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I had assumed that the hole in my passenger door card beneath the armrest was prior owner shenanigans, but then I saw this photo which has the same shape hole in the same spot, Does anybody know what might have been here? Mine is a 93 touring with red interior.
its for a mounting screw. theres a small plug (if you want to call it that) that goes over it. the plug comes off, the screw is accessed then the plug is reinstalled.
If you are referring to the hole in the centre of the panel, it is used for accessing one of the screws that bolt the door card to the door, which is usually covered by a cap (see pics below).
If you find a good match please post it. Think I might just paint my tan interior at this point since getting my hands on a factory red one is proving almost impossible
This post is an FD owner with a burgundy interior who accidentally chose the wrong SEM paint. He chose Firethorn Red, which looks a lot like the FD interior color: https://www.rx7club.com/1st-gen-gene...oject-1151048/
There's also advice from the board (somewhere...) that says to take your most faded piece of small interior to the paint store and have them match it. Any paint store should be able to provide the paint in a spray (or so I've read).
For $10 I've TOFTM and ordered a SEM color chart. Will post pictures against my red interior when it arrives. Meanwhile, I'm itching to try this crazy technique for chairs:
SEM should have a matching paint. Hopefully someone on here probably posted about it over the last 20 years.
when i did my GSL-SE back in the day. i went to the store, which is like a big box that has faster shipping
they had a shelf of the SEM stuff and i just tried a couple. the 84-85 Rx7 is tough to match, the closest was the SEM Burgundy, but its a bluer red than the factory color which is almost an orange
I got my SEM chart in the mail and took some photos. Based on the SEM color chart, I would say that Portola Red is the closest match, but it's not a perfect match. Granted, these are 30 year old panels with some fade on them, but I think the FD red interior plastics are slightly brighter (I'd say 1/3 the distance between Portola and Flame red) than Portola while the leather seats are slightly more burgundy.
First picture: This is the interior door card. This first photo is taken inside the car in a garage with an LED light shining on it. In this light, it's quite close to Portola red.
Picture 2: This is the red leather seat. It looks a lot more burgundy in this photo, but in real life it's not quite so stark, but there's definitely an observable difference in hue. But you'd probably be using a leather dye anyway for the seats. So far I have not been able to find if there's a code so probably would need to be color matched. I think Portola might work for the lacquer thinner trick from the youtube video I posted in this thread. I have some big tears so am going to try out leather patching and try to source a color matched dye.
Picture 3: This is the door sill cover which is easy to take off and so allowed me to move it into different lights. Here, Firethorn red is way off so I eliminated it from the running immediately.
Picture 4: This is the sill cover outside, in direct sunlight. Here it looks darker than Portola but that's probably just the camera. In direct sunlight with the naked eye, the sill still looked pretty close to Portola (see more photos below).
Picture 5: Portola red is to the left, and here's Flame red. In exterior light like this, the Flame Red looks closer but in real life not quite so much. But even in this photo you can see how Flame Red is not a good match because it doesn't have the same degree of overtones. Only toward the right edge, where the sunlight washes away the trim's overtones does it start to look like a match for Flame Red, and I don't think you'd ever see those conditions in the actual interior. There might also be a little reflecting going on in the photo.
Picture 6: This is the underside of the sill cover. I figured the underside would be closer to factory colors, and it is indeed darker. To the naked eye, in interior light, I couldn't tell the difference between Portola and the actual plastic color. Note how in this photo that the sill tips slightly more in the burgundy direction. I've grown to appreciate the small disparity between my seats and my interior plastics, thinking it was a design choice, but perhaps that's fading plastics and the look was actually intended to be more uniform. Maybe someone with a garage trophy car could tell us.
Picture 7: One more photo of the sill in exterior light, trying to get a better camera angle. Here, Portola looks pretty damn close. Angles and texture make a big difference.
Picture 8: This photo captures best how the actual FD red interior color lies somewhere between Portola and Flame reds. To me, this is very close to what I was seeing with the naked eye. One has to wonder whether blended coats would get you a near match (at least per my current interior with it's 30 year fade).
Here's an update as I'm finally restoring my red interior. I decided to try spraying SEM Portola Red in an inconspicuous area. It's close but not a perfect match. It doesn't have that slight burgundy color of our original. It's more of a "brick" red. Maybe hard to tell in the photos below but side by side in real life it's underwhelming compared to the original. It's lighter than the color chart.
I'm going to order a can of Firethorn for comparison and maybe work on a blend. I'm also going to see how the Portola works out just being rubbed into some scuffs.
SEM Portola Red SEM Portola on left, OEM red on right (bottom of bin) Another view
I've been meaning to make a post in the 3D printing thread, but figure I'll tag it to this thread as well. @need-a-t2 and I worked to find the closest color match of 3D print filament. Obviously every interior is going to be different based on various things, but this is what we came up with.
"It's interesting because which plastic is a better match seems to change based on the lighting. I was pretty skeptical of the Dark Cherry at first, as in person it looks to have quite a bit of purple in it, but it seems to blend really well with the smaller, darker plastics. The Candy Apple blends well with the larger panels though, so it almost seems for different panels, you should use different colors. Then again it may just be my interior and how its aged. If only we could somehow get the plastic color name/brand from Mazda lol. I think for the door vents and smaller trim pieces, the Dark Cherry is the way to go. But for larger panels like the ones in the footwell, it seems like the Candy Apple is the better option."
In regards to repair, all of our red pieces are polypropylene (PP). I haven't been able to find any "dark red" plastic welding rods, just red, which would probably be good enough for fixing tabs and such, but so probably is black sprayed red since all that stuff is hidden anyway.
Meanwhile, it seems that 93 Miatas also had a red interior option and their interior pieces look strikingly similar to ours! I think it would make sense that Mazda used the same red for different vehicles in the same year. These guys seem to have had luck mixing SEM Firethorn and SEM Napa reds to get that perfect blend. I'm going to have a whole shelf of SEM reds by the time I'm done here: https://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?t=701874
Meanwhile, meanwhile, this guide suggests "Humbrol 73" aka "wine red" which is a model paint. I might pick up a small container and try it out: https://www.erix7.nl/mazda/rx7col.html
Meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile Portola Red has been perfectly adequate for fixing scuffs. I applied it kind of like shoe polish, spraying the back of a white cloth, thinning with a little lacquer thinner and then rubbing with medium pressure on the other (dry) side of the cloth. These pictures are before applying any UV protector.
The reason we put effort into matching to a filament was mainly for printing full replacements or missing parts (like the door vents in my case). You could also certainly get a better color match through resin printing, but we didn't go that far. For touch ups or small pieces I agree that painting is a perfectly fine route to go down. I'll probably end up painting a bunch of black push clips myself as I'm missing a bunch and there's no other options for replacements. Just gotta figure out which red is the best red
Apparently one can order direct from https://vinylpro.com/pages/custom-colors. Or send them a part and pay $35 for them to hand match. I've seen many forums where people say their local paint shop can mix up custom SEM colors and put it in a spray can. I have a local distributor so will see if that is possible.
