correct concours restoration

[john302]

Getting ready to spray the doors and body shell on my 69 trans am . Thinking about spraying the paint thin on the edges of the rockers ,doors, quarters,fender bottoms .The primer should show through the paint. Mopar oe restorations do it correct and Rick Nelson also on chevelles. It seems nobody is doing this on f bodys.Thoughts ? anyone have original paint cars with pics to show this?The last car we restored is way over done with the bottoms of the rockers wet sanded.thanks John

[Mike S]

 The 67 F-body done by Fisher were sprayed with reciprocating sprayers so I would assume the thickness was more consistent due to steady speed and surface distances compared to a human spraying. I have measured an average paint thickness of 3.5 - 3.9 mils across most of the Fisher built body of my 67 04B LOS. That's under 1 mil variance and in the 3.0 - 4.8 mils range along the nose with the latter being sprayed manually on the Chevrolet side.
 On my 67 04B LOS, I have very large runs along the top of the firewall and inside the door jambs and this is original paint.
As for thickness, I don't see any lightly sprayed parts especially on the edges and rocker coverage looks uniform with some bottom overspray. Now the nose, from what I understand, was sprayed manually on the Chevrolet side so any areas lightly sprayed would depend on the person behind the gun. I have looked for light areas on my car n the past and I don't see any especially where the edges of the hood and fenders that turn under are concerned. I don't think you will see any two cars the same.

Mike
 

[68camaroz28]

Getting ready to spray the doors and body shell on my 69 trans am . Thinking about spraying the paint thin on the edges of the rockers ,doors, quarters,fender bottoms .The primer should show through the paint. Mopar oe restorations do it correct and Rick Nelson also on chevelles. It seems nobody is doing this on f bodys.Thoughts ? anyone have original paint cars with pics to show this?The last car we restored is way over done with the bottoms of the rockers wet sanded.thanks John

Maybe it would be good to ask the Pontiac gang concerning the 69 Trans Am. John, I think all cars being restored to a high level are ALL way over done. With the amount of cars you have restored over the years what have you found? By the way, just looked at a 68 Z/28 12D car and the bracket along the right side to hold the shroud was not painted black as the radiator.

[X33RS]

Getting ready to spray the doors and body shell on my 69 trans am . Thinking about spraying the paint thin on the edges of the rockers ,doors, quarters,fender bottoms .The primer should show through the paint. Mopar oe restorations do it correct and Rick Nelson also on chevelles. It seems nobody is doing this on f bodys.Thoughts ? anyone have original paint cars with pics to show this?The last car we restored is way over done with the bottoms of the rockers wet sanded.thanks John

I just finished up a restoration on a 69 mach 1 for a customer.  It was original paint.  Bottom of doors were thin to no paint, and there was very little paint on the front jamb of the doors where the hinges are (doors are painted after installed on the car) also under the rockers were thin.  Also the very back of the decklid bottom as installed on the car had little to no paint, this was also painted at the factory while installed on the car.  I have duplicated this to some degree on other cars when found but on this particular car the customer didn't want that.  I see this more on the Fords than anything else when they come in with original paint.  What few original paint Fbodies I've seen haven't had this issue.  My 70 Van Nuys Formula is original paint as well and I haven't found any of these light paint issues in the usual places. 
  I have a 55 bird in here now that is original paint, these cars are also painted with doors on.  When I dig into it I'll likely find some light paint areas.
   Every car seems to be different, and not that many examples left with original paint that we can learn from.  Even the same brand and type of car built on a different week of the same month is different (Fords are horrible for this) as well as different plants using different procedures.
  Honestly I'm not comfortable practicing some of these spray techniques on just any car unless I see evidence of it to begin with, simply because the variances from car to car can be so vastly different on the same assembly line.

[firstgenaddict]

Bodies were painted and assembled at Fisher Body Norwood
 inside floors note the sealer around the floor pan...



 bottom of floors--




Floor pan plugs after grey primer before PAINT



Note how the top lip is barely covered with grey primer then the black body color mists over the edge.





Maybe difficult to see but the top is grey primer, then the silver mists over the edge...



Before Color Coat, Grey primer tan sealer as original



05C Norwood The Trans Am probably did not have this much white on the firewall although it is possible... this car was built when Trans Ams were in production.



Rocker on silver SS conv...







The front sheet metal is a little different on Norwood assembled F bodies - the front metal minus the wiper cowl was bucked in position with approx 1.5-2" gaps and painted at final Assembly for Norwood cars not at Fisher Body where the car bodies were painted and assembled. (wiper cowl was hung in the window opening and sprayed with the body)
The gaps will be understood when painting in order to get correct overspray...

 note the edges which are grey, where the paint couldn't fall...



Hood edge













Strip ends shouldn't be heavy, leave the panels "bucked"








Top of Cowl at the dash showing dash ZERO degree.



Serial Number was stamped after painting so it should be chipped and then covered with a brush of neoprene cement originally or I used clear coat-

[ZLP955]

^ great detail observations as usual James.

[KJProX]

Wow, great pics and useful information on factory painting.