Ted Connolly

Ted sees red... but manages to keep his temper.

Take it as red

Whereas I once reckoned I was well-versed on the subject of automotive paint, I am now somewhat lost. I suppose it’s rather stupid to say that paint technology has moved on, because that’s what technology is supposed to do and, equally, us dinosaurs are meant to remark on the situation with a mixture of bewilderment and disdain.

The reason I seize on this particular subject is that, at one stage in my tacky little life, I spent many, many hours doing bodywork. It was never a profession, just a means of making beer money (as some bloke said when he visited my workshop and saw the amount of paint hanging around: “Blimey, you must drink a lot!” Yes, I know, the old ones are the best).

I had the good fortune to live next door to a panelbeater for more than a decade and he taught me a great deal about paint spraying. He was what I would regard as old-school, having served his time at a Vauxhall-bedford main dealership when coach enamel was still in regular use. Part of his job involved hand-painting the chassis of Bedford trucks. Each chassis was then sold and the customer either took it as it was or specified a certain type of body to be fitted. Cellulose was around, of course, but had still not reached wide popularity.

I never used coach enamel – I’m not quite that old – and have sprayed using cellulose, which was considered the industry standard when I got into painting. The subject became almost an obsession with me and I’d work all hours trying to achieve that perfect finish. It never happened, but some of the stuff I turned out wasn’t bad.

Anyhow, it got to the stage where I’d look at a car and try to identify the colour – just like you probably spotted numberplates as a kid. To this day, I can remember loads of them. A few stuck in my mind, even back then, and they were Aubergine, Silver Fox, Saluki Bronze and Blue Mink. Those with good recall and absolutely nothing better to do in life will identify them as Ford colours, most popularly used on the Cortina Mk2, especially the 1600E.

I noted that, after a while, all of these paint finishes started flaking. It was explained to me that the paint itself was OK, but there was a problem with the lacquer. At the time, Ford – along with other manufacturers – used cellulose lacquer and it really wasn’t much cop. I haven’t forgotten acrylic paints, by the way, but they never caught on in the same fashion as cellulose.

As time progressed, cellulose gradually began to go out of vogue and two-pack became the system to use. It was super-tough and shone like a shilling in a sweep’s armpit. The only snag was that it contained isocyanates, a derivative of cyanide, so you needed an air-fed mask and plenty of ventilation to remain safe. I couldn’t afford that sort of gear and, by this stage, I’d cut down on my beer consumption, so I didn’t need to do as much bodywork. In the event, I stopped spraying altogether and chucked away my guns (madness, on reflection, because they were all Devilbiss – top-drawer gear).

Paint systems have moved on since the 2K days and now the trade uses waterbased paint, which is quite clean, although, ironically, the lacquer generally still contains solvents. It is difficult for my feeble brain to come to terms with waterbased paints – I still think of using a brush and palette to create pictures as a lad, not painting cars.

Where is all this leading?

Well, nowhere, really. It’s just that I received a missive from CM contributor Jeremy Haworth, who sent in a photo of a Mitsubishi with noticeably faded paint. He observed that somebody had tried to polish in an adjoining panel with a degree of success and then appeared to have given up.

It has always been common for red paint to fade – just check out the number of ex-royal Mail vans running around with pink panels and marks on the sides where the original decals have been removed. But why does red fade far more than any other colour?

Well, there are a number of theories and some border on being rather too scientific for this puny column. One is that red paint reflects red light, which then absorbs ultraviolet rays and results in bleaching. Another is that red paint is based on red oxide, which goes on to oxidise even further. My panel-beating next-door-neighbour had another explanation: red contains more pigments than any other hue, therefore it is unstable and loses its colour very quickly.

So take your pick. I prefer to believe my neighbour, because he was in the game for a very long time and had neither the facility of Uncle Google for reference nor the need to prove himself online with fancy words. In truth, I don’t think anybody quite knows the answer, nor how to prevent it from happening.

To close, I might add that red does hold intrigue in other circles. You will be familiar with the expression ‘holding a red rag to a bull’. This is fantasy, because bulls are colour-blind and it is not the red of the rag that irritates them but the flapping of the material. Fortunately, at a certain age, a columnist can get away with writing irrelevant tripe, drawing comments like: “Bless him, he can’t help it.” Well, I can, so don’t bother.