The question was asked on another forum a few days ago and 'X2 Engine Red' was a quick reply.
Another guy was absolutely certain his Acacia Ridge Type-2 327 had Rocket Red, his words were "never been touched and its 100% hk rocket red"

I guess some GMH plants re-painted or at least touched-up the engines along with the gearboxes as an assembly while other plants didnt.
I have a photo from Elizabeth showing a 307 with Saginaw all freshly painted as an assembly, that was probably what we call X2.

My Dandenong engine has only one layer of paint on it and that would have been applied at McKinnon Industries in Canada, its not Rocket red so my money is on Chevy Orange.
I'll get it colour matched anyway but I'd like to put a name to it one of these days.
Chevy Orange and X2 might be the same thing, I'll be able to confirm that soon.

Whats the chances of McKinnon painting 0.01% of their total engine production with a special colour mix just for GMH?
That does seem like a pointless thing to do.

Wayne

Canadian Pontiac engines were painted Chevy Engine Orange and Studebaker didnt exist after 1967.
In 1968 McKinnons built 2400 engines/day, 307 and 327 and I wouldnt mind betting they were all done with the same paint.

The Engineering spec calls out X2 Engine Red for Chevrolet sourced engines, there is little or no doubt of that. What actually happened in the plants is a different matter.
It appears that Dandenong, for example, left gearboxes raw, while Pagewood painted them. I've seen a Pagewood HG350 where the engine colour is distinctly red, and the gearbox is painted in the standard 186 colour.
Since we know there were plenty of cars that were left waiting for engines to arrive from the US it wouldn't be all that surprising if some engines were not repainted before installing in the cars. I would think your car, Wayne, would be a likely candidate since it sits in between the 1st and 2nd type transition.

Trying to draw conclusions from a surviving predominately red colour, which is the worst colour for fading, that is 50 years old and has been through thousands of heat cycles is difficult but it wouldn't surprise me if X2 engine red fades to colour not unlike fresh Chevrolet orange. Its hard to say how different they were since the formulations I've seen for each are based on tinter quantites and not visible spectral components.

The engine enamels, pre 1971, were mostly sourced from BALM paints, and were just about the highest lead content of all the paints used. This isn't surprising, since BALM is an acronym for British-Australian Lead Manufacturers. A new formulation for Rocket Red was issued by Dulux in 1971, after it acquired BALM, and I
believe some other colours were effected too. Presumably this was done to accommodate the Dulux tinters. This may explain the change late in HG, and in HQ.
When you investigate some, if not all of the formulations around now it always comes back to the fact that they have been eye matched from a supposedly correct sample. Even Dulux admits to this.
I believe the high lead content paints have suffered the most in terms of colour accuracy with the transition to lead free tinters.

It would be great if someone, somewhere, had a surviving tin of Balm full lead X2 Engine Red so it could be properly measured and matched. Until that happy day I think anything we do is an approximation, and only for a particular point in the age of the paint, which fades with time.

Either chev orange or holden red does depend on make and batch of paint bought. Many times I've painted manifolds separately from the block and sump, using cans all bought together, only to find when assembled they all look different. Once I painted a 253 for my LS Monaro project only to be ridiculed about the "pink" engine which was painted from a "holden red" can. It only turned pinkish after the engine was brought up to temp a couple of times which was well and truly to late!

Hard to tell in images as you have the affect of a non-calibrated camera and a non calibrated monitor plus image compression by less than perfect software. But it does look slightly pinker or redder than the very original GMH Impala I saw the other day, however it is more than likely in the image rather than in reality. Do you know Frank (we-wreck)? He has a pair of Tonawanda GTS327 heads of mine in storage at the moment for me, you could compare those to your engine.

On the engine paint issue, I believe that the highest performance engines were painted Rocket Red and the rest were Holden engine Red for HD-HR. So:

HD-HR 161 and 186 were Engine Red.
HD-HR X2 and 186S were Rocket Red.

When HK arrived the new HK Rocket Red (I think this is the term used) was painted on all 6cyl engines including 186S, and continued to be used on all engines other than the higher performance engines until the end of HZ and VB. The original Rocket Red was renamed X2 Engine Red and was used on HK 5litre/307 as it was the highest performance engine in a Holden and also used on the 327 in '68 Impala and '68 Parisienne. Once the GTS327 engines became the highest performance they were also X2 engine red, and in theory the 307 should have become the HK Rocket Red but they were all built before Monaro release so I guess that quandary never arose.

For HT, HG, HQ the 350 was always the highest performance engine so it too was painted X2 engine red although this changed for the last of HQ 350 auto only engines (but don't yet know the logical reason).

HD-HR X2 and 186S is the same colour as the 307-350 engines, and it is different to what was on the McKinnon produced 283 and 327 prior to 1968 which was afaik the US colour. GMH painted those HD-HR engines a different colour so not sure why Tonawanda and McKinnon couldn't. In fact it'd be more an issue for Tonawanda as they built maybe 4000 engines only for GMH spread across HK-HT and Impala/Parisienne, whereas McKinnon/St Catharine's would have built around 25000-30000 307 alone just for HK-HT.

I'm pretty sure I have both US sourced 290 heads and originals as fitted to GTS327 with original paint, I'll try and dig some out and look at them side by side. I have old 283 and pre HK 327 engines and heads too, from memory they are a different colour. Will try and check those out as well.

I think it was 1976 they changed to blue.

It should say from EH to HR low gloss 6266 (1583)
X2 HD-R and HK-T-G 186S 8926 high gloss
And HK Rocket Red 10890 high gloss
HQ red is different to HK Rocket Red as it's got a pink shade to them and the HJ has a clear coat over it that peels off the top of the paint.

Maybe it's 1971 that the lead in the red paint is got rid of.

I had my HR and my brothers HQ my sisters HK and my mums HJ all side by side with the bonnets up in 1978 and pointed this out as a fact.
The HJ was peeling it's clear coat at 3 years old and I seen the same with many others doing this but never on a HQ or earlier, HJ on yes and even the blue motors did it, don't remember the black peeling.

I purchased a Dulux/Dulon sample page a few days ago with Rocket Red Mk.2 on it from 1979, does anyone know what year was the Mk.2 introduced?
I guess it was earlier than 1979?

I was asking about the second version 'Rocket Red Mk11 31036'
The earliest reference I can find for it was 1978.

You've confused me with this comment - "X2 red was originally called rocket red but got renamed once HK engines appeared"
I thought there was no Rocket Red prior to HK, there was only the darker Holden Engine Red 6266/0583 and X2 Engine Red 8929 they were the two options werent they?

Ok thanks for that Terry
They werent very imaginative with engine paint names were they.