IHC Red

How can you tell if your IH tractor used the red-orange pigment that the company used to stretch their red pigment supply? What years did they use the red-orange pigment?

Take a wire wheel and grind down some paint if you see orange under the red than you have it.
oldiron29

it was done during WWII.

Andrew

It was during a stretch starting right about the end of WWII or a little after and running for more than a year, and had to do with a strike at a plant supplying their paint manufacturer. (My Originality Guide, which has more detailed dates and information, is in the hands of my neighbor, which reminds me I need to get it back!). Basically a '46-'47 phenomenon. It wasn't a red-orange pigment, though. They used yellow to stretch the red paint, and I've seen discussions where folks have said the color difference wasn't readily apparent at the time, unless you had one of each side by side. Can't vouch for that personally (I'm a '55 model), but it sounds as if the initial color difference was about like our discussion below about 2150 looking more orange these days. But, as that discussion went, what did it fade to?

What I can say about it is that my BN came off the line smack in the middle of that period. In brushing/blasting/stripping it down, I did go through a layer of orange. Which all goes to whether IH ever used a primer. There's folks to say no or yes to that. What I can say is that by the mid-sixties, the tractor had faded and looked more like an AC of the same era in color, almost a rust brown but still orange, and nothing at all like the older '41 H it was shedded with which was the usual red faded to a chalky rose color.

So the layer I got into could be a sound layer of what the yellowed red faded to. (I'd give several dollars to a donut that nothing ever left Chicago with that kind of orange!) Assuming that they didn't use a primer and knowing nothing about their paint line, it's also possible that they mixed more yellow into a first coat (maybe as a tack coat) and less into the topcoat(s). The bonding of two coats like that might explain the kind of fading and turning to orange/brown that I saw.

But that's the era. If I get my book back the next day or two I'll post back if it offers more detail.

It was done after WWII as Scotty says. I don't know what those tractors look like today, especially since many have been repainted. But, the original paint faded to orange -- I have seen some those, back in the 50's. The original color was more orange than the current 2150.

Last fall I saw an Farmall H from that era that was original color, now a pale yellow. Check out the Wisconsin Historical Society, IH paint committee, order #'s 164, 164-1, 167. You will find some answers there.

I know that 1946 uses the paint that faded to orange. My family had both a 1946 H and a 1946 W-6 and they both faded to orange in a short period od time. My father bought a 1947 MD and it did not fade to orande, but rather to a darker red as it aged.