Earl Gillstrom

My '91 GT was painted Zermatt silver. I think this was special order since I don't think it was one of the standard colors. On the door sticker "92A 9 3". When I bought it most of the car had been repainted. I think the roof was original. I thought I would polish the roof and repaint the rest of the car. After polishing the roof it looked like polished primer, so I decided to paint the whole car. When I sanded the roof it went to primer instantly. Apparently all the Zermatt Silver waterbased paint was worthless.
Is there something in the paint code 92A 9 3 that designates water based paint?

cobalt

well as usual as you do research on things like this all it does is raise more questions. Based on the factory Technik manuals I have, no paints were offered in water base in 1991. Zermatt was only offered as 92A and it is not noted as being a water base paint with this paint code. Yet I have conflicting sources saying my Amazon 39A is a water base paint and the factory technik manual says it is not. In 1992 the only paint sown as being a water base paint was Slate grey(M) 23F all others do not show as being water based they also list black as 700 vs 747 for 1994. By 1994 all paints were offered in both standard and water base formulas.

Not being a paint expert here is a formula breakdown of amazon green 39A and 37Z.

Can anyone tell from this whether my paint (39A) is water base or not

JHowell37

You can't really tell. Most of those ingredients on those formulas are just toners. Having bought some Glasurit paint recently, I've seen some of those toners listed on my can which is solvent based. The other thing to keep in mind is that they can match a solvent based color to a water based color. And water based materials can be used to repair solvent based paints, and vice versa. There are a lot of misconceptions about water based materials. They're not inferior to solvent based. There were problems early on, but those have been corrected and many manufacturers use them exclusively from the factory. We can't just make blanket statements that solvent based is better then water based. It's never been about which one is better. The reason water based was developed was to reduce the toxicity of paints and limit VOCs.