Just reread Mr. Schneider's post above about the color of the instrument panel. Definitely was not "flat" grey. I'm wondering if the "pearl grey" he speaks of is similar the "pearl beige" on the headliners I just got from Jim Carter, just a different descriptor? Would that indeed mean the instrument panel color was the same as the rest of the cab but the texture was different? I think we've got everything else figured out but I'm as confused as you over the color of the instrument panel. Ole
I’m beginning to believe that a 1940 truck is a one of a kind. When I went to look at paint from venders, they have it from ”˜41 on and until ”˜39 but not 1940. Same goes for many parts.
The colors I have found under the moldings on the dash and the back of some interior panels lead me to believe that the dark gray with Perl like splotches.... (using hammered paint to simulate) is correct for the 1940 Chevy PU trucks... as previously stated gratefully by Chevy Nut..... The correct tan/brown for the steering column and wheel still leaves me wondering though. I have a sample of Perl Beige from Jim Carter. It might look ok, but it doesn’t seem to be brown enough to be “correct”. The Perl Beige is definitely not the same as the Gray.
I beginning to believe that the instrument panel color is similar to the dash color but not with the “texture”. The instrument gauge color seems to be either a dark “brown” or a light brown/tan depending on if it’s a GM (light) or a Chevy (dark) at least according to the venders catalog.... and the decal colors they sell.
Here is a picture I took of the Gray I found under the glove box molding. Notice the white splotches as Chevy Nut mentioned. I tried scanning it but it just comes out as an average muddled gray.
It’s been stated that the Brown is similar to what is used on the 1940 passenger cars.
If it were mine I would paint the general interior (not dash) a semi-glosss gray/ brown color Keep it in the toned down colors as bright colors were not used.
I just looked in my 1938-46 Truck parts book and see that Chevrolet made the change from light brown gauges to dark brown gauges DURING 1940. The 1940 "first jobs" were "light brown" and one part number, and the 1940 "after jobs" and 1941 to 46's were "dark brown" and another part number. All descriptors taken right from the book.
So it would appear that DURING 1940 the color scheme changed. That might make it easier for you! :-)
Thanks for the comments on the gauge color. That helps.
You are right on the problems with suppliers. Makes things confusing. The issue of the 1940 truck being an orphaned truck makes things hard.
I had thought that the dash and interior panels were painted the same but according to Gene, that might not be so.
Because I found the “gray” index the dash molding, (see picture). I’ll probably go with that using a hammered gray. I’m trying to keep it as original as I can.
I now need to find some reference to the gray/brown that Gene mentioned.
Hi again Jim Carter does still list this: https://www.oldchevytrucks.com/cart/product.asp?prodid=PT136&i=10631|||||
Not cheap at $39.50 a pint but they claim it is the right brown specifically for the steering column and wheel. Again they get the years of application wrong though, as Mr. Schneider says it was not only used in 1946, but right through from 1940 on to 46. Might be worth a call to inquire.
Not saying this is the "right" way to do it, but if it were me, I'd paint the steering column and support, and the wheel with the brown linked to above... and maybe use it on the instrument panel around the gauges (behind the glass) as well. I'd paint all of the interior panels including the dash with the hammered gray you found in the protected spot... as I think that is how Chev originally did it. I'd paint the firewall under the dash the same hammered gray. Floor and toe boards I'd paint black, along with the gear shift and emergency brake lever. Metal under the seat and the door sills I'd paint exterior body color. No one seems to supply the decals for the lighter brown gauges so hopefully yours all work and can be cleaned up to look good. Parts suppliers have headliners and kick panels in gray and they should match the hammered gray nicely.
What ever you decide to do, I'd really like to see the end result!
I managed to find a gray/brown paint on the Jim Carter site as well as the brown paint you mentioned. Being that I will be ready for paint in the coming months, I decided to buy them both so we shall see when I do a test. So the interior choice is between the entire inside panels and dash as hammered gray or the entire inside panels painted gray/brown with the dash painted hammered gray. In both cases, the steering wheel and column painted brown.
The firewall under the dash is prob the same as the exterior color...
I believe the entire cab, inside and out was painted the exterior color. I seem to recall that they painted these all at one time and wouldn’t have bothered to mask off a small area for a separate color. Panels that were attached later like the floor board and toe board were painted separately. Just like the engines, they assembled them and then painted them manifolds included. Distrib, carbs, generators, starters.... removable parts were painted separately then added.
The dash could have been painted differently because it was added later..... and for that matter so could the interior panels.... that could lead to all kinda of color combinations.
I found a supplier for the lighter gauge decals at the filling station supply house.
I bought some of the paint from Jim Carter that was the gray brown. I don’t know, it looks really dark. I also bought some of the recommended steering column.... the dark brown. That looks really dark also.
I’m uploading a picture of the dashboard with some of the sample interior colors from Jim Carter recommendation.
The first color is. Perl beige. The second is a part off of a old singer sewing machine... on top is a brown vinyl I’m thinking of using for the seat. The next color is the gray brown from Jim Carter. The last is just a test sample of something I thought might work. The dash is painted rust oleum hammered dark gray. The bottom tube is the steering column with a test color.... it’s not the brown from Jim Carter... his color was really dark.
Hi there I have come to realize just how much lighting can influence my perception of color. That said...
Looking at your picture, I actually think the color of the old Singer part is closest to what my truck looks like. :-) And jmmmn37's post suggests he thinks the pictures I posted matched what he remembers his 1940 was originally like.
In my opinion the Jim Carter gray/brown is way to dark to match anything.
Your test sample on the right does look like it will work.
I think my steering column is darker that your color. How dark was the Jim Carter column paint?
I know Mr Schneider's information says the panel around the gauges should be a mottled gray, but that seems oddly out of place with the rest of the colors, including the gauge colors themselves. Maybe you could private message jmmmn37 directly and ask him specifically about what he thinks of the instrument panel color?
I like the seat material. I like it a lot. I have come to believe my seat covers are not the originals, although they are very old and predate vinyl seats. They are actually very close to the seats in a 1952 Mercury truck I know to be original, as Dad bought the truck in 1957.
Your picture made me think of Mom's old Singer sewing machine. If I remember right it was a hammered paint and possibly a close match! If it wasn't 110 miles away I'd set it in the truck to see!
This is what I found with regard to seat material. It comes from Keystone Bros Here is some info on them and their product. I think it’s about $18 per yard. It’s nice material and Sew’s well . I made my own seats out of it.
They have a whole line of this type of material.
Also, here are some pictures of the bench seat I made. Excuse the wrinkles, it hasn’t been mounted on the frame yet. I think I have the piping correct.....
So... I took my laptop out and compared your colors to my 1946. The color of your gauges matches mine so I'm going to assume the other colors are reasonably accurate as well. On that, you appear to have the darker brown gauges used in later 1940, which is good because they are easier to find.
The pearl beige on the left is a little light but matches the pearl beige head liners I just got from Jim Carter. They are a little lighter than my interior side by side but certainly are good enough for my headliners and kick panels.
The Singer sewing machine part appears to be the best match to my dash and interior panels and is actually very very close.
Your test sample on the right would seem to be the second closest to my eye.
The Jim Carter gray/brown is way too dark to match anything I have.
I like the hammered gray on your dash but it seems odd to me that they would have used brown gauges with the gray. The two seem slightly out of place with each other to me. I believe I have read somewhere that GMC used hammered gray in their trucks (which used identical cabs) and so your dash color may be close to that. The gray instrument panel certainly looks right for the hammered gray dash, but again, seems a little incongruous with the brown gauges. Just as a matter of interest... and Mr Schneider or another member can verify or correct me on this... I think the 40-46 truck instrument panel was essentially the same panel and color scheme as used in the 1940 car with a few small cosmetic changes. That panel was I think mostly the same "light brown" background as mine in the picture below.
Your steering column color is lighter than mine. My column is darker and about half way between the browns on your column and your gauges.
Your choice for your seats would look fantastic in my truck! Please let me know what it is and where you are getting it from.
You posted above while I was writing... Thanks very very much for your info!! I think your seat looks great and I think you do indeed have the piping correct. Want to do another one? :-)
I've been following this thread since its inception with some interest, seeing that, as I've mentioned, I have a very original 1940 pickup. As I said in a previous post, I did re-paint the original interior with paint sold by Jim Carter, probably about 20 years ago. I recall at that time that the color match of the Carter paint to the original interior/dash color was VERY close--perhaps a bit "brighter", but that is probably largely due to the fact that the original was 50 years old--it has been my experience in restoring a 37 and a couple of 38s that the original colors tend to fade a bit, and this is particularly true of gauge colors (the glass cover of the gauges probably intensifies the light on those portions of original paint). I saw that phenomenon dramatically illustrated on my 38 coupe pickup, where I closely examined gauge colors that were hidden by being covered by trim, etc., vs. those that had been exposed to decades of sunlight.
Not to throw a monkey-wrench into your deliberations, but I don't think the grey hammertone paint shown in Mike's last posts is very accurate--my original dash was nothing like that color. I will attempt to attach 3 photos that I just took of my dash/interior. Unfortunately, I cannot presently move the truck into daylight, seeing that I recently stored it for winter (we had 8 inches of snow in MN yesterday?!?!) and it's back in the shed. I applied some light to the interior--this is the one that is less "bronze" colored; the other 2 pics were taken with the flash, which rendered them just a bit more "bronze/gold" colored than reality. The actual color is a bit more bronze colored than the 1 with light applied, and a bit less bronze colored than the pics with the flash (Ole's observation that these colors can change dramatically in different light situations is right on). That is why I previously commented that I thought the bronze-shaded Rustoleum hammertone would be close to the original, not the grey. Incidentally, you can see from the gauge panel how the background color seems to have lost a lot of its pigment, almost appearing a creme or tan color--as far as I know it's original unless a PO sometime changed it out.
I have one other suggestion that might help you come to a satisfactory conclusion--have you tried calling or writing Barry Weeks, the VCCA technical advisor for 1940 trucks? I know Barry well; he has owned MANY 1940 trucks over the years and I'm sure he has on more than one occasion encountered one with original interior paint. If you asked him to comment on this thread, check the pictures, etc., I"m sure he would be able to offer sound advice. He's a great guy, and has always been helpful to me in any way that he can. You should definitely contact him.
I'll try now to add the pics. I hope this helps rather than confuses the issue.
Hi Jim For my part I want to thank you for an excellent post and taking the time to take pictures and document what you have! Some day I would really like see both yours and Mike's trucks.
A question: I notice your gauges (the actual gauges themselves) are the darker brown. Are they original gauges? If one or more of them is/are... is your truck an early or a late 1940 truck? Just wondering if we can verify what the parts books say about light versus dark brown gauges during early and late 1940.
Also, knowing that computer screens don't always render colors well.. which of Mike's colors in his above post would you guess to be closest? I thought maybe the Singer part.
One more thing My grandfather grew up near St James and we still have cousins farming there. So I know about the snow, and half the corn is still out. Not good. We are white with snow up here in Saskatchewan too. But at least the crop is off. And that spells the end of my fun with my truck too. :-(
To reboot..... Here are some pictures. One from a hidden place on the dashboard showing a “hammered” gray and the second located behind the back panel. I don’t know if these are original but they are old and were hidden so......
One picture contains the Jim Carter gray/brown for the interior and the Jim Carter steering column brown as suggested. Both are very dark. Jim Carter Brewster green and that is very dark also.
I have tried to create my own version of Brewster Green from the accepted color codes with modern offsets. It appears very green....
The light brown Is something I was fooling with.
The steering wheel/column brown is left of the white, the gray/brown is to the right. My Brewster green I’d on the bottom and Jim Carter’s I’d on top of it. The gray is rust oleum hammered gray.
Thanks for your reply. The answers to your 2 questions are, 1) my truck was built at the Janesville WI plant in the latter half of 1940, hence it would qualify as what you discovered in your research to be an "after job." Given that fact, the dark gauges would seem to fit the puzzle (N.B. I can't swear that these gauges are all original, but I didn't replace them and their uniformity would suggest originality); 2) my color appears to me to be close to the "perl" in Mike's picture, or the Singer color, but the closest of all seems to me to be the color of YOUR dash, as shown in the picture that you posted on 10/19. The color on your dash as illustrated in that picture (and on earlier ones you posted) is, as I recall, just about exactly the color that was on my original interior, and very close to the paint that Jim Carter developed a couple decades ago to match the 1940 interior, which is currently on my interior. I made this same point about 2 pages earlier in this thread.
Given what I have seen of your truck interior, and what I know and recall about my original 1940 interior, and the fact that Jim Carter researched and re-produced essentially the same color and sold it as original for the 1940, I strongly believe that the color of your dash (and of my re-painted dash) is the original color; in fact, I would wager that your interior is reflective of the original paint scheme in toto.
As suggested in my last post, if still in doubt, I would try to confirm this with Barry Weeks. As for me, I've made this same point a couple of times alread, so I don't have anything further to add.
Mike I haven't done any experimenting with paint colors as I don't plan on repainting my cab. But I did buy a can of the Rustoleum hammertone bronze (which I believe is the paint Jim wrote about above) in case I needed it for new headliners and kick panels. If things warm up a bit I'll shake it up and try it on a scrap piece and let you know how close it looks to my interior.
Here is a picture of some paint samples. Starting from the left... Rust oleum metallic bronze Gray/brown from Jim Carter Brewster Green from Jim Carter Top is Perl/beige from Jim Carter The light gray Rustolium hammer gray The rest are my attempts ....
I'm back... The pearl beige in your last post looks significantly lighter than the one in your previous post of 10/18/20 08:34 PM . Are they supposed to be the same but different lighting? After comparing (on my screen at least) it looks like the Jim Carter pearl beige in that previous post of 10/18/20 08:34 PM is very close to my color. See below.
Regarding Brewster Green... It is actually quite dark and definitely not "bright" green or a "green" green, so don't discount the Jim Carter color on how dark it appears.. You really notice the darkness of my truck from some distance. I'll include 2 pictures for your own comparison, but if I had one recommendation, I'd say be careful not to go too bright with the green. The picture of the edge of the door and my avatar picture probably show the color most accurately as it appears to the eye.
Last edited by Stovblt; 10/27/2002:11 PM. Reason: More info
