As some may know, I'm restoring a 170 and it will be polished aluminum.
I plan to paint the undersides and internal bits (between ailerons and wing for example) but need a good color.
I'm not painting the undersides of the wings - that never looks good..just the bottoms of the control surfaces, in between moving surfaces that are a pain to clean and the bottom of the horizontal stab.

I don't want it to look like I'm trying to pretend the painted surfaces are bare metal.
I don't want the painted parts to stand out at all.

I'm looking for a color that is very un-noticable as to not detract from the painted areas.
I keep thinking a primer gray or a flat silver might do the trick but I thought I'd ask here.

Thoughts?

Can't offer any good clues on aluminum colored paint, but as the owner of a "semi-polished" 170 I'd recommend you reconsider painting the bottom of the flying surfaces. You'll find that these areas are where the oxidization really hits first and it's much harder to polish there than the fuselage, etc.

A few caveats on my comments: I'm up here in the pacific northwest, with a lot of rain, I instruct in and rent out my airplane (so it's flying a lot), and I don't require my renters to towel the airplane down when it's wet. (Yeah, I know, I could do that, but I'd rather have them spend their time flying and maintaining proficiency.) Lots of opportunity to get wet and get oxidation started, so my comments may not apply in your case.

All that said, I sure wish I'd gotten the bottom of the wings, flaps, ailerons, hor. stab, and elevator painted with the trim color. Might not have looked as good as a fully polished airplane, but would look a bit better than its "semi-polished" state.

Good luck with the restoration!

--Tony

I was planning to paint the bottoms of the control surfaces but just not the bottom of the wings.
My only logic for that is it might be too big an area of paint to still make the plane look bare metal.

"Semi polished" is a good description as I don't want to have to maintain a polished look. Just a clean bare metal look

There is a great silver Imron that matches polished alum. This is what I used on my gear, wing fairings, wing roots, etc...

Greg-

bigrenna wrote:There is a great silver Imron that matches polished alum. This is what I used on my gear, wing fairings, wing roots, etc...

Greg-

Do you have a paint code or even of few photos?

I will grab the code when I get to the shop. Unfortunately I don't have any pics of my Skywagon project.

Greg-

bigrenna wrote:Unfortunately I don't have any pics of my Skywagon project.

Haha!

Lol

bigrenna wrote:Unfortunately I don't have any pics of my Skywagon project.

I see what you did

I painted the tops of a set of Cessna 140 rag wings with Stewart Systems metallic silver.... The fuselage is polished and I think it looks pretty good...

Brian