Just after lunch today I stopped in at the body shop where the side skirts are, to let the painter compare some colour samples to the Focus. The issue with this paint – Yellow Blaze (NQ) – is that it’s a tri coat. In between the base and clear coats is a pearl coat, which makes the car look fantastic in the sun but also makes it a pain to match painted parts to.

Above is the sample card, and although it’s hard to see there are four variations of NQ on it. Over top of the same base coat are one, two, three, and four coats of pearl, with each additional coat resulting in a darker final colour. Even the lightest shade (one coat of pearl) was too orange compared to the car though, so the base coat needs to be changed. Tomorrow I should be stopping by again, when they’ll have new samples to compare. Eventually the magic combination will be found.

With the Grand Prix this was never an issue as its paint was a really basic, plain white. I would drop parts off with the paint code and they’d match. Because of the pearl on the Focus though, that’s not an option and each time something needs to be painted it’s going to be a trial-and-error process to get the mixture just right. I adore the colour though and when shopping there was no other colour I wanted; but the body shop and I will need to spend more time testing and checking when painting parts for it – and this will be all done again when a rear valence gets painted in the future.

This evening also marked my first Beyond meet of the year. During the summer these get quite large and are held outside at one of the local malls. In the winter months, they shrink and tend to be held underground where it’s brighter and warmer. Not too many people show up (especially this early in the year) but it’s always good to see familiar faces and hang out.

Mario was there with his ST. Mustard and Ketchup, again.

The closing picture for this post; I finally received this in the mail yesterday. For those that don’t know, Modifiers were die-cast cars that you could customize with supplied parts. They were big when I was in junior high and since then have long since been discontinued. Some new-in-box ones can still be found, such as here.

There was a fair bit to do with the supplied pieces. This is a deluxe kit but even the regular ones came with body kits, wheels, seats, tinted windows, and a few engine parts. Myself and others even took it further and would do repaints and custom parts. I’ve spent countless hours on these and even sold parts for them years ago. When this one popped up for sale I grabbed it right away. Now the question is, keep it in the box or play with it? Hmm.

-Bill