Chorehorse restoration project

[Jordan Baker]

I read about about this ZEP degreaser product online. It’s a great degreaser and if the parts are left in longer it also removes the paint. These parts had been soaking for a few hours in a diluted mix of the product and water.

[David Dunlop]

Thanks for posting about this Zep product, Jordan.it just might be the answer for stripping that NATO Green paint off my Remote Receiver Case and Carrier No. 4 parts without damaging the Satin Nickel finish on the inside of them all, when I get to those points.

I assume it is cleaned/neutralized with something simple?

David

[Jordan Baker]

While a few parts were soaking, I did a redo on the frayed wiring. I took the original off and then removed the original terminals. Using new made vintage looking wiring I was able to make up a replacement piece.

I also removed the field coils so I could strip off the paint on the generator housing. Two more wires are showing a bit of fraying, so these will get fixed up another day.

Lastly for the day was the air breather. This was in NOS shape. The top had suffered some damage at some point and was slightly crushed. However with some careful metal bashing I was able to get it looking pretty good. I did a partial repaint on this as I didn’t want to disrupt the original decal. Interestingly, these were all originally gloss black and given a quick paint job of the SCC2 brown including drips and smudges. On another one I’ve seen there was even a few finger prints in the paint.

[Jordan Baker]

As for the final paint colour, well when I removed the data tag I was pleased to see that the 1950’s army painters led the tag in place. I was greeted with pretty much NOS SCC2. A fellow restorer/hobbyist put me onto the fact that RAPCO paints Camouflage Field Drab Brown 30118 was a near match to the paint used on the 1943 chorehorses. Thanks also to a couple of OMVA members who had gone to the MVPA convention and picked up the paint for me.

MLU and the hobby is a great place.

[Mike K]

Nice project.

Re the colours: the NOS chorehorse I bought in 1980 in the shipping crate. The horse itself is factory green and the spares box is brown. The exhaust flex pipe is a silver colour. Outboard Marine brand. Cloth bags for the leads and small ancillaries.