I brought my saleen down to a very good body shop that I bring all my cars too and he hooks me up. I needed to get a few dings and scratches out from someone ramming their shopping cart into my door and from someone keying it. He told me that the color of the hood vs. the color of the fenders and the rest of the car was different. One of his painters looked at the car closely and could see "blue pearl" specks in the paint making the fenders and rest of the car look brown. I couldnt see the blue pearl specks but I could definitely see a difference in the color of my hood vs. the color of the rest of the car. The hood is much darker and the rest of the car looks browner. My hood was painted at Saleen so it was painted seperately at different times. He said it cold be from a dirty paint gun or sometimes they will repaint the car if there was any transporation issues.

So is ford painting my car with crappy paint? Everything they told me made sense and I could clearly see it on my car but I also thought maybe Ford vs. Saleen used a different black. Im not sure how the paint process works but I didnt want a brown car...

 

With the way they mass produce cars these days i wouldnt rule out paint contamination! also it seems as though all brands of cars nowdays have less than great paint on them.I know there are very strict federal regulations on the auto makers for painting these days(with all the environmental concerns) so im sure that plays into it all. they surely dont use a drop more paint than is req to get the car covered it seems. I would be willing to bet you got better quality paint from saleen for sure! do you have any photos of the discoloration?

 

it could have been paint contamination or they just didnt use the exact paint code... same with me, i had a ford dealership do my hood and my hood is a different color then the rest of the car, i took my bodykit to the same dealer and they got the bodykit to match perfectley, so chances are they just maybe used a different year color... when my freind was gettin some parts painted on his gt/cs, the bodyshop wouldnt paint the peices until he got the code from the CS itself, i told him it was a performance white 08 GT/CS but he still said that he needed the exact code... so im gunna guess they just didnt check the code and just grabbed whatever paint "looked" right to them

 

I think the Ford paint is good.

You do need to go by color code. Performance white code WP is a different color than performance white code HP.

Also, there are a lot of factors involved when you try to color match. The temperature, pressure of the gun, and other things can cause the color to not match, even if you do start with the correct color code.

 

It could also be the clear...
Cheap clear brands are not transparent but rather yellow.
Good luck matching whites with those cheap *** brands.

Another thing is, you might have gotten some oxidation on your car.
Claybar a spot on one of the fender top, see if it turn back to where it matches your hood.

 

sprayed at 2 diff times it will be a little diff the color is hard to match exactly thats why they sometime blend the color into the fenders so you cant tell

 

I have the Vapor Silver which I think is a very hard color to match. That being said I have never had any of my car repainted after Ford did it from factory and I have not been able to notice any off color