Were the '66 factory body panels black in color as in '67, and were the bonding strips black also?
'66ORIGINAL BODY PANEL COLOR
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Interesting factory pix in Noland Adams....
up front on page 32 of his Vol 2 book. There's a four panel sequence with one panel showing the jig that was used to assemble front clips. Although the time of the shot isn't annotated, the era MUST be '65-66 because of the style of the side louvers.
What's interesting is the pix clearly shows three different colors of panels going together (off-white, light grey and dark grey). This is EXACTLY what I found when I took my April '65 body down to raw glass. This is telling us that by '65 there WAS a mixture of body panel colors and you can't use specific panel color to document 'unhit-originality'....- Top
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Re: Interesting factory pix in Noland Adams....
I have studied hundreds and there is one thing for sure, the colors varied a bunch even on the same car. There are some trends,however. They were white in early 63 and generally changed to gray by the end of the year. 64 was basically gray although multiple shades. Interestingly early 65 went back to white but again changed to gray later. 66 started out a light gray and changed to black later in the year like the 67. 67s were basically black. Even in 67, which were probably the most consistant, there was lots of shades of dark gray or black.- Top
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Re: Interesting factory pix in Noland Adams....
...so at the end of the day, GM used the panels provided by (perhaps) several vendors, shipping from various locations arriving on uncontrolled mix of delivery dates. Inventory management was not as stringently controlled at that time these cars were being produced.- Top
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Re: Interesting factory pix in Noland Adams....
A couple things went into the color of a panel. 1)pigment and the amount pigment in the resin 2)the ratio of resin to fiberglass in the panel. Some panels that are very white are very low in resin. Some panels that are very dark are very high in resin.
Probably varied at the manufacturing plant on the time of day and whoever was making the panels and/or how the equipment was set up. Just my thoughts, Terry- Top
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Re: Interesting factory pix in Noland Adams....
Many of the major panels were molded by A.O. Smith (and its Rockwell/GenCorp, etc. successor names, well into the 80's), and they bought most of their resins in railroad tank car lots from outfits like Ashland Chemical. I doubt if they were too concerned about the color of the resins and fillers as long as the resin chemistry met specs and the price was right.- Top
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Re: Interesting factory pix in Noland Adams....
I have played with some NOS panels and taken apart a few original cars. There was some variability part to part. I have seen identical panels from same year cars and one looked like it had all the resin squeezed from it and the other looked dark gray and you could barely see any strands of fiberglass. Terry- Top
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Re: Interesting factory pix in Noland Adams....
I dont think that the amount of resin had too much to do with the color of the panel. It is a fact that some panels are resin rich, but the colors were a factor of what went into the resin mix. According to an article by an official of MFG years ago, there were clays used as thickners and this was probably the coloring agent. It is evident that there was eventially a conscious effort to make them black. They did this with certain panels anyway, like the tire carrier, in the earlier years. I think it was an effort to reduce the need for blackout.- Top
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