VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1937-1945 Paint formula for 1946 Chevy

Does anyone know how to find a paint formula? Ensign Blue is the original color Local paint shop is having trouble finding the correct formula. they have scanned a spot or two of original paint and commented that the metal flake in the paint is smaller than modern paints.


any help appreciated!

My local paint shops dont have formula for paints prior to 48 but that is in Australia, the best suggestion they had was to choose a color close.
Tony

Is the original paint in good condition? If not, you might search ebay for some good quality 1946 Chevrolet paint chip charts. Some list the formulas(though i think the original paint numbers are no longer available). Even still, maybe they can get a better scan from a quality chip example

My local PPG Platinum Dealer had the formula to mix 1948 Oxford Maroon in their Shop Line brand. The result was a near exact match that I compared to remnants of the factory paint including the size of the metallic. I would ask your local PPG dealer if they could do the same for Ensign Blue, 1942, paint code 316. Note that not all PPG dealers are able to mix the Shop Line products.

Check out the Autocolor Library:

https://www.autocolorlibrary.com/

I've used this company for obtaining original color paint for 4 restorations and as far as I can discern (from comparison with original patches), their colors are very close to the original.

Hello TonyU,

I've been thru what you are going thru. Recently I learned, you can Google just about any question, then tack on VCCA and it will seach the entire VCCA archives and give you all the links. If you leave off the VCCA, it will give you liks to all kinds of other forums.

To read my answer to your question, go to "1945 Chevy 1/2 ton interior paint aplication, Phase 2". Scroll down to my last entry, there is much info aplicable to your question. They changed the catagories in this forum, so I don't know where it is now, so you need to Google it.

Hey everybody, spread the word about Googling questions. It is light-years ahead of submitting a question here and hopping some knowleagable guy will trip over it. It's a fluke I tripped over this question, not that I'm a know-it-all.

Jake

P.S. If you happen to find old formulas for your color, Andy says they are obsolete because they no longer make that vintage type of paint. On the other hand, if you get a hold of an actual paint chip card, it would probably be able to be matched by eye.

So under the most demading situation of show judges, they may have paint chips to compaire to your color. Where it's obvious a vehicle has been repainted, they are anticipating modern paint. So, they would not be concerned with formulation, only color and maybe sheen. This being the case, it is very practical to have the paint mixed by eye.

To further muddy the waters, back in the day, Chevy could not be all that precise, especially with different plants assembling the same vehicles. As an extream example, durning war time, Chevy was particularly loose. On my '45, they applied 2 color coats to the exterior. The 1st coat was on the cab assembly alone, before the assembly line. At some point after the cab had been mounted to the frame and other assebly had been done, they gave the whole vehicle a 2nd coat. My truck still has big portions of original Brewster Green exterior paint. Amazingly, the 2 coats are noticably different!! The 1st coat is somewhat of an olive green. The 2nd coat is more of a forest green. This is a true fact.

Jake