Engine Paints

Buying engine paint in the UK

The four kinds of UK seller, what each is good for, how to compare tins that aren't the same size, and why carriage decides the price of a small order.

Updated 2026-09-19

On this page
  1. Specialist restoration suppliers
  2. Marque parts suppliers
  3. Motor factors and high street chains
  4. Marketplaces
  5. Comparing like with like
  6. Sources
  • Specialist restoration suppliers have the best paint and the imported American ranges. The colour names are American too.
  • Marque parts suppliers sell tins named for your engine. The name is the supplier's claim, and they tell you to test the match.
  • Motor factors have black and red, today, round the corner.
  • Cans and tins come in very different sizes, and some are sold by weight. Compare the quantity before the price.
  • Paint is hazardous freight. Carriage can double the cost of a single can, so order everything at once.

Specialist restoration suppliers

Frost, in Cheshire, is the reference case. It sells engine paint under its own label and imports the American specialist ranges: VHT, POR-15 and Eastwood. POR-15 names Frost as its only UK distributor, and Eastwood lists Frost as one of two. Its paint catalogue also carries Dupli-Color, Dinitrol, Fertan, Granville, Tetrosyl and Zinga.

The range is organised by job: engine enamel, very high temperature paint for exhausts, caliper and radiator paints, etch and zinc primers, wrinkle finishes and clears. Sizes follow the country of origin. Frost's own engine enamels come in 500 ml tins. The VHT aerosols are 312 g, which is the American 11 ounce can. POR-15 comes in American pints of 473 ml and quarts of 946 ml.

Buying here gets you a system. Primer, colour and clear come from one maker, with that maker's data sheet behind each, so the coats are known to work together. It also gets you the few tins in Britain that pair a British engine colour with a specialist paint: Frost's own BMC Green, MG Maroon, Ford Dark Blue and Ford Green, and POR-15's MG Maroon and Austin Healey Green.

Most of the imported colours are American all the same. Chevy Orange, Chrysler Hemi Orange and Pontiac Light Blue are fine paints, and none of them belongs on a British engine.

Marque parts suppliers

Rimmer Bros sells the same kind of paint with a marque on the label. Its very high temperature engine paint in MG Engine Maroon comes as a 400 ml aerosol and as a 500 ml brush-on tin. Having one colour in both forms is useful when the block and the rocker cover get painted on different days.

Somebody has done the work of attaching an engine to a colour, and that is worth paying for. Rimmer is also candid about the limit. Its listing says colour match testing should always be carried out before application, because the car may not be the exact shade of the original. No supplier guarantees these matches. A marque name on a tin tells you what the seller believes, and nobody has measured it. How we judge a match sets out what we do about that, and the readings go into the colour reference.

Engine colours also get far less attention than body colours. Rimmer's Triumph aerosol list gives body colours with their factory codes: Signal Red 32, Mimosa Yellow 64, Carmine Red 82. No supplier documents engine colours that way, which is why this site exists.

The MG, Austin-Healey, Morris Minor and small Ford specialists each sell an engine paint for their own marque, usually a single colour in a single size. They are listed against the engines they suit in the colour reference.

Motor factors and high street chains

Go here when the engine is in pieces on a Saturday morning.

Hycote is the British-made paint you will meet most often. Its engine enamels come in two colours, black and red, in 400 ml aerosols. The shelf label gives no temperature. That figure is in the data sheet, and for the gloss black it is 140°C, as the Hycote page explains. Hycote doesn't sell direct. Its website sends you to a store locator, because the paint reaches you through motor factors and chains.

Halfords works the same way with a bigger shop front. Its product pages attach the safety data sheet, and it classes anything flammable or pressurised as a hazardous item, which limits how you can return it.

A factor suits a job that needs black or red today. It will not have a rating you can read before you buy, or any colour a marque would recognise.

Marketplaces

Everything above is also sold on the big online marketplaces, including Frost's own range under Frost's own name. The breadth is useful, and the listings need reading with care.

Check the quantity first. Many listings are packs of two or six, priced to look like a single can at first glance. Others are the same tin offered in three sizes on one page.

Check the brand field. Imported paint is often listed under the importer's name or as "Generic", so a search for the maker misses it. The reverse happens with the letters VHT. They are an American brand, and they are also trade shorthand for any very high temperature paint. Holts sells an engine enamel whose part number contains "VHT", and it has nothing to do with the brand.

Check who is selling. The same tin can be offered by the importer and by a reseller at a markup.

We have done that sorting in the shop. Every engine paint we could find is listed under its real maker, with the size, the type and the maker's heat rating in columns, and prices that are refreshed daily.

Comparing like with like

Three things move the price, and only one of them is the paint.

The first is size. A VHT aerosol is 312 g. A Hycote or E-TECH aerosol is 400 ml. Simoniz is 500 ml. One is measured by weight and the others by volume, so those labels can't be compared directly. Among the ones that can, a 500 ml can holds a quarter more than a 400 ml one. With tins the spread is wider: 250 ml, 473 ml, 500 ml and 946 ml all sit on the same shelf. Work out the price per 100 ml before deciding which is dear.

The second is carriage. Paint and aerosols are restricted goods. Rimmer sends its engine paints by UPS to mainland Britain only. It won't send them by air or by Royal Mail, won't ship to the islands or abroad, and takes no returns on aerosols. Frost publishes the list of countries it can send paints and aerosols to, and the Channel Islands are not on it. That carriage charge is a fixed cost. On one can it may double the price. On a full order of primer, colour, thinners and a spare can it hardly shows. Decide what the whole job needs and order it once.

The third is the name. The same kind of paint is sold plainly and sold with a marque on the label. The second has had someone's time spent deciding what colour goes in it. Whether that time was well spent is what the colour reference is for.

Sources