78 Pace Car side louver black out

[David W.]

I am doing some chassis detailing/refreshing and the 78-79 judging manual states there should be no body color overspray inside the side louvers. It states this area is a semi-flat paint. However on the driver side the canister located inside the louver has pace silver overspray on it. The car is documented all original with 3000 miles. Is this a factory issue? The car is a 5 star bowtie, BG cert/survivor etc. so I wouldn't expect this is an after delivery event. Thoughts............leave it alone or semi-flat it? Of course it looks sloppy St Louie style.

[Russ S.]

Re: 78 Pace Car side louver black out

Absolutely leave it alone.

[Patrick H.]

Re: 78 Pace Car side louver black out

There's a picture floating around - it's been posted on this board before - of the silver paint being applied to a 1978 Pace Car at the end of the line. If you did the paint job in your garage you'd have better conditions than they did.

I would not be surprised at any location of silver paint, anywhere, on a 1978 Pace Car.

[David W.]

Re: 78 Pace Car side louver black out

Yep I saw the pic referenced. Agree the conditions looked very poor. I've noticed a few other inaccuracies in the judging manual that probably should be rev'd to avoid confusion. The overspray will stay.

[Michael D.]

Re: 78 Pace Car side louver black out

...There's a picture floating around...of the silver paint being applied to a 1978 Pace Car...

My money says Tom Russo has pics of the two-tone PC process.

[John H.]

Re: 78 Pace Car side louver black out

There's a picture floating around - it's been posted on this board before - of the silver paint being applied to a 1978 Pace Car at the end of the line. If you did the paint job in your garage you'd have better conditions than they did.

I would not be surprised at any location of silver paint, anywhere, on a 1978 Pace Car.

Patrick -

Here's that photo - hardly a "concours" paint application.


PaintRepair78.jpg

[Patrick H.]

Re: 78 Pace Car side louver black out

Patrick -

Here's that photo - hardly a "concours" paint application.


[ATTACH=CONFIG]57418[/ATTACH]

Thanks John, that's the one. I probably have it here on my hard drive somewhere; now I have it again.



Missed you at the P&M tour today.

Patrick

[Tom R.]

Re: 78 Pace Car side louver black out

I am doing some chassis detailing/refreshing and the 78-79 judging manual states there should be no body color overspray inside the side louvers.

David

When the manual was written, examples were used to develop it but there was no comprehensive study of the various techniques adopted for production of the Silver Anniversary or Pace Car paint schemes or decals. Since then, much as been learned including those coves. The picture above documents that the silver paint on Pace Cars was sprayed after assembly and therefore it is typical that silver paint is found in the coves.

rAlso, if you look closely underneath the front chassis, you may see silver overspray on the front stabilizer bar and/or mounting brackets. When we first began to judge these Corvettes, we thought the nose had been repainted. Now we recognize the method contributed to this overspray pattern and now it is rather typical to see this on low-mileage Pace Cars.

I have a draft for a Corvette Restorer article titled 1978 Pace Car: The Final Process. Drop me a note with your email address and I'll send it to you.

[Mike E.]

Re: 78 Pace Car side louver black out

I found this shot of a '78 Pace Car for sale with 150 miles on it. Perhaps it's similar to yours.



Mike

[David W.]

Re: 78 Pace Car side louver black out

Mike........yes exactly the same. You can see the patch of silver on the canister. At least they were somewhat consistent :-).

[David W.]

Re: 78 Pace Car side louver black out

Tom...........thanks you can send to david.warzala@yahoo.com