Fire flake roman purple
- Thread starter Lj3
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A good body shop and/or automotive paint supplier can match your paint if you have a sample. Is it one of the original factory colors? NOC may be of some help..
Oddly enough, HD have a color not that far removed form this, in their 2012 or 2013 lineup.
Hard candy voodoo purple.
http://i.imgur.com/hxevE80.jpg
Along with other versions of most of Nortons fireflake colors...
commando6868 said:
Good luck with that !
You'll be lucky if the NOC even mention fireflake colours.... ?
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Lj3 said:
Well ... I recommend Brent Budgor... "the Vintage Vendor" who regularly posts on this forum.
Check out his recent post in the "for sale" section of this forum. An added plus ... he is really good at duplicating the "70s sparkle effect" of the "Fireflake" colors in the Commando range. He did a "Fireflake Royal Blue" set for me 
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My 70 S had Roman fire flake purple . Sexiest colour in the world. My last colour source for that paint was some California distributor awhile back. So sparkly ,don't put it over fiberglass as per original. :wink:
B+Bogus
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Rohan said:
Amen to that!
Black is the traditional way, Old Boy
Purple flakes are available - they're supplied dry, just like glitter, and need to be mixed with lacquer, sprayed over a suitable base colour then overcoated with another 3 or so coats of lacquer before it levels off.
It's not as straightforward as 'normal' paintwork, so make sure your paintshop has done this sort of thing before.
The available flakes can be a good match for the original Norton colours, but I haven't done a purple one yet.
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Rohan said:
Oddly enough, HD have a color not that far removed form this, in their 2012 or 2013 lineup.
Hard candy voodoo purple.
http://i.imgur.com/hxevE80.jpg
Along with other versions of most of Nortons fireflake colors...
commando6868 said:
Good luck with that !
You'll be lucky if the NOC even mention fireflake colours.... ?
It is possible that the NOC may have access to the original color codes, the other suggestions are a good way to go too.
You will have to post photos of the final result, I bet it will look great.
Black is boring, and way over done.
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There are no original colours codes to access, they did not operate that way in the 60's/70's, paintshop operators at the BSA and Triumph plants made their own mix up every day to a formula and can't see Norton doing any different. It varied slightly every day and current experts like John Critchlow work to copying several samples and picking a mid range one.
B+Bogus
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Lj3 said:
I haven't seen the recent Harleys, but I'm guessing the paintwork will be a candy clear over metallic base - not what you're after.
I don't think there's been a production bike in metalflake since Commandos and Ducati GTs in the early '70s, but I'll gladly be proven wrong
I have the purple you're after, but I can't get a decent photo of it!
Best endeavours etc...
A completed job or two...
I'm in the UK, but if you can't source anything locally, please PM me. I'm guessing you're in the US?
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I believe Roman Fireflake Purple had medium sized flakes of differing colours not just silver. I recall reds in the mix. :|
B+Bogus said:I haven't seen the recent Harleys, but I'm guessing the paintwork will be a candy clear over metallic base - not what you're after.
I don't think there's been a production bike in metalflake since Commandos and Ducati GTs in the early '70s, but I'll gladly be proven wrong
Naaa, the HD paints have (colored) flakes in them. Just like Nortons did.
http://i.imgur.com/hxevE80.jpg
This is said to be a good match for the HD version of their purple.
http://www.voodoo-flake.com/witch-dr-series-indigo/
(And possibly even the origin of it ?).
If you've seen their range of bikes together, they bear more than a resemblance to Nortons range of fireflake colors...
Sounds handy.
Try it, and show us how it goes !
Unless you can find a Norton sample, and then get a real good match off it,
its just as likely to be as close as anyones. ?
And, you can tell HD owners that Nortons had it 40 years earlier... !
There is also the minor point that these colors look different when viewed from different angles,
so pics will often look quite different shades for the same color.
Try it, and show us how it goes !
Unless you can find a Norton sample, and then get a real good match off it,
its just as likely to be as close as anyones. ?
And, you can tell HD owners that Nortons had it 40 years earlier... !
There is also the minor point that these colors look different when viewed from different angles,
so pics will often look quite different shades for the same color.
B+Bogus
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Rohan said:
It's my favourite too, and hopefully will see the light of day when I can get my finger out and finish building something :roll:
Base colour was NOC approved black! :wink:
I make sure there's enough flake applied to completely cover the base-coat, so the underlying colour isn't visible. The original panels & tanks I've seen are the same.
The custom car brigade make them stretch out further by using a good match on the base colour and laying down just enough flake to get the effect, but it isn't the way Norton did it.
Here's an original unused 'S' panel (two if you look carefully) with one of mine...
It's a fact that metalflake paintwork just doesn't photograph well - it needs to be seen in the flesh.
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