Moore_rb's 1962 Soft Top Patrol- L60-2-00504

[RiverPatrol]

Whoohoo! Congratulations!

... I've decided I'm going to rebuild my white 65 hard top Patrol first

I thought this was a parts donor?

[moore_rb]

... I've decided I'm going to rebuild my white 65 hard top Patrol first

I thought this was a parts donor?

Well yeah, it was, I mean, it is, I mean... Yeah- the plan changes daily But this load of parts I have coming from Norville has a full engine gasket kit in it.... So if I can get the engine from the 65 un-seized, and if I have a full gasket kit for it, well then.... You know the rest.

I have two non-numbers matching 65-66 Hard top Patrols. It would be a shame to scrap a numbers-matching one with documented ownership history when I have TWO parts donors that can provide everything it needs to go back together (minus the rust )

Right?

[moore_rb]

Love the softy, I spotted a really nice looking front bumper on that Patrol.

It's not as straight as the front bumper on yours...

Wanna trade...? I'll pay for all the shipping

[moore_rb]

AAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH... This green paint.

I spent a couple hours at the paint store yesterday evening getting prices for the White paint for my 65 project, and since the place is a half-hour drive from my house, I decided to kill two birds with one stone, so I took my polished up glove box door from the 62 along with me.

The young paint guy happened also to be a local Datsun-dork who owns a couple 510's, and so he embarrassingly began to bow before me when he heard I am rebuilding 3 Patrols

This is what we have come to as a society- We praise the most insane among us...

Anyway, the only conclusion he and I could agree on is that the paint on my 62 is NOT Nissan paint code 558 (called Oregon green, Dragon green, or Roy Rogers green).... and, he also confirmed something else I had suspected- the Dulux 64 paint card is the earliest known set of Nissan paint chips that either of us were aware of, and fortunately the store did happen to have one of those original color cards...

But again- the best match that we could agree on for the Green on my 62 was Nissan code 461 - Valley Green (Dulux code 5126) - The hue was correct, but the Valley green sample on the card was a tad bit darker than my glove box (which I guess could be the result of 52 years of fading.... )- valley green is also not metallic, and the green on my Patrol has a slight metallic finish

Also, they had no formula cross-matches for either of these ancient paint codes (neither the Nissan 461, nor the Dulux 5126) to any present day paint manufacturers' formulations.

They did offer to do a custom blended paint match to my glove box door for an extra $200, plus the cost of however much paint they have to use (or possibly waste) before they get the correct color blend.... Yeah, ummmmmm........ No.

So, I left there instead with an inch-thick stack of "off the shelf" green formulas from their paint chip color wall, and will undoubtedly spend a couple hours the next time the sun is out sitting in the 62's passenger seat going:

"Nope, that's not it...{toss} Hmm, that is close... but nope {toss}... Close, but not as close as the other one {toss} "



I guess as long as I have a cooler of cold beer on the seat next to me, I'm sure I'll find a suitable shade of green that is close enough to make me happy...


Or, maybe the beer will make me happy, and I'll just forget about the paint altogether....

[moore_rb]

Still more research about this green paint... I still don't have a color recipe, and the stack of color chips I brought home were all no bueno... Next week I'll run to 2 more local car paint shops that carry PPG and Sherwin Williams automotive paints, and will gather a collection of their paint chips and try again...

But, I did finally confirm one thing about this green paint- I am now convinced beyond any doubt that this is the original paint on this Patrol. I had two small remaining doubts that were still nagging at me:

1) The green on my Patrol has a very subtle metallic sheen to it, and every Patrol color I have ever seen has always been a solid, non-metallic color. Also,
2) I was not finding any examples/photos of this shade of green on any other Patrols out there, nor on any other early Datsun models for that matter.... Until now.

Last night, I found this photo of a pre-65 Datsun N320 pickup on earlydatsun.com:

datsun320_green.jpg

And I thought "man- that really looks like the same color as my Patrol", So, I googled: "green datsun 320" and found 2 more examples:

from http://japanesenostalgiccar.com/2012/05 ... lvang-2012:

46_DatsunN320-640x426.jpg

The green on my Patrol does shine brighter in the full sun just like this one; and the caption under this photo says:

"Its resplendent shade of green looked to be either original or very old..."

but, the best example I found was on http://www.manxsr.com/unfinished_datsun.htm:

green320.jpg

This page had a 2nd closeup shot of this 320's floor and door jambs:

green320doorjambs.jpg

Now, compare that 320's interior shot above (especially the door jambs on the right side of the photo) to a close up of the remaining green interior areas on my Patrol:

green-zoom.jpg

So, I think I now have pretty concrete evidence that this color is a correct early Datsun shade of green that was used on pre-64 trucks... including at least one 1962 US import market Patrol

This discovery has now even got me thinking about possibly paying that $200 custom color matching fee at the paint store... Because even though I have now satisfied myself that this is indeed the original paint my Patrol wore from the factory, I still don't know exactly what color it actually is...

[zed]

Have you contacted Sherwin-Williams Automotive Finishes (http://www.sherwin-automotive.com/); they may have the formula.

I have several color chips (https://www.flickr.com/photos/53116286@ ... 20419593/0 but do not have the “Dulux 64 paint card”. Did you take a photo of the card, I’d be interested in seeing it.
Keith

[moore_rb]

Hi Keith-

Here is the PDF of the 64 Datsun Dulux color card:

PaintColourChartNissan64.pdf

There is only one metallic green listed on this card (Westchester Green); but when I held the original print of this card that I saw at the paint store next to my Patrol's glovebox door, the Westchester green was darker than the green on my Patrol. When I did my comparison, I thought the valley green (code 461) right above westchester green was closer in hue to the green on my Patrol, but Valley green is not metallic.

So now I'm seriously thinking about re-visiting that color card and taking a second look at that Westchester green sample....

the cool thing about this Dulux card is that the color formulations for each of these colors are listed right there on the card...

I posted this Dulux card, and another card I found a while back in the paint code thread:

http://www.60patrol.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1729

[zed]

Thanks,
I must have missed your prior post.

[mdawg4x4]

Have a small pint mixed and spray a test panel for confirmation.

[moore_rb]

Ok, I'm going to issue a disclaimer- What I did here might be considered sacrilegious to some diehard Patrol/Roy Rogers fans, but like I posted above, my efforts to find a single color image of a Patrol in the same dark shade of green as my 62 has only resulted in images of 320 pickups/utes.

And, since I am no Chip Foose (my artistic talent falls well short of drawing and color rendering ) I wanted to make a "design inspiration" image to help me see what my 62 might look like someday...

So this morning (since it is still too wet outside to go work on my 65) I took the famous Roy Rogers 1965 brochure photo, zoomed in on the truck, and Photoshopped it (gasp ) to make the green in the picture to more closely match the green shade on my Patrol, and then I colored over the hardtop in the image...

RRGreenSoftop.jpg

And I also have this image that I lifted from the 64 Patrol sales brochure (the green on this one is Nissan code 352 Olive Green, in case anyone is wondering ) But at least this one has a "real" canvas top on it:

Green64BrochureCapture.JPG

So now I have a couple inspiration images for this project...