Paint for the engine

I got a bit caught up the last few weeks in researching the paint colour for the engine. The original colour was a pale duck egg blue - heaven knows why Land Rover picked that colour in post-war England, but they did.

The closest available match is reputed to be Detroit Diesel Alpine Green. This is available as a spray pack in both Duplicolor and Plasti-kote brands according to the manufacturer’s web sites. However, the Australian importers of these brands don’t bring that colour into the country. Further investigations with US retailers suggest that both manufacturers have dropped the colour, even though the colour is still on their web sites. Bugger.

I finally tracked down a source - Dunfold DLR in the UK. They get the stuff made up specially. They were very edgy (as in - wouldn’t do it) about shipping outside the UK, so I got some shipped to a UK address, then shipped on to me.

After it arrived (being a suspicious bugger) I thought I would test the paint’s heat resistance.

I put a coat on a piece of steel plate, and waited for it to dry. The colour looked pretty good at that stage. I then put it in the oven at 200C for 1 hour. When I took it out, the paint had turned khaki green - nothing like the original.

Thinking an engine shouldn’t be running that hot (although I wonder about the head close to the exhaust manifold) I did it again, with the oven at 100C. It came out OK this time, so it looks like an option.

Chris Klein of LROC came up with a recommendation of Pontiac Blue engine paint from VTR. This is available in Australia, as it is imported through Speco Thomas. However, just to make things interesting, their NSW distributor, Performance Supplies, doesn’t stock it. Both Autobarn and Repco stock VTR paints, so I scored one tin from Autobarn at Auburn, and I have ordered another through Repco at Penrith.

I put the VTR Pontiac Blue through the same 100C/200C heating as the Dunfold paint, and the results are in the photo below.

The top row is the Dunfold paint, untreated, heated at 100c and heated at 200c. The bottom row is the VTR paint with the same treatments.

I have to say that the Pontiac Blue looks closer to the Land Rover engines that I have seen - but feel free to disagree. It also changes far less on heating.

All in all, I think I’ll go with the VTR paint.