radiator support paint

[John H.]

Re: radiator support paint

They made the frame, they made the bird cage, they assembled the car for some of the midyears (probably not all at the same plant).

The A.O. Smith Frame Division made midyear Corvette frames in their Granite City, Illinois frame plant (along with 1600 passenger car and truck frames per day for the adjacent "big" St. Louis plant); the Corvette frame tooling was transferred to their Milwaukee frame plant in 1968, which supplied St. Louis with C3 frames.

The A.O. Smith body plant in Ionia, Michigan made 50% of the Corvette bodies from mid-1964 through mid-1967 (painted and partially-trimmed body shells) and rail-shipped them to St. Louis for final assembly.

[Chuck S.]

Re: radiator support paint

...The A.O. Smith body plant in Ionia, Michigan made 50% of the Corvette bodies from mid-1964 through mid-1967 (painted and partially-trimmed body shells) and rail-shipped them to St. Louis for final assembly.

In the early days of this activity, I suspect the GM guys responsible for insuring that A. O. Smith started up and built a product meeting GM quality standards had an interesting endeavor, to say the least.

[Bill H.]

Re: radiator support paint

because they did a complete blackout, both sides of radiator support, It shouldnt make a difference if I just paint it satin-black now, unlike the mount areas that stay prime green. I assume no green prime was visable after the car is assmbled and blackedout and painted.
this is getting interesting!

[Wayne W.]

Re: radiator support paint

Bill -

The radiator support on an A.O. Smith body was painted green zinc chromate initially before it was installed, and extra effort was made during the engine compartment blackout operation to cover both the front and back sides of the support to hide the ugly green zinc chromate paint.

Ha, some extra effort.

because they did a complete blackout, both sides of radiator support, It shouldnt make a difference if I just paint it satin-black now, unlike the mount areas that stay prime green. I assume no green prime was visable after the car is assmbled and blackedout and painted.
this is getting interesting!

You assume wrong.

[Bill H.]

Re: radiator support paint

do some cars still show green primer after blackout ? Should we leave some green primer visable, (judging points?) or blackout completely? Is this info on judging sheets or somewhere so we dont make mistakes. How crazy do we get here?

[Wayne W.]

Re: radiator support paint

do some cars still show green primer after blackout ? Should we leave some green primer visable, (judging points?) or blackout completely? Is this info on judging sheets or somewhere so we dont make mistakes. How crazy do we get here?

The information is probably not in judging manuals, and I dont know how crazy you want to get. Look what it took to prod the information out of the people here. But, the fact is AOS supports were green to start. When they blacked them out they hit what they might when spraying down into the engine compartment and they hit the front face in the grille opening. Nothing more. So yes, you would see green on the underside of the lower bar and along the underside and face of the top rail. Most have some showing in the shadows in lots of other places. Some had better coverages than others, but I would expect to see some green.

Now lets talk about the header bar.

[Joe L.]

Re: radiator support paint

Joe -

The passenger car and truck plants welded up their radiator supports from loose parts and dip-primed them, but the Corvette radiator supports were made and assembled at Chevrolet-Bristol Road Stamping, and they didn't have any paint systems at all (their primary business was hoods and fenders), so Corvette radiator supports were shipped to St. Louis and A.O. Smith raw, just like all the major sheet metal stampings. St. Louis-Corvette didn't have the floorspace to dedicate for the radiator support subassembly, and didn't want the work.

John-----


The 63-82 SERVICE radiator supports were always painted semi-flat black. I presume they were manufactured at the same plant as PRODUCTION supports, at least during the years the supports were used in PRODUCTION if not always. So, they must have been painted elsewhere after manufacture.

[Bill H.]

Re: radiator support paint

wayne don't leave me in suspense, what about the header bar???

[Wayne W.]

Re: radiator support paint

wayne don't leave me in suspense, what about the header bar???

Its green too.

[John H.]

Re: radiator support paint

John-----


The 63-82 SERVICE radiator supports were always painted semi-flat black. I presume they were manufactured at the same plant as PRODUCTION supports, at least during the years the supports were used in PRODUCTION if not always. So, they must have been painted elsewhere after manufacture.

Joe -

The GMPD Regional Depots each had their own complete clean/phosphate/prime/bake dip-prime or flow-coat prime systems, and received stamped parts from Chevrolet (and Fisher Body) stamping plants raw, just like the assembly plants did. They processed all those raw stampings through their prime systems before boxing them for distribution to the local warehouses and dealerships.

[Bill H.]

Re: radiator support paint

ok, so wayne got me to look at the header bar on the new nose that will be installed next week. I am going to prime in green (wish I knew this when ordering from shemershine, I could have had them paint it green first). But that leaves a couple of minor questions.
there are 8 bolts in the header, were they painted or left plain?
and any suggestions on keeping the rivets free of paint spray?vasaline?
thanks for your suggestions

[Wayne W.]

Re: radiator support paint

ok, so wayne got me to look at the header bar on the new nose that will be installed next week. I am going to prime in green (wish I knew this when ordering from shemershine, I could have had them paint it green first). But that leaves a couple of minor questions.
there are 8 bolts in the header, were they painted or left plain?
and any suggestions on keeping the rivets free of paint spray?vasaline?
thanks for your suggestions

The bolts would not be painted.