What paint codes on 1988 XJ?

Hey!

I have a problem with my paint choice, the car is gonna get a new paint job next week, but the company that's gonna do it needs the paint codes. The authorized dealer in town told me the codes are in the engine bay on the firewall or on top of the radiator support. There is no such coded numbers on any of thease places, and when I called the dealer later the same day, they told me they couldn't help me!. The colour it has today is dark red metallic and it has a grey tape stripe on the lower part of the body. I want to keep those colours! Do you guys have any idea of what kind of paint I'm looking for? Is there any paint scemes on the net? Where?
Hope you guys can help me with this!

Thanks in advance.
Arnt H. Andresen
Trondheim, Norway

Take the XJ to the place that is going to do the work. If they cannot find the paint codes, or come up with a close match if it is not the OEM color, I would find another place to do the work......

Arnt --

Look on the driver's side door and door post. Sometimes the paint code plate is there. The codes should be two sets of three characters, with a space in the middle, such as

PE9 SE9

The red we call Colorado Red is not a metallic paint. When you say yours is "dark" red, is it closer to a maroon? I believe in 1988 they were already using Chrysler colors. Ask your paint shop to look at Chrysler "Black Cherry Metallic" and see if that's close.

Dana44,

I also have a 88 XJ and it is going into the shop this week. I have the factory service manuals and what the dealer told you is what the manual says. I looked around my XJ and did find the data plate, it was moved after the manual was published.

My data plate is located on the fire wall between the driver's side hood hinge and the fender. Is it a square panel about 5 by 10 cm, thought I'd put it in SI for you!

There are 7 rows of numbers the paint codes are in the bottom row. According to the manual the first number in the last row is the Chassis color, the second one not talked about in the paint section and the third is the trim color.

My data plate says 3D in the first position. I checked the manuals and they called it Sterling Silver Metallic. I then checked it against the new vehicle window sticker which I have in the file and they called it Sterling Metallic.

I am confident the first number in the last row of that plate is the paint code. The maual says Ditzler, Dupont, Rinshed Mason, and Sherwin Williams Acme/Rogers all were suppliers for the colors.

Martin

I Just found this site,
www.paintscratch.com/

was very helpful in finding the paint code, I found mine where martin said, between fender and hood hinge drivers side. It is a stamped plate rivited on and painted the body color and somehow I had never noticed it before. they also show what the colors look like but one of the links explains how it is hard to match a metallic paint because it can appear different from different angles so the colors are kind of an avarage. HTH and good luck