Orange undercoat

[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