Ford Kent engine colours

What the factory did

Ford of Britain printed colour charts for its dealers, and the ones that survive are body charts. The 1978 and 1982 charts that collectors pass round list exterior colours and nothing under the bonnet. There is no Ford engine colour chart to quote, so the Kent's finish has to be put together from people who have stripped the engines.

For the pre-crossflow, the best witness is on the Ford Anglia 105E Owners Club's own forum. The owner of a 1960 car found hints of green on his block and asked what colour the blocks were. A club committee member answered that gearboxes were generally all painted green and some blocks too, that other blocks were black, and that he did not know of any pattern by factory or by year. Anglias, he pointed out, were assembled in several places. So both colours are original, and which one your engine wore is something only the engine can tell you. That is why this page has a green record and a black record for the same cars.

For the crossflow, the answer is black. No source found speaks of the crossflow alone. What exists is owners on two forums giving black as the rule for Ford of Britain engines of the period, and the same being said of the Pinto and the Essex by people who have stripped those. Nobody offers another colour for a crossflow that was not a reconditioned engine.

On sheen there is one remark. The 105E committee member says the other painted parts of the engine were satin or matt, because gloss would have cost too much. Nobody states a sheen for the block itself, so the records carry this site's default and say so.

What changed, and when

The pre-crossflow ran from 1959 in the Anglia 105E, then the Consul Classic and Consul Capri, the Cortina Mk1 and the early Corsair. In August 1967 the Cortina's engines gained the crossflow head, and the Escort that followed in November had it from the start. The crossflow then ran through the Cortina to 1982, the Escort Mk1 and Mk2 and the Mk1 Capri, and its last Ford car was the Fiesta XR2 of 1981 to 1983.

If the green stopped at a particular point, nobody has said where. It is reported on pre-crossflow engines and not on crossflows, which may mean it ended with the old cylinder head or may mean nobody has looked.

The later Valencia and HCS forms of the engine, in the Fiesta and the front-wheel-drive Escorts, have no record here yet. One sentence in the Kent's Wikipedia article says the HCS can be told from the Valencia by its rocker cover, head and block being grey instead of black. That is one unsourced sentence, and it is not enough to publish a colour on.

Common mistakes

Blue. Blue Kent engines are everywhere, and every source read for this page says the same thing about them: blue was the finish on Ford's exchange engines, not on the assembly line. A great many surviving British Fords are running one. Blue paint under the grime is a fact about that engine's history, and painting a car's original engine blue because the last three you saw were blue is how the mistake spreads. One Cortina owner adds that some reconditioners used other colours, gold among them.

Painting a pre-crossflow black on the grounds that Ford engines were black. Some were green, and the gearbox usually was.

Treating the name on a tin as a factory reference. Retailers sell Ford engine colours, and none of the product pages read for this page cites a Ford document. A colour named for a marque is the seller's claim about a colour.

What to buy

For a crossflow, black engine enamel. Nothing is matched to a Ford reference because there is none, and black has no shade to get wrong, so choose on heat rating and finish. A satin black is listed first on the record because the people who give a sheen for Ford engines of these years say satin. Engine enamel explains the ratings, and you can compare the black engine enamels in the shop.

For a pre-crossflow, look at the engine before you buy anything. If there is green under the grime, green is right for that car. The only Ford-named green engine enamel on general sale is Frost's Ford Green, and nobody has compared it with original paint. The club member who answered the question had used a Ford green bought from Frost and was pleased with it, but that was in 2006 and it may not have been the same paint. If you find black, or nothing at all, black is a defensible choice. The shop lists the paints sold for Ford engines.

Whichever it is, most of the result comes from preparation. The preparation guide covers degreasing a cast iron block so that the paint stays on.

What is disputed

The pre-crossflow, though it may be less a dispute than two halves of one answer. On the Cortina forum an owner states without qualification that pre-crossflow blocks are green and the gearbox housing with them, and two others in the same thread say Ford engines were black. The 105E club's committee member says both were used and that he knows of no pattern. Nobody cites a Ford document for any of it.

What would settle it is a pattern: green tied to a plant, a year or an engine size. Until someone finds one, both records stay flagged.

The green also runs back to the sidevalve, the one British Ford engine that everyone agrees was green. A pre-crossflow in the same colour looks like the old engine's paint carried on to the new one, on some lines at least. That is an inference from two sets of owners, not something any source says.

Finding original paint on your own engine

Look where paint was protected, not where it is thickest. The underside of the inlet manifold face, the area beneath a bracket or a clamp and the shielded side of a boss keep their colour long after the visible surfaces have been degreased, scorched and repainted. Cut back gently through the layers in one small protected patch and count them. A reconditioned engine will usually give up blue, and any later owner's paint will sit on top of that.

On a pre-crossflow this matters more than on any other engine on the Ford pages, because the answer for your car is green or black and only the block knows which. Look at the gearbox casing too. If it is green and the block shows nothing, you have learned something about the gearbox and nothing about the block.

If you find original paint on a pre-crossflow, tell us which colour, which car and which year. A dozen reports with dates on them would show whether there is a pattern, and one measured reading from an unfaded block would outrank everything on this page.