VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - GENERAL Trucks and Vans Interior paint

Looking for input on interior paint (the gray/brown/champagne original color used on the early 50's pickups). Has anyone used the jim Carter, Chev's of the 40's or Filling station products? None of these suppliers can tell me what brand/type of paint it is (all say enamel) and can't offer a clear direction if you need to add reducer (or how much) can you add a catalyst, etc? Common answer it is spray ready right out of the qt can and into the gun.
Anyone out there that has used one of these products, or has other options? Bob Adler has also suggested a DCC code, which may be a better route to go.

Some of the Chevrolet trucks interiors were painted with a color I called "Lima Tan" which was interior paint for a Cessna 170 back around 1952. I think that the GM equivalant was "Briarwood Brown".

Automobiles were painted with Enamel or Lauquer....before there was epoxy, base coat clear coat, Acrylic Enamel Auto Paint, Acrylic Urethane Automotive Paint,Urethane Base Coat / Clear Coat Car Paint, Acrylic Laquer Auto Paint, these all requied their own special reducer hardner and cataylst.

Before all of these were available there was Laquer and Enamel. GM used Laquer paint and others like Chrysler used Enamel paint. Laquer required laquer thinner and Enamel required paint thinner. Laquer was made out of bugs and Enamel was made out of something else, probably petroleum. You can paint enamel over laquer, but you can't paint laquer over enamel. laquer can be compounded and rubbed out for a million dollar shine and is applied in many coats, most enamel is applyed in two coats and usually can't be compounded and rubbed out,sometimes it was baked on with a big paint oven, or radiant heat on the body assembly line, what you see when it drys is what you have to live with.

Buy the Enamel paint from either of those vendors and if it needs thinned, usually it won't, just use paint thinner. I use Naptha that is purefied, which I buy at Tractor Supply Company.

I would not recommend buying interior paint from any of the big parts vendors.
If they don't have any idea of what type of paint they are selling or know how much reducer & catalyst to use....I imagine the color is also wrong.... that should be a big red flag to stay away from that stuff.

I have seen references to this paint in PPG & Dupont color codes but, none of those colors really looked like the original to me.

Best route to locate the original "champagne" interior color is to find a few remnants of it somewhere in the cab & take it to the paint shop for them to match.

I can tell you that the original interior "Champagne" paint was a semi gloss & was semi-metallic.
So.. once you get the right mix of color.... you will need to ad a flattner agent so it is not too shiny once you spray it.

Here is an original part that still retains the factory interior paint to give you an idea of what color you are looking for...

A fair repersentation of Lima Tan however the color appears to be washed out by the flash or too strong light source. The metallic content of a lot of the paint that I used back in the late 50s thru he 70s made it diffucult to do touch ups on interiors of both airplanes, trucks and the interiors of well logging trucks that used the color. We used it for everything from tool boxes to air conditioner panels and tool compartments. I wish I had a couple of gallons or a case of rattle cans for myself. The paint we used was always enamel.

I know this is a year late but after receiving paint from various suppliers that were supposed to be correct (and were not), my paint shop found that if you mix Rustoleum hammered grey and hammered brown 50-50, the color and texture were a perfect match for the original paint in color and texture and gloss in my 1949 deluxe 1/2 ton pickup. We had the original radio and heater to compare with. These items were not exposed to sunlight and fading so we had an accurate comparison. And the price is right too.

For my 1955 1st series chevy truck, the color was called Pearl Beige.The PPG color codes I gave them didn't have a match, so they matched it to an NOS part I had.
I'm out here in CA and had a professional do the work, so I had to use waterbase. The following paint code is for PPG Envirobase waterbase paint. You must put a clear coat on afterward.

I don't know exactly what these codes mean, but I'm providing it in hopes it will help:
PPG Envirobase HP (EHP)
SKU.......Inc(g).......Cum(ulative?)(g)
--------------------------------------------
T409.......271.3.......271.3
T400.......288.2.......559.5
T422.......376.4.......935.9
T436.......17.0.......952.9
T423.......33.9.......986.8
T425.......17.0.......1003.8
T428.......17.0.......1020.8


It took 3 quarts to paint the entire inside of the cab. (4 quarts to cover.) Add clear to it too.

I must say the paint came out beautifully. The waterbase really looks good.

Lyn