Fmtrx

Does anyone have any association on Raleigh paint codes and RAL codes?
I still have not found the RAL code for my purple bike for example.

Taking a look at the paint code list of a paint shop i am planning to send the frame, i tend to believe that the purple is very close to RAL 4008
what do you think ?

pastorbobnlnh 

@Fmtrx, I suffer from "color deficit" or partial color blindness, so I see colors but find it challenging to see the differences in shades or to distinguish two sperate colors. Therefore I won't comment on the color. I get grief from my wife and church members all the time when I make color suggestions. Turns out my daughter has the same condition, which is very rare in women, and quite the coincidence since she is adopted. But none of this has any thing to do with my suggestion below.

I'd like to make a suggestion as a long time Bike Forum member who has spent most of my time in Classic & Vintage: Start a new Thread in that forum titled something like "New to Bike Restoration: Help me Bring my '83 Raleigh Folder Back to Life!" Keep all your specific questions about your Raleigh in the same thread without starting new ones.

The reason for moving this to the Classic & Vintage forum is that many of your questions can be answered by vintage bike enthusiasts who have a deep knowledge base on the era of your Raleigh. Usually there are a significant number of members on line at any time to answer your questions and to comment. Most are very gracious and exceptionally helpful. They also know significantly more about vintage Raleigh bikes, vintage folding bikes, vintage components, vintage Sturmey Archer gear, etc.

The members here on Folding Bike are never very many in number, and for the most part seem more interested in modern folding bikes and thus don't comment much or have nothing to share. Conversely, the members participating in Classic & Vintage are not interested in modern folding bikes. However, they are very interested in vintage bikes, vintage restorations, looking at pictures of vintage bikes and components and solving vintage challenges. Also the C&V folks seem to me to be very friendly overall, eager to assist, and will encourage and coach you on to victory!

I hope you find this helpful and I see you post over in C&V.

Fmtrx

This is a good idea, so i copied the thread to the Vintage section. Although i do not know how to remove the thread from Folder section. Perhaps only the admin can do so ?
About the specific question, yes one could say that it is more practical to have all questions gathered in a single thread, this is easier for me and i would prefer to do it this way.
But someone else could say that, for example an expert in paint codes is less likely to hit the thread with the generic title "restoration" and find the question burried for example in post #34 and answer it.
On the other hand, a thread with a specific title saying about the paint code is more easily viewed from the readers. Just my opinion. I guess i could try my luck with your proposal, and if it does not succeed then i could start a new thread asking a specific question.

pastorbobnlnh 

What you will find is that in C&V there is quite a bit of using the "@+username" in that the knowledge base is deep and the C&Vers seem to remember fairly well who has experience or expertise in what area. For instance when I used cudak888 in a mention, he chimed in. However, I know most of his posting is in C&V and that he doesn't look here in Folding Bikes.

Try it both ways. However, for your Raleigh I'm assuming C&V will provide you with better and more complete feedback.

If you go to the first post in a thread, I believe there is a tab marked "Thread Tools." There you can delete a thread. However, I don't believe you need to delete these that are here in Folding Bike. We never know who might come along and help--- or even read it and find it helpful. So just leave these here. I'll look for you in C&V!

systemBuilder

First off let me say that the RAL4008 color is a very good match. If anything, maybe a tiny bit too rich/dark, as modern paints have much deeper colors than vintage (pre-1980) paints, so if anything you might have a paint shop cut the paint with a tiny bit of light grey color.

You can load both photos into paint.net on a PC, and install the white balance tool.

• https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/23...white-balance/
• https://www.getpaint.net/doc/latest/InstallPlugins.html

The tool will let you read out the RGB (red, green, blue) values at any part of the picture. Then, use that to assess if the paint is "close enough". I think +/- 5 on each value is probably good enough. Cameras are not color-calibrated and often take photos with a color bias depending upon the type of sensor (CMOS or CCD or whatever happened to result from SONY's VLSI production line that day!!)

Also note that paints change color every year even if they are kept in the dark, so the original color is unknowable (the paints change faster in the sun but they still change). A friend of mine did his BS thesis at MIT to try to computationally match GM paints n years after production because the paints change color every year.