Anyone recognize this paint color?

[hgeranium]

I’ve been trying to figure out the mystery of this mismatched paint since I’ve had the truck. Every single body panel on the inside of the engine bay is painted black, but under that coat of paint is this bright metallic looking blue. This includes but isn’t limited to the hood, fenders, and the core support. Strangely enough it’s only the inside of the engine bay (plus the cowl vents) that have this blue paint. The outside is just bare metal underneath.

 

I know for a fact the hood and these fenders aren’t from this truck because the black paint doesn’t match and is the only place where there’s clearcoat fading, meaning they got painted (badly at that, considering there’s no clearcoat fading on the rest of my 38-year-old paint). Do you guys recognize this as an OEM color? Or is this from some hot shot Cherokee with a painted engine bay? The fact the whole front end has been replaced makes me wonder if it’s been in a wreck that toasted the original panels and it just got pulled from a junkyard. That would surely explain the upper grill lip (with the jeep logo) that’s just forest green lol. 

also if the front end got messed up, who’s to say that this is even the original engine? The body might have 180,000 miles but now I don’t know if the engine reflects that. I probably won’t ever know because 4.0s seem to run just as good whether they had 100,000 or 200,000 miles anyways. It just makes me wish even more I knew the story about this truck

[89 MJ]

Looks like this color:

 

Whats odd is that is an HO era color. I think it’s Brilliant Blue Metallic, which is the same color as my truck. It’s a Chrysler color from 94-97. 

[hgeranium]

51 minutes ago, 89 MJ said:

Looks like this color:

 

Whats odd is that is an HO era color. I think it’s Brilliant Blue Metallic, which is the same color as my truck. It’s a Chrysler color from 94-97. 

Yeah I wouldn’t be surprised if they just grabbed the front end parts from the first pre-97 XJ that they saw. Is your engine bay painted blue like the exterior?

[fiatslug87]

Have you posted its VIN in the registry? 

[hgeranium]

1 minute ago, fiatslug87 said:

Have you posted its VIN in the registry? 

Which vin?

[hgeranium]

3 minutes ago, fiatslug87 said:

Have you posted its VIN in the registry? 

My truck’s vin yes. Came up as classic black. Apologies I wasn’t sure if you meant some other vin from the vehicle the panels came from or something lol.

[fiatslug87]

Is there black under that blue?

[Pete M]

that was my thought.  the paint codes in the vin printout are not usually correct (mainly because chrysler keeps reusing codes for newer colors) and repainting a truck twice is a definite possibility.  have you removed a door panel yet?

[89 MJ]

8 hours ago, hgeranium said:

Yeah I wouldn’t be surprised if they just grabbed the front end parts from the first pre-97 XJ that they saw. Is your engine bay painted blue like the exterior?

No, my truck was a white truck originally. I painted the engine bay black because I didn’t want the body color clashing with the AMC blue engine. 

[Spinnakerblue89]

So, I've run into this sort of thing before, but in reverse. My 1984 Bronco II was originally a light metallic blue that was never offered in the Bronco II. It was however offered only on the 1983 Ranger, and so my truck was built using leftover paint, apparently.

 

On the flip side, which would be your case, I wonder if that color you are seeing was used on a different Chrysler product at the time and sit he truck was bucked to use such color.