GMC Wet Olive - The Results.

[pfarber]

Today was perfect out 73F low humidity, no direct sunlight.

The narrative is ABOVE the picture... so whatever I'm talking about the pic for it is BELOW the text.

All of the pics show the paint as wet. No reducers were used, of any kind.

Here's the paint:
I got it online (see the forum post a few links down). Its advertised ad 1940's era GM Engine Olive paint.

Here's what in the can looks like.. yeah, that's a pretty good lime green.

Here is the test valve cover. Sandblasted and cleaned with brake cleaner to remove oil/grease.

My paint setup is straight forward. I shot it at 60PSI (about 40 at the gun due to the 50ft of hose). Paint gun is a standard suction type needle valve paint gun (Harbor Freight). Its a good gun and I have had ZERO issues with it.

Continues next post...

[pfarber]

First coat is a LIGHT coat. I did not use ANY additives, this is STRAIGHT out the can. The paint is THIN. I when I shot paint on my test board to set the volume and pattern it EASILY ran. I was pretty cautious with how fast I moved the gun and how far I held the gun away. The first coat I could still see a good amount of metal.

The second coat was heavier. Still how thin the paint was caused problems because if I slowed down to get more paint on the metal it would run. If I upped the volume of paint and kept the speed up, it would run. So this is actually 2 coats to get coverage, in addition to the initial light coat.

[pfarber]

Here is a comparison photo next to some OD.

The OD paint is from Army Jeep Parts, what they call the 319 WWII Lusterless.

My jeep is painted this color.

[pfarber]

I did this to try and get an idea of how a 1940's period photo might look of the above paint colors.

I loaded it into Fireworks and simply clicked on Convert to Sepia.

Here is the same photo converted to grayscale.

As you can see the green-ness of the valve cover dissapears A LOT when not in full color mode.

But does it match the 'GMC Wet Olive' that we are looking for?

[pfarber]

Here are more pics. This is two hours after painting. Paint is dry to touch.

Outside next to original comparison color. The paint *seems* to have darkened just a tad.

This is on my jeep hood to give a better idea what it would look like in an engine bay surrounded by 319 WWII Lusterless paint.

Here is a photo next to an NOS (50's production) late style canvas top. The 1/4ton next to it is in some shitty NATO green from Germany or the Swiss Army.

And this is Yeager. He doesn't give a crap about paint. There is a snausage on the top shelf of that cart.

[pfarber]

Seems that this has been done before:



Some obvious 'other issues'... but its the same paint I used.

[pfarber]

After looking over dozens of engine colors I'm gonna have to say:

THIS IS NOT THE ENGINE COLOR WE ARE LOOKING FOR.

I thought maybe the paint would darken after 72 hours (the full cure time from the label) but it hasn't budged.

[Quasimodo]

What do you think about the colour in the English collector's pics:

http://cckw.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4798

[pfarber]

Its closer than the lime green I tested out.

I think the the engine paint is much more glossy than we expect. This is a B&W (not gray scale) dithered xerox photo of an engine. I really want to emphasize that this is most likely a 3rd or 4th generation image (again, I want to point out how bad this is).


Below is the full image. This is a factory supplied truck assembled from a TUP crate. This is on page 42 of the GMC assembly manual tossed in the box. NOTE THE SIGNIFICANT REFLECTION OF THE OIL FILTER LID ON THE VALVE COVER!!!

Here it is blown up and highlighted.

This is a 300dpi scan 8 bit gray scale. Remember above how degraded the image was (every copy loses quality... so it went from a printed TM, to a xerox, to a scan) AND THE REFLECTION IS STILL STRONG!!!!!!

So when people (he who shall not be named) say that the paint is closer to 'ammo can green' I look at any of my still original ammo cans and cannot get this sort of reflection.

I did some test test shots with the ENAMEL (aka glossy) paint I used:

And I could only barely get any reflection.

[pfarber]

What do you think about the colour in the English collector's pics:

http://cckw.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4798

I don't know who's engine this is.. but there are several significant paint errors:

Water pump pulley
oil fill tube
Every part of the oil filter (I thought I beat the oil can color to death by now?)
PCV elbow is not not painted

Someone let him know there's a free set of decals in it for him if he fixes those errors

[pfarber]

If you look at the above painted engine (with the orange oil can) you 'll see what I see in the TM, a nice strong reflection of the oil filter:

cckwengineolivegreen.jpg (39.52 KiB) Viewed 16858 times

The color may (or may not) be correct, but the level of gloss from an enamel paint seems to be dead on.