tsappenfield

I’m doing a restore on a 1974 Raleigh Super Course Mark II. This includes some frame, actually fork, painting. I’ve done some bike painting in the past with mixed results, the problem being getting a good paint match for touch up work. My automotive paint store is of little help in that they say their paint matching machine just won’t work on bike parts regardless of their size, so they direct me to several large chip books and leave me to it. No fun! The color of the bike was flamboyant (flam) red/white. Only the red appears on the fork. Is their an easier way to match this color? Is it still available somewhere? Probably not.
Tsapp

Doug Fattic 

The kind of paint used in the UK in the 70's is not the kind of paint we can buy here in the States today. When I was learning to build frames at Ellis Briggs in England in 1975 they also had a paint department. I would hang out with those guys during lunch and coffee breaks. The paint they used was "stove enamel" that was hardened by heating the freshly painted frames in giant ovens.

Your request for a paint match is greatly complicated by the fact it is a flamboyant red. Flamboyant paint is translucent (meaning you can see through it) and is painted over a sparkly undercoat (usually metallic silver but could be gold or could be any glittery color actually). The color darkens and deepens as more coats are applied. And to get an exact match you would need to know the undercoat color too. Undercoat metallics can also have different size flakes from very fine to coarse.

However it wouldn't be impossible to get close. House of Color (Color should be spelled with a K but auto correct keeps changing it back to a C) makes candy (the American word for flamboyant) polyurethane paint. The 2 colors similar to British flam red is Apple red (with a slight orange shade) or Brandywine red (a bit darker and more bluish). H of K makes several metallic undercoats with finer or heavier flakes. If I am painting a candy red I usually tint the undercoat a bit red too).

H of K started out as a glamor paint for hot rods and custom motorcycles. Eventually it got bought out by Valspar. There are other paint companies that make candy colors too. They have a huge number fancy paints including pearls to get different effects.

Bad Lag

Candy Apple Red - the quintessential color for a custom hot rod.

repechage

Today, probably look at House of Kolor. Won't be cheap.

desconhecido 

That color, as I understand, was called Carmine Red and it is a translucent red over what appears to me some shade of gold or copper colored metallic. The other color of that bike was a flamboyant green which, I think, was over silver metallic but I don't have one of those. The translucent red is not very rub resistant, in my opinion, and the top of the top tubes shows the metallic peeking out -- even on bikes that have not been used hard. Might be a light reaction thing on the top tube rather than rubbing, don't know.

USAZorro

Are you looking to do it yourself, or send it off somewhere? I imagine professional painters would likely get it closer to a match, but on the other hand... $$$ or another land's equivalent.

plonz 

Geez, what did these paint mixers do before they had so-called “matching machines”? I had the same challenge when sourcing touch up paint for my Olmo. Not enough flat surface space for the auto paint supplier to get a read on their machine. They agreed to keep the frame until their rep came by who was an old school paint guy. He matched it by eyeball (and maybe some trial & error) and got me what I think was a perfect match.

To top it off, he didn’t charge me anything. I think he enjoyed the challenge knowing there were no consequences.

3alarmer 

...pretty much what these guys said. It's almost impossible to touch up the flamboyant finishes, because of the transparent nature of the top color coat. If it's just the fork that needs touching up, if it were me, I'd remove it from the bike, do a little experimentation on something else like steel conduit or other pipe, then repaint the whole fork when I had something close to the rest of the frame.

You can actually buy some pretty interesting transparent paints in small spray cans at Hobby Lobby, and at least one of them is a transparent red. It usually looks best over either a silver or gold metallic, unless your under-surface is chromed, in which case you just paint over the chrome. If you go this route, you'll probably need to clear coat over everything for durability.

Or just go with something relatively close in small non-spray liquid bottles, if you're not a perfectionist. But I've ended up entirely repainting at least one flamboyant bike, just because touching it up was impossible. The other problem with some of those red flamboyant's is that the fade unevenly over time. So you end up scratching your head over what to match.