheap" paint job on a mk4 way back in the day. Supposedly they didn't have a paint code, but used a spray on gel coat from NAPA that matched up well. I'm going to assume they are using the same red gel coat on the 818, so I'll swing by NAPA at some point and see how it works out. (I did go through the effort of googling and then digging way into the FFR facebook posts - it was posted July 12, 2011 for anybody wanting to see the results)

[bbjones121]

Any luck finding the color?

[billjr212]

Napa guy looked at me like I was crazy (kind of a terrible napa by my office) and I got busy with making it drivable and lost interest in repairing for the time being. It's on the winter project list.

[bbjones121]

Well if I get there before you and find out, I will post what I find.

[mikeb75]

Ditto on the ask FFR for a gel coat repair kit. I was lucky, white is pretty easy to color match

[bbjones121]

Ditto on the ask FFR for a gel coat repair kit. I was lucky, white is pretty easy to color match

Yup, got that already. I still would like paint for some spots.