I consider myself quite lucky to have found a secondhand van at the right spec and the right price in a colour that you don't see too often. Stone Blue (or SteinBlau to be Germanically precise) was an optional extra. It seems a little odd that the initial purchaser chose this option over quite a few, more practical offerings, such as electric windows or air-con for example.
I'm always happy when I see another Stone Blue T5 on the road (we've even waved at quite a few - with mixed reactions) so it was a great opportunity whilst in the car park at
Vanfest to scout around for some fellow 'Stoners'.
It became immediately apparent that Volkswagen must have had a tough time when it came to mixing up a batch of Stone Blue paint as none of them seem to match. Ours seems quite 'grey' in comparison to others that seem to be a touch warmer - please tell me my (slightly colourblind) eyes don't deceive me and you too can spot the difference in the colours above...
Let me know if you're a fellow 'Stoner', maybe we should have a meet-up at a future show to see how much this colour fluctuates!
My stone blue looks a bit more like the one on the right above which seems to be more aqua than yours.
ReplyDeletecheers Ron, glad it's not just me! Although I'm now starting to wonder if we've got an oddball colour!!!
ReplyDeleteDunno not seen many to compare with, either way its still a cool van colour!
ReplyDeleteMy 06 stone blue 174 also looks very much like the one on the right. The lighter of the two! At first I was unsure about the colour but am now totally in love with it.
ReplyDeleteDo either of you two find that it marks and scratches very easily, almost too easily?
Haha! They all seem to look like the one on the right! Not that I'm too bothered - I love the colour :)
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, it does scratch easily - I had the rear wing repainted and it makes the rest of the van's original paint feel very 'thin' by comparison.
So how do you protect your paint? Car parks are turning into an absolute nightmare for me. I go very out of my way to park so people dont park next to me. Even the lightest touch with a hand bag or belt or something marks the paint.
ReplyDeleteI spent about three hours yesterday with touch up paint doing some of the worst offenders and it looks better, but the smaller scratches are the hard ones - t-cut wont get them out.
These vehicles are seriously bad for your health!!!!
So how do you protect your paint? Never drive it! Seriously though, you can't - you can always find me at the back of the car park too!!!
ReplyDeleteYour smaller scratches might come out with a proper mopping with a light cutting compound and then re-polishing. But this is getting into the realms of OCD and there are bigger things in life to worry about!
I did a day's cleaning back in the Summer with a Meguiar's 3 stage kit (it was 2-for-1 in Halfords) which starts with a pre-clean for road-tar and grime and finishes with a decent quality Carnuba wax - probably the best shine I've had for a while; long lasting and water is still beading off the van three months later!
For all the other scratches and dings, I'm hoping to have them sorted when I go for colour-coding.
Yeah, OCD is a nightmare and definitely comes hand in hand with these vehicles!
ReplyDeleteMeguiar is a good brand? I might be popping down to halfords for some of that for mine.
Colour coding is always an interesting issue. I did a mock up in paint with colour coded bumpers and mirrors and it did look very nice. But also kinda strange. It's like the stone blue wants to be mated with black at every opportunity possible. If you've seen a fiat 500 in a similar (although slightly lighter blue) colour to the VW it'll give you a good idea of what it will look like.
Can't wait to see pics when you've had yours done... maybe it will give me the balls to get mine done too!
Meguiar's are an okay brand - there's better out there but the cost starts to rise very quickly - have a look around for Dodo-Juice too, I've heard good things about them...
ReplyDeleteColour-coding will still be a year or two away yet, I was a bit unsure until I saw a colour-coded Stone Blue van on a campsite recently - it looked spot-on in the flesh - but I'll definitely be changing to the smoother Caravelle bumper and not colouring the standard van bumper...
In the top photo the van at the top of the photo looks more like Volkswagen's 'Flannel grey'...i'd definately say Stone blue is more like the other van and like the back round colour on this page!
ReplyDeleteNow even I'm confused? Maybe I've got a 'Stone Grey' or 'Flannel Blue' cross-breed!!!
Delete'Flannel174' doesn't sound as good though, so I'm sticking with what I think is Stone Blue.
One lesson I have learned over the years of ownership: never trust a paint-code to match paint - always use a sample from the vehicle.