I've been working on making my 68 bird as correct as possible. The rearends for 1st Gen cars were not installed when they were painted. While I can appreciate the picture above, that's for a full frame car. Since the rearends only got paint on the backside, it's 100% correct that the paint on them got varied a lot. I've heard they were painted with the rear springs attached and I've also heard they were painted without the springs attached, so I'm not sure which is correct. For the rearend itself, if you want to do a "fake" correct looking detail job, you can paint the pumpkin with cast iron gray and the tubes and brake backing plates with Stainless Steel color paint. Then paint the backside only with black covering as much as you think might be correct if you were a GM worker (read into that whatever you want). So, you might ask, were the brake backing plates on when the rearend was painted? Again, I don't know for certain. I think, yes they were on the rearend before it got painted black and therefore received the same partial coverage, but I have no absolute proof.
Here is a link to a photo of a 69 bird being assembled at the factory. Looks to me like the springs were assembled to the rearend as well as the backing plates before painting black, but you be the judge of what your eyes are telling you. BTW, the springs were gray phosphated prior to all of this.
OJ
|