Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

My 1972 +2 S130 has progressed to the stage where the engine has been rebored/reground/rebuilt, and the body
stripped back to gelcoat.

The next stage for the body is repair of stress cracks and minor damage, then a covering of tissue+gel before final stages of filler/primer and paint.

The original colour was Carnival red with Silver metalflake roof. I'm happy to go with the same red but feel the metalflake is a bit too "glitzy" for my liking. I'd like a similar Silver base colour so wonder if anyone knows a paint code that will look like the original without the metalflake?

Thanks, Richard

I restored the original roof on my 72. It is a large silver metal flake and looks amazing. I?m not aware of any other car that had this feature. Be bold, do it! Warning, not inexpensive.

Another Roman Purple +2, yay!

I used a BMW silver, but it looks nothing like original which is flake suspended in gel... custom paint shops should be a good point to start, the flake is quite large if you want an original look

I use a single stage metallic for the bumpers and hardtops - you can get silvers from PPG with different size flake in them - allows you to tone up or down the glitter ( fine tended to look pewter to my eye so i went corse )

picture to help

Instruction on roof re-finishing from the Plus 2 workshop manual - page 61 section B.47 in attached picture

How does the Plus 2 silver compare to the earlier Elans? I suppose they were simply painted.

John

I?ve seen some that are too glitter ball but matched mine to what was on there and it really isn?t as flashy as you think, I think, and really just silver looking as you see thanks Gordon Sauer

Do a bit of searching on here, my memory isn't that good but this subject came up and someone said the make / model of the metal flake used by Lotus (it was still available when i looked a few years ago).

I did a couple metal flake roof's (seems a big thing on American classics) and for that i used house of kolor flake, the problem with that is it is very bright and don't think it would look right. Some thing else to take into account is the ground colour makes quite a big difference to the cast.

Davefettback

What a stunningly beautiful car!

Well played!

It can seem a bit OTT, depends how high the sun is shining.


I was told it was original but the PO was a bit of a stranger to truth.
Get a bit of shade and it calms down to be relatively subdued!


Paul Matty maintains that VW Golf Reflex Silver is a good shade match. So I'm going to go with that.

Really appreciate all the great advice and photos of your fantastic cars.

Getting near the right shade with VW Reflex Silver may be my first choice for cost and simplicity. Always an option to use the metalflake later.

I did try cutting back the original very coarse yellowy silver metalflake, which came out reasonably ok on the top but showed the white base coat around air vents and edges.

Many thanks, Richard

You could get an aerosol and experiment!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/300573273139

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/132757458907

As the Ad. states the code is LA7W

Davefettback wrote:I restored the original roof on my 72. It is a large silver metal flake and looks amazing. I?m not aware of any other car that had this feature. Be bold, do it! Warning, not inexpensive.

Mine is almost the reverse of your's Dave My roof is a BMW purple (can't remember the exact code now).

Richard, I think I agree with you that VW Reflex silver will look great. Whilst maybe not 100% original, many people do seem to agree that the original flake can be a bit too blingy in the wrong light. Just do what you are happy with.

Kind regards

Rich

Grizzly wrote:Some thing else to take into account is the ground colour makes quite a big difference to the cast.

Ahhh. That explains why my metal flake always looked more gold on my tawny metallic +2