Mazda soul red question

[Mickey thumbs]

I love the deep red that Mazda used on their IMSA prototype car. I believe it is the same as the road car color soul red metallic and more recently soul red crystal. I read it’s giving fits to 1:1 body and paint shops trying to match when doing repairs even with OEM paint. I would like to use it in a fantasy livery Mazda group C build. Any suggestions besides giving up before I start? I was thinking black base, dust coat of metallic silver followed by several coats of transparent candy apple red. I am limited to rattle cans. What do you think?

[Courtney s]

Look up Testors mythical maroon it’s an extreme lacquer paint and I think you might be right with a dark base it would be perfect

[chrisguyw]

Have a look at Tamiya TS95 pure metallic red...........

Cheers
Chris Walker

[Impulse-ive]

What was your base primer color for that Tamiya red?

[chrisguyw]

Not my car, but, the base was white.

[dw5555]

That laid down really nice Chris. Very little orange peel.

[chrisguyw]

Again, not my car, but personally I find that I get almost zero orange peel spraying with Tamiya TS paints.

[Mickey thumbs]

Thanks, Chris. I’ll probably give it a try over a dark base. I also find the TS paints to be easy for me to use. I used their racing green over a black base to get a very nice dark green color.

[RichD]

It used to be that you could go to a shop that supplied automotive paint to body shops and they could put some in a spray can for you. They might have the exact color in stock, or they could mix some up. Now body shops use low VOC paints, so I don't know if you can still buy paint that way. putting a metallic red paint over a black base will probably get you the metallic maroon that you are looking for. It would be best to experiment using some scrap plastic.

[waaytoomuchintothis]

I did a car once with white primer, metallic gold over, then metallic red over that. It was gorgeous until the next morning. It went dull. I clearcoated it, and it came back. These paint experts have some magic stashed away to make the rest of us crazy. The thing is, I used to be pretty good at this stuff. Did I change or the paint?

[waaytoomuchintothis]

I just did a quick look and found that Duplicolor now has Mazda Soul Red. Be careful with 1:1 paints, though. The pigment size is many times bigger and you can swamp all your details in one coat if you aren't careful.

[SuperSlab]

WARNING: I am NOT a scratchbuilder. I am NOT a painter or decorator. Out of my >200 cars that I run, I have a grand total of THREE that I have dabbled in painting. So please consider the source...

For the Canadian MR Slotcar proxy in 2015 I decide to try my hand (for the very first time on a slot car...) at painting a white kit. My wife's 2011 metallic red Mazda 3 served as inspiration as I loved the colour. On the MR Slotcar Mazda 787 I used Tamiya light grey primer and then Tamiya TS83 Metallic silver with TS39 Mica Red over top. IIRC I added TS13 Clear before putting on the (total of 3!) decals. Decals were coated with Future.

FWIW: In testing ahead of time it seemed to me that I could also have used TS30 Silver Leaf and TS74 Clear Red and gotten very close to the same result, depending on the number of thin red coats added.

This is what the painted shell looked like at the time:


Since that time I completed the car, it participated in the proxy and I have raced it a few times since. This is what it looks like currently:

[Slotspeed]

Hi SuperSlab,

For some reason I can't see your photos.

My wife has a red 1989 Mazda Mx5/Miata. That car taught me that red is a very difficult color to match. It has been repaired in various places and so the paint is slightly different shades to the keen eye. Some panels were resprayed with dark primer and some were resprayed with primer and then I think a white base may have been painted before the red color coat, most of the car is painted that way which makes me think it may have even been from the factory like that. The official matching color code from the paint factory is easy to get from auto parts suppliers. But depending on what you paint it over it makes quite a difference in the tonal qualities in the paint's appearance. Using the correct color to patch up the repainted panels looks pretty bad because of the color difference. It's an old car that she has had for a long time and we will never sell it but I learnt a bit about the color red from some minor touch up repairs on it!

[Mickey thumbs]

Thanks again everyone. I now have a couple ideas to try out. I have sheet styrene left over from making the flared fenders for my Corvette Grand Sport so I will cut some tests squares and share the results in a post. May take a couple weeks as I’ll have to order online since local hobby shops are considered non-essential. Our politicians are misguided as usual 😄

[SpeedyNH]

when i've bought factory paint in the last few years to use on either models or 1:1's, they've all been either two-or three-part processes.
pita. the last part is usually a paint-specific clearcoat, without which the paint doesn't look right the way it used to with the old one-part types, even metallic. modern chemistry, i guess. i don't know what changed, but something sure did.

[Slotspeed]

Yes, I have also noticed that clearcoat once applied tends to make the color coat look darker. At least that has been my experience.

[RichD]

Metallic paints are actually translucent so the final color will be affected by the base coat that you use. I also ran into the problem of a metallic red paint job going flat once it dried. I had used the same paint many times and had always gotten a glossy finish before, so I have no idea why this particular paint job came out flat, but a coat of Future got me the desired glossy finish.

[Slotspeed]

I find the same with flat colors. What you put under it affects the deepness of color so to speak.

[Fast Co.]

Have a look at Tamiya TS95 pure metallic red...........

Cheers
Chris Walker

Chris,
Who makes that Miata? Is it 1/32 scale?
Steve

[chrisguyw]

Hi Steve, This is a 1/24 model produced by Tamiya......I stole it from google "images" just to show the TS95 colour.

[Fast Co.]

Thanks Chris!