Ford Sidevalve engine colours

What the factory did

Green. This is the one Ford of Britain engine where nobody offers a different answer, and the evidence for it comes from three directions.

The first is the trade. Small Ford Spares, a specialist in exactly these cars, sells a brush-on enamel it calls Ford green gloss colour in a quarter-litre can, and lists it against every sidevalve model from the 1932 Model Y through the upright Anglia and Prefect to the 100E range and the 300E van.

The second is a remark made in passing. A site about the specials built on these engines says Aquaplane's tuning parts looked so good because their polished aluminium and red paint were set against the dark green of the engine block. Nobody writing that sentence was trying to settle a colour question, which is what makes it useful.

The third is the Ford Anglia 105E Owners Club's forum, where a committee member says gearboxes were generally all painted green and treats Ford green as the obvious paint for the job. A guest in the same thread had used it on his 100E Escort.

None of the three cites a Ford document. No factory paint reference, parts book entry or club technical page stating the colour was found, so the record is graded C: several independent people agreeing.

What changed, and when

Nothing found suggests the colour changed across the thirty-year run. The same green is offered for the 1932 Model Y and for the 1962 Popular, and no source distinguishes between them.

What did change is the engine. The two capacities are 933 cc and 1,172 cc, and the table follows the model list from the specialist's own catalogue: Model Y and Model C in the 1930s, the 7Y and 7W, the E83W commercials that ran to 1957, the upright E04A Anglia and E93A Prefect, their E494A and E493A successors, the 103E Popular, the 100E Anglia, Prefect, Escort and Squire, and the 300E van.

The green did not stop with the sidevalve. The 105E club's committee member says some blocks of the overhead-valve engine that replaced it were green too, and others black. That is on the Kent page, where it is the main thing in dispute.

The specialist's tin is described as enough for the engine and the gearbox, and the club member says gearboxes were generally green. The gearbox is outside this site's scope, so it has no record, but if you are painting one to match the engine you are probably doing what Ford did.

Common mistakes

Treating a tin's RAL number as the engine's. Frost's Ford Green is titled RAL6003. That is Frost's reference for its own product. It is not copied into this record's nearest_ral field and should not be quoted as Ford's. The only description of the original shade found is two words long: dark green.

Trusting green because it is green. These engines are old enough that most have been apart more than once, and green on a 1172 is as likely to have come from a tin bought in 1985 as from Dagenham.

What to buy

A Ford green engine enamel. The one on general sale is Frost's Ford Green, a 500 ml tin rated to 170°C, which is ample for a sidevalve block. Frost does not say what the green was matched to, and nobody has compared it with original paint. If you have a patch of original green on your block, brush a little on a test card and hold it up before you commit.

The shop lists the paints sold for Ford engines. Engine enamel explains the heat ratings, and the preparation guide covers getting decades of oil out of cast iron so that the paint stays on.

What is disputed

Nothing within this family. No source offers a colour for the sidevalve other than green, which is why the record is not flagged.

What is unknown is the shade. Two modern tins carry the name, one source says dark green, and nothing ties any of them to a Ford reference. That is a gap, not a dispute, and a measured reading from one unrestored block would fill it.

Finding original paint on your own engine

Depth matters more than colour here. What you want is the layer sitting directly on cast iron.

Look at the flat above the water pump housing, the sheltered face where the bellhousing meets the block, under the dynamo bracket and inside the recesses around the head studs. On the vans and the E83W commercials the engine has usually led a harder life but has also been repainted less carefully, so the layers separate more cleanly.

If you find original green on an unrestored block, measure it or get it measured before you clean the area. The paint listed for this engine is sold on the strength of a colour name, so an instrument reading from a genuine survivor is the missing piece of this page.