Australian Paint Colours and body numbers

[1000wannabe]

I've spent some time recently chasing dead ends and dead forum links trying to find a list of paint colours/codes for Australian built Minors.
Almost all of the links I found refer the OP to places with 'how to ID your Minor's documents and sites but they are all based on UK cars. Australian cars were built with a range of different colours and they are of no use.
I recall finding a list maybe a year ago that was mostly correct, but didn't happen to include the colour of my car.
Does anyone have a list saved away anywhere?
There used to be one on the Morris down under forum but that's long dead...
I'm also trying to find out if there's any production timeline info available that's specific to our cars.. for example, when did the dashboard change to central speedo in Australian Utes and is there a list of body numbers by year of manufacture? Bearing in mind our cars had both the UK numbers followed by ours...

[Chief]

I can't help with paint codes, but if you have the dead links/know the url for the MorrisDownUnder forum, then you could try the Wayback Machine and try viewing the old sites that way, forums are more tricky as you may find you click a link and the page was never archived etc. or it's there but there's no reference to it unless you can find the precise url for the thread/post etc.

https://web.archive.org/

[1000wannabe]

Thanks for that. It took me to the page that I remembered seeing and I have since taken some shots of the info on that page.
It of course doesn't help with formulas, but its a start.
Interestingly both of my cars are coloured from factory in colours that were from the year preceding in that same list. I wonder if its to do with timing of manufacture in the year and when they decided to release the new schemes.
The variety was far more extensive than that you guys had in the UK

[Chief]

I wonder if its to do with timing of manufacture in the year and when they decided to release the new schemes.

I guess it may be akin to the "Dual Identity" thing for us, where cars were a mix of the old series and incoming new series in the early '60s.

Can I suggest that you post any information you've managed to find back to a thread here, either with screenshots or links to the archive.org site etc. for any other Australians who might be looking for the same info.

As an aside, you can also save websites to the Archive (bottom right of the page: https://web.archive.org/) so if there's any information out there at the moment you're worried could dissapear in the future, you can save it for yourself and others

[1000wannabe]

Thought I'd add an update here on my progress with respect to Australian colours.

I will shortly have access to colour chips for Australian Minors with paint colours used in 1958 and 1959.
As I work in a paint shop, I will have access to a spectrometer and be able to scan the samples and SHOULD be able to recreate formulas for the colours I'll have as samples.
I'm pretty sure the sample chips will be actual paint, not recreated colours via the printing technology of the day and therefore I should be able to get a pretty close match.

I SHOULD be able to recreate those formulas using either or both of Valspar or PPG (Protec) systems. PPG are a global company and the tint base and formula will then be able to be recreated anywhere with access to those tints.

If any Aussies are lurking in here and need help, sing out.
Bare in mind the best use of what I'll be able to recreate will be for people doing a full respray. If your car needs a repair, you are best advised to get an adjacent panel scanned to allow for variations in the colour shade after 50 plus years of sun exposure.
The attached is a list of the colours..
Ironically, one of the colours I need is from 1953/54 and I'm yet find a sample of it in even a photo..
(Austral Blue)

[Scott]

I'm not sure if you have seen the pages for the pre 1954 and 1954 cars but Austral Blue is 6050.

[1000wannabe]

Hi Scott,
I would have at some stage. I only managed to get that shot because I had found someone had linked the page in a forum post somewhere.
Being a dead link with the demise of the Australian site, I only got back to it via the web archive. To find other pages, you'd have to guess the url or find another link to it to copy it.
Either way, knowing the paint number is almost useless these days.
There are only a handful of colours still referenced in the paint systems. All the ones I found were ones that extended use on presumably other models into the 60s.

I've just mixed up Crooma cream for example. It was renamed as Camden cream and used later. It shares the same paint number.
In my samples from 1958/59, you can see the name change, but same code and same formula and both samples of the colour are the same.
They were 'duco' paint codes, all prefixed with 261- the second part of that number was used in the modern systems as the main identifier.

When I mixed Camden cream, it came out lighter and a bit more yellow. Both the samples, the scan and resulting formula create a more beige colour which matches the samples perfectly.
I had Crooma cream mixed about 25 years ago when it was still on file. It came out a lighter, more white 'cream' and I believe the colour probably became lighter over time from tinter changes and people doing matches by eye before we had spectrometers.
Austral blue doesn't exist anywhere. I had very small samples to work with. It appears by eye to be the same as a photo I was shown so I made it off my on car sample. Of course it assumes the car in the photo is painted correctly. This is how errors occur over time.
As much as I prefer the lighter version of the cream, the original samples I have, have been preserved in a book for decades, protected from light, so I am going off them as the point of truth for now.