What colour primer is best for British Racing Green?

[dazzed]

Will be using SMS paint 

[Ace-Garageguy]

Assuming you don't achieve 100% "full hiding", white will make most colors brighter, red will make them muddier, and gray is somewhere in between.

Best thing to do is a "sprayout card" to see what you like best.

It's also helpful to shoot a checkered test panel to determine how many coats you'll need to get full hiding.

[Rodent]

What color is the body molded in?

[dazzed]

Great idea, thanks Ace.

 

[dazzed]

Molded in red

[Bugatti Fan]

Grey will possibly the best over red plastic. Key the plastic to a matt finish first by taking the shine down with a worn piece of Scotchbrite or some fine grit wet and dry paper.

[stitchdup]

since its red and revell you'll need to do a mettalic silver or gold layer between the primer and colour coats. the revell red and orange leeches a lot of colour through the paint and the silver stops it

[Dave G.]

You will very likely need a sealer of some sort to keep the red from leaching through to your color coat ( as mentioned above). The silver pre paint is one method. Some folks like a shellac based sealer like Binns, first. It's white. If you were shooting acrylic or enamel, I'd suggest Stynylrez primer, which is a  sandable poly acrylic primer/sealer. But some lacquers if hot enough can get sand scratch swelling with this. I don't know how hot SMS is..

Anyway, you want to seal that red.

[Ace-Garageguy]

RED PLASTIC LEACHING COLOR INTO PAINT: This topic has been debated endlessly for years, with some insisting it's a problem, and some insisting it's not.

The REASON people disagree is that SOME red plastics leach color and SOME don't...and not every red plastic from the same manufacturer does it.

I know this to be true from extensive experimentation.

SO...as in all things related to getting primo paint results on models these days: TEST ON THE PARTICULAR PLASTIC FROM THE MODEL YOU'RE WORKING WITH BEFORE DECIDING HOW TO HANDLE IT.

 

Edited August 31, 2024 by Ace-Garageguy

[Fat Brian]

This is Tamiya nonmetallic BRG over white primer.

[TransAmMike]

Me, I'd go black.  I just think the British Racing green is blackish. I've seen some models painted and it's too greenish.  Just my 2-cents.?

[Matt Bacon]

BRG is not one colour, anyway (even Tamiya's rattle cans have two... TS-9 and TS-43). 1930s Bentleys were Brunswick Green with matt-finish olive green fabric bodywork. Racing Jaguars in the 1950s and early 60s were very dark; Lotus race cars in the green with yellow stripes schemes were much brighter. Vanwalls are somewhere in between. Jaguar's E-Type racing green is dark and slightly bluish.... unless it's "Opalescent Racing Green", which is beautiful, but different again. Broadly, I'd go for neutral grey primer. But it's important to make sure that the red pigment of the plastic won't come through and make it brown, so test as @Ace-Garageguy says. In my experience, Tamiya Fine Surface Grey Primer with multiple _light_ coats of colour on top will not leach the plastic pigment. The problem arises if the solvent in the coloured paint layer can penetrate the primer and pull the plastic pigment through. So don't have wet coats, and remember the same thing can happen with the clear coat as well. In fact, the couple of times I've had this problem, it's been with Zero Paints 2K clear (which is intended to be applied wet) pulling pigment through the matt finish porous base coat (which is designed to give a really good "key" for the gloss coat on top),

best,

M.

Edited August 31, 2024 by Matt Bacon

[Dave G.]

1 hour ago, TransAmMike said:

Me, I'd go black.  I just think the British Racing green is blackish. I've seen some models painted and it's too greenish.  Just my 2-cents.?

Well, Bill mentioned testing before painting the model for leaching red plastic. This thought you have is another reason to test shoot over various color primers. I shot Thicket Green for a build. The differences in test shoots were all over the place. In my testing I found black primer to produce the most faithful rendition.  I really wasn't expecting it either, as Thicket Green was quite dark already. White primer was impossible with that color, grey just wasn't right, black did it. Dark grey might have worked too but I never tried it.

Edited August 31, 2024 by Dave G.

[Skip]

The last Austin Healey Sprite we restored used the recommended Med-Gray primer under 2 coats of BRG color coat.  Most BRG covers really well, that is if it’s a high solids pigment paint, if not it will take a few coats to cover the primer.  I would recommend gray primer, black is almost too dark, red oxide might try to do something weird, white is too bright under a darker green it would lighten things up reflecting off of the BRG paint.