Master cyl color?

[Don R]

Were they all black when new? My sandcast has a nice black anodized set and my diecast has silver.

[kp]

Yes, black when new. They faded over time. If you were to pull back the rubber cover where the brake hose bolts to the master cylinder you would see a darker colour, assuming that the rubber is still in place.

[ChrisPinAz]

See attached picture of 4567. It clearly has a black painted master cylinder body with a natural or gray painted cap.
The other pictures are of the cap off my bike. It was torn all to hell on the top so i used 340 then 400 on it until almost all the scrapes and scratches were gone. The last one was the deepest and actually almost goes all the way through. It is hard to see in the pictures but there is definitely remnants of what appears to be the same gray paint on the sides of the cap that is on the engine cases and front caliper.
Is the actual paint code of the gray color known?

Chris

[Sam]

The master cylinder and cap were chromic-anodized black.

[ChrisPinAz]

Flipped my cap over and realized it is very black on the inside. Looks anodized to me.......

What about the cap in the pic above?

I read a comment somewhere in the many posts I have looked at. I think Steve may have made it. Something about many inconsistencies in the sand cast models. I work for a small electronics manufacturer and it made me think of how much a product we start out with changes in a very short amount of time. Things can happen, parts availability etc.

Chris

[Sam]

Hard to know what happened to the cap in the pic above. Chromic anodizing is very susceptible to fading...the anodizing may have still been there. It is super common to see controls, master cylinders and caps that have faded so much that they have no black on them at all.

I have never seen an original cap that was gray. Only faded ones and those that had been stripped. Though there are many changes to the sandcasts over the few months that they were produced, the anodizing does not appear to have changed based on documented cases.