Orange undercoat

[Alex Blair (RIP)]

Originally Posted by HUntsville Matt

Hi,

I'm new to the forum - I'm part of the group in Huntsville Ontario that are restoring the local Legion chapter's carrier after many years of neglect.

Can anyone offer any insight or background about the orange paint used throughout the engine compartment in Canadian built carriers, or is it just the vehicle we happen to have?

Any historic info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Matt

What you may be looking at is weathered or sun bleached red oxide primer which tends to turn orange with age and weathering..OR It may be the Great Pumpkin..of Charlie Brown fame...!!
Did it come out of a pumpkin patch...????

[HUntsville Matt]

Alex,
Thanks for the suggestion. I wondered about oxidization myself, but wasn't sure if primer would change colour that much. But, after 65 years, who knows?

[Jordan Baker]

A number of carrier parts I have striped the paint off seem to have used a grey primer from the factory. I can't say if this was used 100% of the time. Although on my resto I have mostly used the oxide red.

[HUntsville Matt]

Thanks Jordan.

[Jared Archibald]

G'day Matt,

I am in northern Australia and have a project Local Pattern No.1 (LP1) carrier that was built in 1940 at the Victorian Railway Workshops.

This carrier has no original paint left, but whenever you remove a panel or bracket from the position it has been in for 70 years you find a orangy-red layer that has been applied before the pieces were bolted together at the factory. I have been told that this is "red lead" but I don't really know much about it. Any one out there know - I assume it was used when putting steam locomotives together also as an anti seize/anti corrosion layer between metal parts.

I assume from your post that yours has the orange coating everywhere, not just underneath/between parts so it is probably not the same stuff, but I thought I would mention it anyway.

Jared

[HUntsville Matt]

Jared,
Thanks for your reply. The areas with the most orange colour exposed on our vehicle have been the inside faces of the engine cover panels and on the one remaining fuel tank(it's twin is long gone). I spent the last 2 Friday afternoons scouring the old finish and rust out of the engine compartment and I did find orange under the standard green paint, so maybe it's just a weird primer colour they used at the time. It's a very different than standard red oxide primer in use today.
I'm just interested in any trivial details I can find.
Cheers,
Matt

[Phil Waterman]

The use of different color undercoat or primer paint has come up in other parts of the MLU Forum even different colors on the same vehicle. While some of this can be explained as composite vehicles assembled from knockdown kits, other vehicles or repair parts I suspect that you might find this on military vehicles coming directly of the assembly line. Paint was a scares resource just like any other part of the vehicle and they used what ever was available. I'm quite sure that if somebody had 10,000 gallons of pink primer in 1942 we would be finding parts painted with pink primer now.

But it is interesting to note during a restoration what the different under colors are as it does give some indication of history of the vehicle. While one of my CMPs didn't have enough paint to give much information though it did have some paint under the rust in places. (yes I said under the rust or more exactly under the rust color where rust coloring has stained the paint)

On my other CMPs what I found more interesting was the first coat of paint on top of the primer. One truck everything matched the other many bits like one front fender didn't match though the top coats did.

Interesting to follow your detective work on your Carrier

Cheers Phil