After many years of my old bike sitting neglected in a corner of the basement in poor condition, I have now started a project to revive this wonderful frame. Since I now ride road and gravel bikes, I want to transform the 970 into a modern gravel bike with disc brakes and 650b wheels.
The frame needs to be completely repainted as it has many paint damages, and I would like to retain the original Sour Grape color. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find information about the original color. Local paint shops were unable to determine the exact color, as color spectrometers used to measure the color only work with larger paint surfaces, and the frame does not provide enough surface area.
I found out that Trek originally used Imron paint, but it is no longer used today – at least here in Germany, I could not find a paint shop that uses it. In the range of RAL colors, RAL 310 20 20 comes quite close to the color, but it’s not really exact. Therefore, my questions are:
Are there ways to determine exact colors on a small and round surface of a bike frame?
Does anyone know the name of the original Imron color?
Does anyone know the best matching RAL color?
Is there a way to directly contact Trek with questions Labour vintage bikes?
Do you have any further tips on how to proceed in determining the exact color?
Any help would be highly appreciated.
Thanks a lot!
by dziegener