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Re: To Paint or not to Paint
Another Picture of the same collection John showed. Life magazine "opened" those pictures to the public through the internet. A good debate started in my country when I showed the pictures in an american car club. Late 50's owners run to the paint shop inmediately asking for orange paint!!Photo below shows the beginning of the Engine Dress Line at Tarrytown in 1959; note the paint coverage on the exhaust manifolds. The engine plants (Flint V-8 and Tonawanda) ran 300+ engines per hour through their paint booths, which gave the sprayers 12 seconds per engine - hardly a "concours" paint operation.
Best regardsComment
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Re: To Paint or not to Paint
People are just now starting to accept, or at least believe that the manifolds started life on the engines completely covered in engine color.
Thirty years ago, I was the very first to show a car in NCRS (and Bloomington) with painted manifolds. Or, at least the first to do so intentionaly. Can you imagine the debate that caused?
One of the first few cars that I painted the manifolds on was my 4000 mile black 64 FI coupe. The car eventually sold to Dr Vance Shappley and I judged it at Bloomington in the late 70's. People had a field day with that episode because I gave him full originality points for the manifolds but deducted a few points on other cars in the class that had unpainted or grey coated manifolds. That was the beginning of the manifold/paint war that I'm sure a few older NCRS guys will remember.
For the next quarter century, I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to convince the troops that this IS the way these cars rolled off the assembly line and it's the way they should be restored.
I showed several factory photos to judges and owners but almost everyone claimed that these were just "GM promo photos".
Fortunately, the orange burns to black over much of the surface of the manifold within an hours, or less.
I still very vividly remember the black and orange color on the manifolds of my brand new 1964 365 HP coupe. I may not remember what I had for lunch yesterday but I remember many details about that car.
That's also where the orange painted bypass hose and dull aluminum painted cyl head between the valve cover and intake manifold theory came from. Yup, it was me.
Ask Bob Jorjorian about the time in the late 70's that some guy painted the bypass hose orange on his Z06 car. Bob refused to watch as I masked the area and shot the hose orange.
As I remember, I wanted to paint his exhaust manifolds too but I don't think he was quite up for that...yet.
Last edited by Michael H.; April 4, 2009, 07:09 AM.Comment
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Re: To Paint or not to Paint
Thanks for those historical references, very interesting!!
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Re: To Paint or not to Paint
I was getting ready to "restore" my exhaust manifolds (67 SB) and when doing a search this thread popped up first. For some reason I missed it when it originally posted on April 1st.Photo below shows the beginning of the Engine Dress Line at Tarrytown in 1959; note the paint coverage on the exhaust manifolds. The engine plants (Flint V-8 and Tonawanda) ran 300+ engines per hour through their paint booths, which gave the sprayers 12 seconds per engine - hardly a "concours" paint operation.
John, would the process for painting midyear engines (SB or BB) be the same as they were in the 1959 picture you posted? If not what would the changes have been and about when would they have taken place?
As always thank you for sharing your Corvette knowledge with us. Anytime I see your name or Mike's in a thread I know I'm going to learn something new about this great hobby!!Comment
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Re: To Paint or not to Paint
Chuck any luck with the 16 mm footage. StewyComment
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