8BA paint color

I think they referred to the 1952/53 car V8 engine as tangerine. The 52/53 commercials and trucks went from red of earlier engines to green with the green being the same as the 49 through 53 255 Mercury. Some mention the 52/53 Mercury 255 as being either green or tangerine but I don't know. The 255 always had a different color than the 239 engines. That's why they had the different colors was to tell which engine was on the line ready to go in a car. If they finally started looking at the cylinder heads for EAB or EAC then they could have finally changed the ID of engines that way but I don't know. Ford had all kinds of different colors for the different Y-blocks from 1954 up through 64. The advent of MEL and FE engines really started confusing things but it was obvious that they were different designs.
 
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You might find them in the old chip charts in TCP Global's auto color library but I don't know if it would help much. Too many changes in the world of automotive paint in the last 75 years. I'd check with all the relevant reproduction parts sources.
 
I'm confused. Bill Hirsch and Tom Brownell, who wrote "How to Restore Your Ford Pickup" told me that bronze was the correct color for the 8BA flatheads in 48-50 Ford pickups. That changed to a red or orange in 51, Some posts here say that the engine color for the earlier F-1 trucks should be green or red.
 
Ford truck engines were red up through 1951. They used the Mercury green starting in 1952 and up through 1953. Bronze was used in the Ford passenger cars starting in 1950 up through 1951. The older dark blue was used in 1949 for passenger cars. This was a hold over from the earlier 239 engines from 1940 or 41 though 1948 on 59 series and earlier engines. The Bonus Built trucks were the first post war new design released for the 1948 model year. The Ford passenger cars changed to tangerine in 1952 but also could be green. Mac VP has info on this at his website.

Ford was late for the passenger cars due to the design changes that slowed the process down. The original designs were dropped to produce the shoe box design that was eventually produced for 49. The Mercury design was signed off by Edsel Ford before he died in 1943 but whiz kids hired by Hank the Deuce wanted the Ford cars produced at the same time as the new Mercury. The trucks were the only vehicles ready for production in 1948.

The preceding paragraph info is in Bob Gregorie's excellent book about Edsel Ford and the design team he ran. It also includes what happened to the team after Edsel passed.
 
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Chucks Trucks in CT now makes the correct red color for Truck engines 48-51. The common red color you see is too bright. His is a darker shade and it looks beautiful on an engine.
 

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