Four-cylinder pushrod engine used in BMC saloons and MG sports cars from the mid-1950s to 1980. The badge decided the colour: maroon in an MGA or early MGB, green in a Farina saloon, and black in every MGB from the 18V engine of 1971. No factory paint code has been found for any of them.
Also known as: B-Series, Austin B-series, MGB engine, MGA engine, 18G, 18V
Records
MG · MG dark red
B-series 1489, 1588 and 1622 · 1955–1962 · block, gloss
Awaiting measurementC · Community consensusDisputedLast verified 2026-09-20
Awaiting measurement
Not yet measured. The patch will appear once a spectrophotometer reading is recorded.
What is disputed
MGA Guru says one dark red covers the MGA and the early MGB, and nothing found contradicts it, but no second source confirms it either. The codes it lists are refinishers' cross-references and not BMC numbers: Ditzler and PPG Reno Red DQE 50782Y, PPG DAR 2673H, Duplicolor Dark Canyon Red, and Moss Motors 220-540. The same page says the MG TD and TF engines were a darker red with a brown tint, so the colour was not constant across the decade.
The pushrod MGA only; the Twin Cam is not covered by the source. The modern matches are the MG maroons sold for the MGB, listed here because the source gives one colour for both cars. The factory painted the engine as an assembly with the plates, timing cover, pulley, water pump, sump and rocker cover in place. The starter, generator and distributor were not on it. The face of the rear plate where the starter mounts must stay bare, because the starter earths through it.
B-series 1798, 18G and 18GA to 18GK · 1962–1971 · block, gloss
Awaiting measurementC · Community consensusDisputedLast verified 2026-09-20
Awaiting measurement
Not yet measured. The patch will appear once a spectrophotometer reading is recorded.
What is disputed
Two things are argued over. The first is the shade, and whether a factory paint code for it ever existed: none has been found, and every code in circulation is a refinisher's cross-reference. Owners debate it at length on The MG Experience. The second is where the maroon era ends. MGOC Spares ties the change to black to the 18V engine of 1971, which makes the engine number prefix a better boundary than the model year.
MGOC Spares, the MG Owners' Club's trading arm, says early MGB engines were finished in dark red or maroon from 1962 until the 18V-series engine of 1971. MGA Guru gives the same dark red for the MGA and the early MGB. Frost sells its MG Maroon as RAL 3004; that is Frost's choice of standard and is not evidence of the factory colour. The engine was painted as an assembly, so the head, rocker cover, sump, timing cover and plates carried the same colour as the block.
Sources
club: MGOC Spares, engine paint section — The MG Owners' Club's trading arm. Catalogue text stating the MGB sequence, not a ruling by the club's technical staff
retailer: Rimmer Bros product listing RX4155A — Product named for the application; no factory reference cited
History
2026-09-04 · Record created as the scaffold's worked example. Placeholder measurement.
2026-09-05 · Match brand corrected: the Rimmer Bros listing names no manufacturer; "VHT" was an inference from the product title and is withdrawn. (https://rimmerbros.com/Item--i-RX4155A)
2026-09-17 · Frost P800MG MG Maroon RAL3004 500ml (ASIN B0FD46KZ2X) and the Frost-sold 473ml P300 MG Maroon (B0FB9JFQ5T) added as matches from amazon.co.uk; the Rimmer aerosol has no Amazon listing
2026-09-18 · The Frost-sold 473 ml MG Maroon is POR-15 Engine Enamel, imported by Frost and listed on Amazon under the brand Generic. Brand and 150°C rating corrected; confirmed by James
2026-09-20 · Placeholder measured_lab removed: it was a scaffold value, never a reading. Sources added from the research note and fetched again. Amazon matches added. Published
MGOC Spares says MGB engines were painted black from the 18V-series engine of 1971 to the end of production. The boundary is the engine series, so check the engine number prefix: an 18V engine should be black whatever year the car was registered. No source states a sheen; gloss is recorded because the club's own replacement paint is a gloss enamel. Black has no shade to match, so the modern matches are general engine blacks.
Sources
club: MGOC Spares, engine paint section — The MG Owners' Club's trading arm. Catalogue text stating the MGB sequence, not a ruling by the club's technical staff
History
2026-09-20 · Record created from the MGOC Spares statement; source fetched and checked; published
Awaiting measurementC · Community consensusDisputedLast verified 2026-09-20
Awaiting measurement
Not yet measured. The patch will appear once a spectrophotometer reading is recorded.
What is disputed
No club or factory source has been found for the Farina saloons. The record rests on a specialist supplier selling one green for every badge, which is trade practice and not documentation, plus one passing forum mention. Whether this green is the same as the A-series BMC green is not established either; the trade sells one tin for both.
The point of this record is the contrast with the MGB. In the same years, the same engine family was maroon in an MG sports car and green in a saloon, including the MG Magnette saloon. The model years are production dates for each car and are not documented dates for the paint.
Sources
retailer: BMC Farina, green engine paint XEP3 — A UK Farina specialist lists one green for every badge of the family. The page does not claim a factory match
The B-series is the clearest case of the rule this site is built around: the colour followed the badge and the year, and the engine had no colour of its own. Between the late 1950s and 1971, the same basic engine left the factory maroon if it was going into an MG sports car and green if it was going into a saloon. After 1971 the MGB's engine was black. Every record here is graded C. The sources agree with each other, and none of them is a factory document.
What the factory did
The MG sports cars were dark red. MGOC Spares, the trading arm of the MG Owners' Club, says early MGB engines were "finished in dark red or maroon from 1962 until the 18V-series engine of 1971, after which they were painted black to the end of production". Barney Gaylord's MGA Guru site gives the MGA the same colour, calls it MG Dark Red, and lists its application as "MGA, & early MGB".
The saloons were green. BMC Farina, a specialist in those cars, sells one green engine paint and lists it for every badge in the family: Austin A55 and A60, Morris Oxford, Riley 4/68 and 4/72, Wolseley 15/60 and 16/60, and the MG Magnette. The Magnette is the telling one. It wore an MG badge and got a green engine, because it was a saloon built alongside the others. It was the kind of car that decided the colour.
The engine was painted as an assembly. MGA Guru describes the factory spraying it with the rear and front plates, timing cover, crankshaft pulley, water pump, oil filter canister, sump, tappet covers and rocker cover all in place. The starter, generator and distributor were not fitted at that stage. So on an untouched engine the head, the rocker cover and the sump match the block, and none of them has a separate record here.
What changed, and when
One change matters, and you can check it on the engine. The MGB went from maroon to black with the 18V engine in 1971. Read the engine number prefix. An 18G or 18GA to 18GK engine belongs to the maroon years. An 18V engine should be black, whatever year the car was first registered and whatever colour it is today.
That makes the prefix more useful than the registration date. Engines get swapped, and an early car with a later 18V engine is correctly black.
What to buy
For maroon there is a real choice, listed on the MGB record above. Frost states its MG Maroon as RAL 3004, and it is rated to 170°C. POR-15's MG Maroon is a brush-on enamel rated to 150°C that needs four to six days before the engine runs. Nobody has measured either against an original engine, and nobody can tell you which is closer to what Abingdon used, because no factory reference exists to compare them with. If original paint survives on your engine, match to that and spray a test card first. You can compare the MG maroons in the shop.
For a black 18V engine, shade doesn't come into it. Choose on heat rating and finish.
For a Farina saloon, the trade sells the same BMC green it sells for the A-series. Whether the factory used one green for both is not established. The A-series page sets out why "BMC green" is three different tins and two different standards.
All of these are one-pack engine enamels for blocks, heads and covers. Engine enamel explains the heat ratings.
Common mistakes
Painting the starter's mounting face. MGA Guru is specific: the face of the rear plate where the starter motor mounts must stay bare, because the starter earths through it. Paint it and you get a slow or dead starter, and an afternoon spent looking for the wrong fault. Gasket faces stay bare for the usual reasons.
Painting a rebuilt engine in pieces and expecting it to look factory. The factory sprayed it assembled, so bolt heads, brackets and the pulley all carried engine colour, and there was overspray in places a careful restorer would never leave any. A concours judge looks for that. For a road car it's your call, and it is worth knowing which look you are choosing.
Treating a refinisher's code as a factory code. The codes quoted for MG dark red are Ditzler and PPG Reno Red DQE 50782Y, PPG DAR 2673H, Duplicolor Dark Canyon Red and Moss Motors 220-540. American paint suppliers and restorers chose all of them to match engines they had in front of them. They are useful, and none of them came from BMC.
What is disputed
The shade of MG maroon, and whether a factory code for it ever existed. Owners have argued it across many pages on The MG Experience without a document turning up.
Whether the MGA and the early MGB were the same red. One well-regarded source says so. No second source confirms it, and the same source says the earlier MG TD and TF engines were a darker red with a brown tint, so the colour did shift over the years.
Whether the Farina green is the A-series green. The trade treats them as one colour. No club or factory source says they were.
Finding original paint on your own engine
Look where nothing has rubbed and little heat has reached: behind the engine mounting plates, under the dynamo or alternator bracket, on the rear face of the block against the gearbox, and inside the lip of the rocker cover. Degrease first. Maroon under decades of oil reads as brown, and that is how a good many "brown" MG engines came to be reported.
If you find a sound patch, photograph it in daylight beside something of known colour, and tell us about it. A measured reading from an unfaded original would settle more of this page than any amount of argument.
Every record above has a correction link. Applied corrections are logged on the record and on the changelog with their source and date.