"The guy" painted the door handles too but I figured that they would wear too frequently and left them OEM black. I also prefer to use Vinyl Dye instead of paint since it seeps into the plastic/vinyl and doesn't chip or flake like paint does.
I started with Septone's Satin Mid Grey paint since I couldn't find the right grey in a dye and prepped the door tweeter's door trim accordingly with the degreaser and adhesion primer:
That turned out way too light, much lighter than the can's cap colour (which looked like a perfect match), so I tracked down some VHT Charcoal Grey Satin dye and tried that:
VHT Charcoal Grey Satin dye is way too dark and almost black - it was hard to tell that there was any difference!
Here's the comparison between the two:
I wasn't happy with either of them so decided to try Tamiya's model aircraft paint since I knew that it wouldn't have any adverse reaction with the vinyl trim. I first tried Light Gun Metal, then German Grey.
The Light Gun Metal turned out almost the colour of the metal lead (ie. metallic silver flecks) and was too light:
It was obvious from this that Titanium Grey actually has a lot of blue in it (you can't really see it in these shots).
Here's some comparison shots between the VHT Charcoal Grey Satin dye and Tamiya Light Gun Metal paint:
Next I tried the Tamiya German Grey paint (shots taken at night so lighting affected the colour):
Note: At this point I gave up masking the speaker covers to preserve the OEM black since the tweeters are an odd shape and took forever to mask.
Here's some comparisons between the VHT Charcoal Grey Satin dye and Tamiya Light Gun Metal and German Grey paints:
I settled on the Tamiya German Grey and here's what the finished product looks like on my Gina after 4 light coats of Septone Clear Acrylic Topcoat:
Now it remains to be seen how the door trim holds up long-term - I'm hoping the acrylic topcoat will keep it lasting good for a few years.
