The Fordson Tractor Pages Forum

Here is my original grille off my grandfathers Dexta, never been re-painted......in its original Orange.

I have gone down with wet/dry800 grade all the way to bare metal, definetly no other colour there. I am in Jersey, so maybe this was an export model if there was such a thing.

Despite all the other threads seeming to say they never came out in Orange, my father assure me they did.

All the dextas up here in north scotland had orange grills when supplied new.Maybe they had different suppliers making them.

Ah..interesting, maybe different parts of the country had different colours, or as you say, different supplier, or different paint left in the gun as different batches of tractors were going out.

This old thread here seemed to imply that they were all definetly NOT orange

and another thread here on this new forum.

My '61 is still in it's original livery too, and certainly orange around the gills. What about your export/import from down this way, Brian, does it still have its grills? Perhaps this was an export thing!

Both the Dextas from New Zealand have silver grills. There are a number of pictures in the recent magazines of un restored Dextas at sales all with silver grills.

I am writing about this at the moment and will post it up later.

This just about the oldest controversy on this website. I am glad to see that the debate is still not settled. It would be interesting to know once and for all how the various newly-produced Dextas where shipped over the years.

when i rubbed down my grills for painting they where silver, so thats what i re-sprayed them as.

Check out the Wiki "Brian on the Grills" http://www.fordsontractorpages.nl/wiki/ ... rills.html

Brian
I've checked out your wiki on the grill colour. Well written.
It certainally seems that the choice of grill colour was an export thing, and not all countries chose the same colour.
Kiwi Kev

Hi,

Reading all this gave me one idea.

Maybe Ford fitted different gill colours to make different production badges easy to identify for their personell on the yard outside.

For example: UK specs blue grills, Euro specs orange grilles and australie models gray grilles.

Regards

Emiel

Brian,

Mike,
Any more pictures like that and I will get Oscar to take away your deputy's shiny star!

Ha Ha Ha,
That's a good one, Mike

Hi,

While we are on the subject of the grills, what silver paint would you good people use
Is it a light or dark silver
I guess the obvious choice is a spray can of silver. With so many shades, just wondered what anybody has used before and can recommend

Same question goes for the orange.
If you go to a paint shop that mixes the paint for you what do you go for?
Mention Allis Chalmers Persian or Howard orange and they look at you like you are from a different planet.

How do you specify a paint colour in terms the paint mixing shops understand? Is ther a standard colour mixing format that they all understand and what is the correct spec for the orange...and silver...and blue

The blue is Empire Blue, the Silver is Matt Silver. It was nearly the grey of wood ash, a very whitey shade, not the bright ones.

Perhaps Zinc colour would be the nearest.

The orange I have seen on the grills would perhaps need to be taken to a paint shop and matched. We used to use Howard Rotovator Orange on the wheels in our paint shop but later paint jobs I have seen seem to be way too red and bright. I did Henrietta with the Rotovator Orange some years ago and they still seem about right.

Both the Rotovator Orange and the original Fordson Orange fade to a more yellow colour.

OK,

I did take the grille in to be colour marched, but there really was not enough showing for them to get a good colour match.

The front wheels still have the original orange, under about three layers of other colours. I am going to rub down/compound/t-cut down to the original colour, and take that to them.

Thanks

A family-member was selling Dexta's in Belgium and he has seen them all with only orange grills. Only superdexta was Silver ... (he remembered)

ps Even Sara painted them orange ....

Jos Cuypers wrote:ps Even Sara painted them orange ....

That's hilarious !

I have just removed Jos and Sara from my will