Orange undercoat
 

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

Orange ..
 

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...????

:drunk::remember :support

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?

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.

Thanks Jordan.

Another idea...
 

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

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

Strange undercoat colors
 

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

Phil,
Thanks for your reply. I also suspect that the undercoat colour may have been whatever Ford Canada had on hand during production. It was getting bronze green sprayed over it anyway.
I think maybe I'm too into the fiddly details, but if the orange colour is there by design I'd still like to know. I don't think I'm OCD.
Regards,
Matt

I have seen a very orange primer used, but only on the later mk2 carriers, and primarily around the fasteners and joints, almost like it was a sealant.

Hi Rob,
Thanks for your input.
I noticed on your vehicle list that you have some CMP trailers - are they flatbeds or something task-specific? If you've got pictures, I'd be very interested.
Thanks,
Matt

Primer
 

I think Jared is on the right trail with red lead. Newport Railway Workshops (just down the end of my street) is 3 kilometers from the Williamstown Naval Dockyards. Both facilities used red lead extensively as primer. In fact their moto used to be if you cant make love to it (not how they actually expressed it) red lead it. The stuff shows up around here all the time in houses . Must have been liberated from the factories by the gallon. Highly toxic and dangerous to small children so take extreme care if you are sanding it.
Graeme

Graeme
 

Paints never been the same, since they took the lead out of it

Orange paint
 

Is this what you mean? -When I took the rivets out- steering box armour, British.

REd lead
 

I am quite certain that red lead was used on british armoured vehicle. Having owned /restored several british MV's (Centurion, Scout Mk1, Daimler Dingo, Ferret and AEC Dorchester) I have come across this hard to remove orange sealant coat, especially in joins etc.

I have always taken the precaution to use filtered masks when removing it. I'm not sure what harmful effects red lead dust can have but I'm not keen to find out either !

Cheers

Phill

Thanks to all.
I get the impression from your responses that the orange finish is red lead primer. Phill's suggestion that filter masks be used when stripping a vehicle is very important considering what one finds when you research red lead and lead poisoning on Wikipedia.
I'll proceed carefully.