Back to some more paint matching. This time for the Knecht Air Filters. I initially thought that once you figured out silver, or black, you’d know your engine colors. It appears that the Germans basically told suppliers, “das silver ist gut” (this is my German translation in my head. I’m too lazy to use Google translate today). So you got whatever silver that supplier had. So the various silver parts on the engine are various flavors of silver.
Similar to the oil circulating bits, you don’t want glass bead in your air filters and carbs. Also the filters are press fit together. So not easy to dis or reassemble. I ran across an Sept 2013 article called Resto Strip, by Edwin Schweitzer. To prep, he boiled them in phosphoric acid. If I understand correctly, this would only attack rust, and not old paint. Which as I understand doesn’t give you any more benefit than Evaporust. I’d rather not deal with the acid. So I went through various stages of carb cleaner and Evaporust to prep them.
I tested several different silvers. The two closest matches I found in four different lighting conditions. Bottom of my Knecht filter in the middle. Paint sprayed on metal left and right. As a Forum contributor suggests, the Krylon dull aluminum 1403 is pretty close. Duplicolor Engine Enamel with Ceramic Aluminum DE1615 looks quite close to my eye as well. I was able to get both through O’Reilly.
After all this, I learned that Stoddard part number NLA-095-042-00 is not just for the wiper system, but also the mesh air filters. I wish I had known this sooner. Even at $29.99 per can, I would have saved time and money over buying several other cans of silver to try to find a match. I think they’ve updated their description to include this now.
