Hi guys, I know should probably considered as going down the rabbit hole, but I’m doing a complete rebuild of a 1950 Tokheim 39 tall and would like to get it as close to factory original appearance as possible. I’ve been mulling over my findings and just wanted to see what everyone else thinks. I know that at the end of the day I can just pick a color and no one would care any different. However, I do enjoy the research and detective work of replicating factory finishes.
I’m starting with a mostly complete and solid pump, it still has a lot of paint inside and out. I’m just not sure if it has been rebuilt at some point in the past, and I don’t want to make incorrect assumptions about the colors I’ve found. I know parts are easily swapped out and that there were companies back in the day that bought and sold refurbished pumps. Just trying to determine how "original" this pump is to itself. The only actual history I know of this pump is that I bought it in SW Missouri and its last use was as an MFA pump.
BODY
The sides and top panel have paint in this order:
Grey/white primer (inside and out)
Red (exterior only, original factory color)
Blue (exterior only, MFA repaint)
Both doors are yellow inside and out (original color)
Grey primer (inside and out)
Blue (outside)
Green (outside)
Grey (outside, primer?)
Blue (outside, MFA repaint)
No holes for any pump plates. Just the factory holes for the caution plates.
Black painted base
With all that said, if the doors are original to the pump, that would make for red sides/top and yellow doors. I’ve seen several Tokheim 39's restored this way as Shell, but am not sure if that was an original paint scheme. The extra paint layers on the doors make me lean towards thinking they have been replaced. If they weren’t; then the pump would have been red/yellow - red/blue - red/green - blue. Seems like an unlikely history, but this is my first pump rebuild so I don't have anything else to base that on.
INTERIOR
Pretty much everything inside is finished in red primer. A few brackets and pieces have paint under the primer (I found black, orange, and white) but the majority is bare metal under the primer. Most pieces (including the frame pillars) have primer between the joints, meaning that they were primed before assembly and then the entire assembled frame was primed again. The exception being the nozzle hanger fork is painted black. (I did note that the entire bracket appeared to be cadmium plated, were the forks originally left bare plated? It wouldn't surprise me if the black was added at some later point.)
I've also thought that the excessive use of red primer on everything (even the veeder root, you can see where portions were masked off including the label) was from a refurbishment.
If anyone has found something similar, or know what is right/wrong for a factory finish, please chime in. I appreciate the help.
Last edited by Myers B; Wed Jul 20 2022 04:00 PM.
