FE-FC Holden Discussion Forum

I'm sure that someone can enlighten me on this but, what the story with the different horn button colours on the FC holden guys?

Try this thread Stephen - should give you what you are after

http://www.fefcholden.org.au/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1122459643;start=1

Regards
Tim

Last week I saw the following new horn buttons in boxes:

Red with Bright Blue centre shield (2 types, 1 had darker red)

Red with Bright Purplish centre shield

Red with Gold centre shield

No, none were faded, or blue gone off, they were NEW IN BOXES.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v162/58feute/DCP_1231.jpg)

I think this picture clearly shows the different types, except there WAS a Green centred button sold on this forum a few years back.

Cheers,

Craig.

HI Craig,

looks pretty convincing but I guess the question is how stable were these pigments over 50 years i.e could they fade while still in the dark (in boxes)?

Jon

No Jon...I think the question we want to know is........HOW MUCH  cause I want one !

Cheers

Mark

I agree with Mark, how much?? ;D

I think they ran to $450.

Each.

cheers
RET

$450 each...gulp! Surely its worth someone coming up with a good repro for that sort of return? 1200 members...even if only 10% want new horn buttons, and only 1% can afford one.....that's still five thousand bucks = a 'new' car (FE/FC of course)!

Jonno

The repro of the button itself is not the problem, in fact I think it has already been done.  The difficulty is in the decoration: getting the colours right, without bleeding into each other, and with the right lustre.

Rares have done the boot badge, but it has only two colours, and has far less detail.

cheers
RET

Why does someone always doubt that they made gold centred horn buttons ??? Not one person said the green ones didn't exist? Everybody ALWAYS says it must just be a blue one thats faded. So was the green one a blue faded one? I'm confused!!

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

I saw it with my own eyes, touched it, looked at it VERY closely, and believe it or not, gold centred horn buttons ARE REAL. Much more real than Canadian blocks anyway.......  :P

In fact, I even know the guy who bought it so send around  Quincy and prove it once and for all!!!

Maybe thats a new show for T.V, Horn Button CSI.

Cheers,

Craig.

sorry Craig

didn't mean to cause offence...its just that you see so many colour varieties that either quality control was non-existent or at least some have faded. I have no reason to doubt that a few different colours were available....just making an observation.

just imagine what a green one would fetch on ebay?!

Jonno ;D

Good idea Craig....and maybe the CSI's can throw a twist in...like.... The Horn buttons arn't actually horns at all, but rather a device that directly exerts pressure to the horn RING, which then sends the signal to the Horn.

So really, they are just Red and Gold and Blue and Green BUTTONS.....but then when you think you've solved the whole horn button crime......the lab tells us that they are not actually buttons, as buttons are things that go in button holes, but merely just a colourful piece of plastic that covers the hole that would otherwise be seen through the horn RING.

So now that CSI have confirmed they are actually, Horn Ring Hole Covers, are they really worth $450 plus ???

Well, that's for next weeks episode !

Jonno,

No offence taken at all mate, just mucking around with ya :-)

Need to go now though, very busy, just fitting a new Waggot quad cam head and Norman turbocharger to my Canadian block. Oh, and a grey gearbox with electric overdirve - mmm but I HAVE seen one of those................... ;D

Cheers,

Craig.

I can't speak for others, but my scepticism is based on the following: there is no argument that FE bonnet buttons (which are a miniature of the horn button to all intents and purposes) were only ever manufactured in blue, gold and red.  And it is irrefutable that the blue colour is the first to fade out of these, leaving the gold (or possibly the coating from the vacuum-metallizing that gives the lustre) where the blue once was.  It is possible that some horn buttons were made with gold centres, but I've yet to see one that convinced me.  Of course I didn't see the ones you saw the other day, perhaps they might have...

I do know there was more than one manufacturer of horn buttons, and there are two slightly different designs (one has larger lettering and the outer gold ring further back), so for all I know there were different original colours, or maybe it is variations in the pigments used that produce variations in the colours.

But just one final word... our mutual friend Ian who got the score of the century on that NOS boxed Wilsonia at that sale?  He left it there.  He double-checked inside the box and it contained a standard idiot light cluster, so the "NOS in Box" was actually the leftovers from a fitted Wilsonia!  Call me a Doubting Thomas if you will, but unless I broke the seal off the original packaging myself, I'd still have doubts.  I cannot fathom why GM-H would deliberately manufacture (or have manufactured) one with a purple centre.  But as I said, I didn't see the ones you saw, maybe they'd change my mind.

cheers
RET

WOW!!!

This is like trying to convince my Mum I didn't go into the pub till I was 18.

I saw it, it was gold, it was new in the box, it was real. If the blue had 'faded' it had done a really good job, because there was absolutely no residue at all. And I promise, I am not going to win a million bucks if I can prove that gold ones did exist, in fact, I don't really give a sh*t!!!.

I know who purchased it, so hopefully it will turn up on his car and the "doubting Thomases" ;-) will come over to the dark side.

Hang on, I can hear a train coming - I have some spotting to do  ;D

Look there were probably 4 or more people who saw both the gold and purple centred buttons. They'll be first to be called as witnesses when it goes to trial.

Horn Button CSI, not such a silly idea after all!!

Cheers,

Craig.

P.S: still no explanation given for the green one. The jury awaits.... And today when I was back there I saw two types of vertical plastic seat uprights, obviously different manufacturers, both 'new' in GMH/Nasco wrapping. I also saw the 'NOS' in box Wilsonia gauge that wasn't. It was obviously fitted/ idiot lights removed when the cars were new. Funny that the guy who didn't have an FE/FC who was so happy to find this amongst so many FE/FC guys found out it wasn't the win he thought it was. Now that's heaps better than finding out gold horn buttons existed!

Hi Guys, A friend of mine actually bought the new one that was on ebay and when he picked it up I was shown the one with the purple centre. I had a really good look at it and all the colouring was perfect, im no expert on these matters but genuine or not I,d certainly like it on my car.
Regards Corm.

Hi Guys.
I gotta back Craig up on this. I have seen the Gold centred buttons. Actually, there was one in the ute that ended up going to Kev (Can't recall his username). If he has a REAL good look at that, he will see it has no signs of fading & the gold is true.
I also, at the risk of getting shot down (It happened once before), swear on my Grandmas grave, I have seen the Green horn buttons. There was one in my first FC sedan. Green as green can be. I have been frustrated since trying to prove it, as that car went to VIC & vanished (Bloke who bought it got himself bumped off by some VERY unsavoury gents :o :o).

I did also once purchase a NOS button at auction, that was in the bottom of a box full of assorted crap. This was when I first started getting into the FC series. I had it for a few years, then fitted it to my old Green & Cream wagon. It was the prettiest blue ever. But, the UV down in TAS is MEGA tough (Scorch you Big Island fairies REAL fast!) & it ate the colour out of that button in about 18 months. Now it is gold, but it looks like it has faded out from a coloured centre.
Get my point? It looks NOTHING like the one in my old ute. the centre LOOKS faded gold.  Maybe Kev can post a photo.

Craig, you have the exact opposite of the problem I had with my Mum. She believed I NEVER drank when young & would live with her until I was 50! I could do no wrong ;D ;D

Rob J

A post from Ken August 18th 2003



Over to you guys to argue it out. I officially retire from the topic. :P

Thankyou Tim
(and the other 218 people who have read this post)
???

my mate had a nice FC in 1984 and had a brown horn badge that i tried to buy off him for mine,and i can assure you it was not some old faded one as his FC had been owned by a priest in Shepparton Vic where it was kept from new in garage.

As I said, I've yet to see a gold one that convinced me, but I'm certainly open to the possibility.  Train-spotter or not, there are others much more obsessed by horn buttons than I am, and I don't claim to have researched the topic exhaustively.  What I do know is that there is only a single part number for FE-FC horn buttons (7409517), every other model has one and only one horn-button, and I've never seen anything 'official' to explain why there might have been deliberate variations in the colour.  I don't deny their existence, nor did I suggest they're "unoriginal".

I know only a little about the decoration process for these things, but I still lean towards variations in tinting being responsible for these odd-ball horn-buttons.  After all, if you're working with all three primary colours, it's not hard to produce green (B+Y), violet (B+R) or brown (B+R+Y).

But I can see this could lead into an "Intelligent Design" vs. "Accident of Nature" debate now, so I'll bow out too.  :D

cheers
RET

Hey Rob, I have the one with the gold centre and yes it does look like the gold is original (not faded) but I wouldn't know for sure.

I thought when I bought the Ute that the horn button was faded so I bought a blue centre one off ebay (the usual high price) and replaced the gold one.  Blue Ute ........ blue horn centre.  Remember I'm trying to re-create what I had 40 years ago.

I did have one chap, restores FE FC stuff, look at the gold centre and looked at me jaw dropped, eyes wide open and said "You've got the good horn button there!!"

And RET there is no part No. on the gold one and is painted white underneath not silver.  I'll post some pics.

Kev

Here is the pic of the gold one.

(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y145/redmr2red/Horn004.jpg)

If you look at the original discussion about horn buttons there two pics of 5 horn buttons, one of those buttons is the same as mine.  Gold, white on the back, with no part No.

Kev

Although not FE/FC  but I have 3 EK horn buttons, 2 silver & 1 is 3/4 gold & 1/4 silver & all 3 have holden part numbers on them (so is it a case of the gold is turning silver or the silver turning gold).
My theory is the gold is possibly a result of a degradation of the silver pigment combined with the sun/light affect on the clear resin (making it yellow) to give the allusion of gold.  

I think this needs a Royal commission  LOL

Well,what a saga.I will be your classic fence sitter.I have 9 horn buttons(horn ring hole covers ;)and every single one is a different colour.The ones with the white painted back seem to have retained their colour better( red,blue and silver) than the ones with silver backs and have no part numbers on them.One has even gone completely silver.On several,the lion is part silver and part gold in no particular pattern.It would be far easier to just put this into the seven wonders of the world category before the whole web site comes crashing down around us!!!! :-/