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Collection, Preservation and Display of Old Lawn Mowers

Suffolk paint colour

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I've recently been working on a couple of 1950s 14" Punches and am looking for some guidance regarding engine cowl and cylinder block colour. The engines on both machines have the semi exposed cooling fins, square fuel tanks and rope wrap starter pulleys  - no recoil units - so would appear to be "right" for their chassis.

On one the cylinder block is black with no sign that it has been repainted and on the other it's silver - again with no obvious sign of a change of colour.

Looking at the unfaded? inside of the engine cowls on one, a Series 1,  the colour appears to be a deeper red rather than the usual more vibrant orange. A spray of commercially available  "Wheelhorse red" is virtually an exact match with the inside.  

On the chassis the cutting cylinders on both machines appear to have originally been painted green but subsequently over painted in red during overhaul and sharpening.

Over the years its possible that a bit of mixing and matching has gone on so I will be interested to know if anyone have any specific knowledge or even coloured advertising material showing the colours used on machines in the early 50s?

 

Forums

hortimech Fri, 08/04/2016

Not sure about the exact colours used, but Atco service centres used to supply service exchange engines to the trade, they used to repaint the main engines black or silver, is this where your engines got painted ? As standard they were  a funny green colour.