1967 frame stencil paint, sprayed or rolled?

[John H.]

Re: Frame stencil paint, sprayed or rolled?

Bob -

Yes, the frames were dip-painted at the A.O. Smith frame plant in Granite City, while hanging vertically from a hook through the front frame horns. They were stenciled later while upside-down, so if there were any runs from the stencil paint, they'd run UP, toward the top surface of the frame when in car position.

[Chuck S.]

Re: Frame stencil paint, sprayed or rolled?

Sorry not to respond sooner; I missed this one somehow. John didn't need any help from me.

Actually, the stencils I've seen don't have any runs...they may have a little sloppiness on the edges of the characters, and you can clearly see tiny little voids to near black in the characters where the roller didn't cover completely. They were probably using a very heavy white paint for the stenciling. Like John says, the frames were stenciled stacked upside down...if they DID load up the roller with too much paint, any runs would be to toward the top of the frame.

John, was there possibly a change in procedures? The account I heard was that the C3 frames were manually painted crudely with hoses over a pit with grating, such that the excess paint could be constantly re-cycled back to the process. This story also had either the frame or the paint HOT from either the cleaning process or to help the paint cure faster (I once paid reel money for some gen-u-wine Dulux frame paint from a vendor; it was supposed to be the "Real Deal". Anyway, it sprayed it on fine, but after a week it was still sticky...I was happy to be able to clean it off with mineral spirits. )

[John H.]

Re: Frame stencil paint, sprayed or rolled?

Chuck, if they'd turn on the "edit" feature so we could edit, I'd have changed the wording from "dipped" to "flow-coated"; Granite City had a booth built around a steel grating-covered sump tank, with many, many nozzles at different heights and angles that sprayed (showered) paint all over the frame as it went through the booth, and the paint that went in the sump was recirculated.

Most Chevrolet assembly plants used the same "flow-coating" arrangement (after degreasing, washing, and phoshphating) in their prime systems for the front sheet metal and all the miscellaneous brackets and small parts that came in "raw" (and oiled) from the suppliers and had to be primed black.