Paint color for various underhood things

[darth_linux]

1966 Newport. Repainting underhood things like the horns, various brackets for AC components, battery brackets, hood hinge brackets, etc.

My car is black, so everything under the hood is black but I can’t tell if certain things are black because of the car color, or because they just should be, or because a previous owner allowed paint overspray into much of the engine compartment when the car was repainted (painting the wiper motor, the wire junction block, the voltage regulator, the ballast resistor, the starter relay, etc. all black).

And if things were not body color, were they gloss black, semi gloss or flat black?

Thanks!

 

[413]

All horns add engine brackets for alt AC and PS are gloss black. That's a crummy 60's gloss black, not a put your eyes out shiny gloss black. But semi gloss is just not shiny enough.

If you ever work on a survivor car and remove the water pump pulley the backside where it bolts to the pump will show the gloss black, also on brackets where hey bolt uo to the block and rust has not gotten to it, gloss black paint will be there.

Just like wheels, so many claim semi gloss black, well take of a tire on a clean spare and the evidence is there, they were gloss black when new.



Hood hinge parts and all battery box parts are body color.

All the listed electrical components are unpainted except the tin cover on voltage regulator is gloss black.

 

[MrMoparCHP]

Anything that is not part of the body that you think is black should be a semi gloss black.

We'll start with that.

I went through this on my 69 (The CHP, a black car) and at the time I had a red parts car and a green driver and was able to go through all the parts.
I know this was different on earlier cars so I'm not going to go into details here.
But here is a page from my journal about it.
MrMopar.com!

Your best bet is to find good original example of cars like yours.


Alan

 

[Big_John]

That's a crummy 60's gloss black, not a put your eyes out shiny gloss black. But semi gloss is just not shiny enough.

^This^

Most restored cars are "over restored" when it comes to this. I'll admit to being guilty.

 

[CBODY67]

As mentioned in post #3, anything on the body structure is painted "body color". With aged black on those pieces now, determining what is "outside color black" and "under hood black" can be difficult, BUT once you know which is which, it can be easier to do.

The cowl area, the core support (front and back), bottom side of the hood, and inner fenders were all on the body structure when it went through the paint booth at the assy plant. Items not attached then are the more-satiny black. Items where the attaching bolts are not body color were not attached at that time, but painted elsewhere in the plant prior to their attachment to the body. So those bolt heads will be unpainted and "natural" or have the flat-black, 80-hour salt spray resistant coating them. A coating which can be closely-replicated by dipping a normal hardware store bolt into "gun blue" for several seconds. It still looks like a hardware store bolt, but with the coating.

In another forum, recently, Rustoleum Hi Performance paint was mentioned. As well as Van Sickle satin black tractor paint (spray cans or in cans for spraying). I have not used those items so I cannot vouch for them, but I trust the person who mentioned them to know what they look like compared to OEM "satiny" black paint.

Over the years, we have discovered that "restoration company-sourced paints" ad NOT as accurate as they purport to be. Which led to searches for "non-traditional" sources out of the restoration end of things. Like circle/dirt track paints, other OEM-supplied paints, and otherwise.

Personally, when I jumped off into the underhood detailing of my '67 Newport, years ago, we stocked the GM "Glossy Black Engine Enamel", so I tried that. Spraying it into a small glass bottle and applying it with a camel-hair artists brush to the a/c metal lines going to the back of the a/c compressor (I used normal red Scotchbrite to polish the smaller lines, which were natural) AND discovered it was an exact match for anything "black" on the Chrysler's engine and such. Even the factory (GM and Chrysler) air cleaner! I was pleasantly surprised.

As this was 40 years ago, perhaps suppliers and formulas have changed, but I strongly suspect that DupliColor built it then, as now?

Whatever works,
CBODY67

 

[darth_linux]

Thanks for all of the replies. It sounds like in my situation, a good cleaning, and then a spritz of that super cheap $1.99 Walmart house brand gloss black spray paint will get all the bracketry looking mostly correct. I'm not restoring anything by a long shot, just "cleaning up" so it looks like what the rest of the car is - a very clean, mostly original, 60 year vehicle.

 

[1970cat]

rustoleum satin black provides a nice look. if you want it a little shinier , wax it when it is fully cured.

 

[CBODY67]

rustoleum satin black provides a nice look. if you want it a little shinier , wax it when it is fully cured.

For that matter, Meguiar's has a spray on-wash off spray ceramic coating.

CBODY67

 

[xxcarguy]

1966 Newport. Repainting underhood things like the horns, various brackets for AC components, battery brackets, hood hinge brackets, etc.

My car is black, so everything under the hood is black but I can’t tell if certain things are black because of the car color, or because they just should be, or because a previous owner allowed paint overspray into much of the engine compartment when the car was repainted (painting the wiper motor, the wire junction block, the voltage regulator, the ballast resistor, the starter relay, etc. all black).

And if things were not body color, were they gloss black, semi gloss or flat black?

Thanks!

This is a 39,000 mile original car being taken apart. Motor compartment pics.
1970 Plymouth Superbird