Paint question.

[Wheelhorse84 87]

I'm sure it's been asked before but does anyone know what color wheelhorse actually used to paint their original tractors?

[rmaynard 14,926]

The simple answer is red. The longer answer seems to be a mystery. I think that it has been discussed that they wanted the tractors to be similar to International Harvester red. Each vendor that provided paint from year to year had a slightly different formula and therefore a different color. I can't tell you how many times people have said " I have an area on my tractor that has never seen the light of day, and it matches such and such color". Well your untouched color is different from my untouched color. Therefore, as the general rule here on RedSquare goes, paint your tractor whatever color is pleasing to you. There is no Wheel Horse color police that is going to ticket you for the wrong shade of red. The only requirement is that it be RED, and sometimes that rule is slightly bent.

[Kelly 1,028]

What Bob said, and very well, I might add, most people using a gun to spray them use IH red, but even that the color will vary from brand to brand, just try to buy enough paint at one time so it all comes from the same batch, I used Valspar IH red, ran out picked up another gal. same paint but it was a shade off, now I'm a body man so I notice little crap like that but it just shows even the same brand can be a different color.

[zieg72 209]

At one time Toro had 2 reds but a grand master standard was not available. Typically a paint vendor would call on an account and develop a good relationship with a customer at which time would be given a chance to bid on the paint. Since the master standard is usually not available the paint vendor is given a color chip sprayed out from the current supplier which may or may not be a good match but the paint line supervisor had the say so usually. There are hundreds of different ways to make colors with different pigments and all the different coatings types. I can tell you when we sold the Toro plant in Evansville Indiana they used a very good true 2K polyurethane that was 3.5 VOC. It was tough as nails along the lines of powder coat when fully cured which takes up to 21 days to achieve all the properties. This was very similar to automotive quality without the automotive price. Most of the cost of Automotive price is the extremely tight tolerances in the bases to make the color 1 quart at a time where on the industrial side we shade using a color computer and routinely make large batches up to 300 gallons at an industrial store with a product service room. Price dictates paint quality. Smaller quantities and restoration type markets as you can imagine are a really small market segment. With raw material costs at a premium paint companies are only making paint that are sold and very little effort is spent to make a specific paint to sit on a shelf in some store to eventually go bad and have to be disposed of which costs more than the raw materials did to make it in the first place... When I get back to work I will get what numbers I can dig up from the Sherwin-Williams OEM side of the business and when time permits visit one of our Automotive stores and see what they offer in a single stage product.

[Sparky-(Admin) 19,612]

Steve, give this a read.

Mike............

[Wheelhorse84 87]

Thanks guys.