TR2/3/3A Nimbus White?

In the final throes of selecting a paint color. The interior is set with cherry red, the darker red from Skinner. I thought I had settled on Pearl White, assuming it is Triumph’s version of Olde English White, but Nimbus white has caught my eye on a Standard-Triumph chip card on the web.

Anyone ever seen one? There’s an Ice Blue TR2 in the UK that might be similar in color... Might Nimbus be a Standard color?

My car was originally spa white w a black interior, but that ain’t happening!

It’s a ‘59, TS 44743L

Jim,

I have a S-T actual painted chip card of Nimbus White as produced by ICI. It's a very, very pale blue, rather than a white-white, but I'm looking at it under artificial lighting at night. I may try to view it in the sunlight if it ever stops raining here in KC. How it compares to Ice Blue I can't say, but those who've seen Ice Blue for real say it varies between a pale blue and pale mint green. Take a look at Edwin Tiben's Ice Blue restoration here: https://get.google.com/albumarchive.../AF1QipPzuLEUi-1MF4eUsBPKXizEPSW1_U9yAPRmYtD1

Take into account the limitations of viewing colors on the web, as well as where he took the photos. Also consider that how anyone "sees" a color is different from everyone else.

ckeithjordan said:

Jim,

I have a S-T actual painted chip card of Nimbus White as produced by ICI. It's a very, very pale blue, rather than a white-white, but I'm looking at it under artificial lighting at night. I may try to view it in the sunlight if it ever stops raining here in KC. How it compares to Ice Blue I can't say, but those who've seen Ice Blue for real say it varies between a pale blue and pale mint green. Take a look at Edwin Tiben's Ice Blue restoration here: https://get.google.com/albumarchive.../AF1QipPzuLEUi-1MF4eUsBPKXizEPSW1_U9yAPRmYtD1

Take into account the limitations of viewing colors on the web, as well as where he took the photos. Also consider that how anyone "sees" a color is different from everyone else.

Click to expand...

Thanks Keith. Would be interested in your perception in the natural light. Of course, it will ultimately depend on what comes back from the paint shop in its test sprays.

Nimbus white certainly could have been a Standard Triumph color but you can't really go wrong as many Triumphs, my own TR3A as an example, were simply listed as "white" on the build record.
Tom

Jim,

The sun finally came out today in KC and I've attached a couple of pix of the Nimbus White chip taken with my iPhone in the afternoon sun. It's the palest of blues, really white with a touch of blue. It would be different than Ice Blue, since it doesn't have the green in it. I hope this helps.

Keith, do your chip cards have mixing information on them? I'm wondering what the original mix might have been. I ask in part because what I see in your photo -- and yes, I understand your camera, your lighting, my monitor and my own eyes all contribute to perception -- looks more like the very palest of green-white rather than blue-white. Contrast with Sebring White, if you have a chip of that color. Sebring definitely does have a very slight touch of blue to it.

As to the use of Nimbus White, I don't recall ever seeing it mentioned on the TR series, but it was used on the Triumph 10. I'm not sure, but I think its application there was primarily on the white "band" around the window areas of the Estate Wagon?

Here's a chip from the internet. The tone is probably pretty useless but it has the numbers. (The color name was also used on much later Jaguars, PPG 90450)
https://paintref.com/cgi-bin/chipcreate.cgi?year=1958&manuf=Triumph&make=&model=&ret=code

Tom

Andrew,

Nimbus White was formulated as follows (ICI Paints):
Nimbus White P030-3247
White P030-9929 93%
Reduced Black P062-9901 3%
Reduced Permanent Green P062-9905 2%
Reduced Yellow Oxide P062-9911 2%

Sebring White was formulated as follows:
Sebring White P030-3276
White P030-9929 93%
Reduced Black P062-9901 4%
Reduced Blue Lake P062-9930 1%
(Note indicated that "A trace of Reduced Permanent Green P062-9905 may be required")

You're right, there is green in there (Nimbus White), but I didn't "see" it, looking at the chip outside. Since it's crappy weather here again in KC, I'll have to wait a day or so to view both chips outside. I'll try and take some noon-day photos for better light. FYI, these chips are Standard-Triumph colors, but obviously for the whole line, not just TRs. They aren't dated.

Keith, thanks for that information! Always tough to go by a "chip" even if you have same in your hand rather than looking at a photo of same. But at least one can get a representative idea! I downloaded and "brightened up" the chart that Tom posted, but now I'm happy that I think I'm looking at what my older eyes tell my older brain that they think they remember. And yes, any given color could have appeared on anything (but by no means everything) in the Standard-Triumph range at a given time. I suppose if a customer "knew someone" or had enough influence, they could have special-ordered a Targo Purple-painted TR3A (said color was available, though, as an interior color on the TR3A), but it begs the question of "why"! Also, S-T had the annoying habit of calling the same shade by different names, depending on what car it appeared on. For example, it seems fairly likely that Primrose Yellow (TR3A) was the same as Pale Yellow (early Herald)! Of course, in the mid-1960s, Conifer and Triumph Racing Green were the same color, depending on model....

Here are the colors (chips) that I have: Coffee, Pale Yellow/Primrose Yellow (called out so on the chip, thus confirming Andrew's observation), Jonquil, Cactus, Lichfield Green, Elfin Green, Conifer Green, Olive, White, Spa White, Jasmine, Sebring White, Beach White, Nimbus White, Silverstone Grey, Pearl Grey, Alpine Mauve, Silver Grey, Dolphin Grey, Phantom Grey, Targa Purple (not Targo), Gunmetal, Powder Blue, Wedgewood Blue, Cornflower Blue, Renoir Blue, Cotswold Blue, Monaco Blue, Royal Blue, Valencia Blue, Pink Wistaria, Signal Red and Cherry. I did find a hand-written note dating the collection 1959-1967.

Andy and Others,

Here's a photo taken today with the sun high overhead. I used one of my photography gray cards as a backdrop. Nimbus White is "on top" and Sebring White, on the bottom. Sebring White appears whiter than I see it, it has a blue tint.

Keith, how does the Nimbus White chip compare to the Cactus Green chip? Just curious; no question to my tired eyes that I'm seeing a greenish white with Nimbus, and Cactus is a very light, pale green, so....

How accurate was the colour mixing when the TR3 was new? No computer matching in those days just the paint department or paint supplier.

David

Andy and Others,

Here's Cactus (L) with Nimbus White (R). The photo shows more yellow in the Cactus and blue in the Nimbus White. Different than in person. Wasn't Cactus a GT-6 color? It's nice. I'll try to photograph all the chips here in the next few days. I would have done it today, but there was a little wind playing havoc.

David's comments about the accuracy of mixing paint brought to mind how we did it in the paint department of a hardware store when I lived in Riverside, Calif. in the 1970s: We had mixing formulas (so many "squirts" of this pigment or another) and used a carousel of pigment canisters, putting the can of base paint under a specific pigment, sliding a pointer to a pre-determined marking on the canister, drawing up a plunger, then plunging down while the pigment squirted into the base paint. I'm sure it wasn't that precise and I remember telling people to mix multiple cans of the same color. Even with today's computer-controlled paint mixes, I combine batches to prevent one being different than the other.

I remember two stories from those days: One lady came in and asked if we could mix up some checkerboard paint(!); the other, one of the pigment canisters was empty, so we labeled it the "pigment of your imagination." You develop goofy humor working in a store in your twenties.

Cactus usually was found mostly on Heralds, but generally NOT those built for the US market (Canadian market is another story). It was also an interior color. And yes, there were some early GT6s in that color as well.

Oh, and thanks for the comparison, Keith!

Just had my paint mixed a few weeks ago. Under estimated how much I needed or over used the paint so I had to get some more made up. It is a similar white to the Cactus. Brought the old can with the formula on it to the store along with a piece that was painted. I made the decision to get more before I ran out in fact I had enough to do several coats on all the outsides of all the panels. They mixed the new batch to the formula and the paint lady said it is not exactly right and that she needed to fix it. She went back in the paint room and did some adjusting and got it spot on.
I did use what I had held back for the final coats just to be sure there was no mismatch.
So even with a computer mixer working on mixing paint a few weeks apart it is not always exactly the same.

David