Thread: Old Vintage Coca Cola Coolers

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Originally Posted by HOTRODPAINT

Attachment 54159By cooler, I assume you mean an ice chest. I've painted a few of them... but it was usually custom work. I also did a horizontal coke machine.

Take a picture of it... or find a picture of the same cooler on the internet. After you get it repainted red, take it to a sign painter, and let him brush paint it back on.

I did the paint and flames on this one, and had my sign painter buddy add the Coke script.

That is the exact Coca Cola cooler I have...minus the fresh paint and flame job. I see you had the lid handle, corner pieces, and latch bar chrome plated. As best as I can tell, they were originally zinc plated. What I did for now was to work them over with some steel wool and polish them up. It helped the looks some. I was thinking the same thing with the sign painter which we have not far from where I live. What kind of paint did you use for the red and what paint code? I assume it's enamel paint. What type of primer did you use? It doesn't look like they used any kind of primer originally.

I used all automotive paints, since that is what I normally work with. We weren't trying to make it original, so we didn't try to match the paint.

You might take the cooler to an auto paint store, and compare it to color charts there. I would look at the colors from the sixties or seventies. Newer reds are much richer than the coke color would have been back then.