Hi All!
My relay box that is on the bulkhead is kind of a khaki color- most that Ive seen online are shiny silver. Anyone know the color code or a rattle can color I an use that would match?
Rob,
I don’t think the DB-10 relay was ever painted black. As far as I can see, this Double Relay was introduced in 1951 on the MG TD Midget for the US market.
The oldest pictures of Double Relay Lucas 33117A, show a grayish colour, clearly from some sort of zinc, cadmium or other metal plating of the steel Cover Lucas 340654.
Urs Schmid (Jaguar XK 120 The Anatomy of a Cult Object Volume 1, page 177) revers to: “The untreated, box-shaped, sheet metal housing…”. I assume “untreated” in this case means “unpainted” but Urs forgot to mention a certain anti corrosion treatment of the metal box, like electrolytic galvanizing.
All later BD10 versions (up to 33117D) were in any case not painted.
Bob K.
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never black
The reason I asked about black is that I have four of these, none of which have any cad plating, and one dated 7-51 had black.
Mine, the one in the picture, is dated July, 1953, as installed in an early December, 1953 production OTS. There were periods just after the second war when some plating types were less available so it is possible, even likely, some of these relay boxes were painted rather than plated.
Nick,
There was a shortage of some metals in the early Fifties indeed, but I thought that was mainly related to Nickel. The C45 PVS generator is an example of that, where grey paint was used for a while, replacing the (beautiful) nickel played versions.
But I thought that other metals (zinc, cadmium) were still available. Don’t know exactly what the British industry used as a corrosion protection layer in those days but I assume zinc or cadmium.
But, I’ve also seen some other Relays that were painted black by Lucas. See the example of this L.I.R (Light indicator Relay) of April 1952 which is painted black, but it may have been repainted of course.
Bob K.
Could it be Lucas painted those boxes to resemble the more usual bakelite?