Undercarriage details., Maybe a nailed topic Pat? you were looking for new stuff. Options

[tod914]

Couple questions, what's the finish on the engine bar? Painted or bare metal? Next would be the color of the blower hoses from the exchangers to the ducts; orange or black? What is the closest high temp paint you found to match the factory color of the exhaust system; muffler & exchangers? The branch pieces; I seen grey and black. What year did they change; mid 73?
Just as a side note, I found a Powder company that will make an exact match of the factory tin color. $100 to develope, $15-$25 per pound with an intial minimum of 5 lbs. If there is enough intested to cover the development cost of the color match, I'd be happy to send in the tin for matching. Say 4 or 5 people to keep the cost down.

[Pat Garvey]

Couple of answers here.......

The bars were not painted. Why, I can't figure. I have veered from that & painted mine. BTW, anyone need a nicely finished side shifter bar?

Engine tin. Redid mine in '88 (that's right). Had all the parts bead blasted & solvent prepped & primed them the same day with Rust-Oleum primer (that's right). Let them cure for 2 weeks & painted them with Rust-Oleum satin black. Yeah, I know, it isn't Factory, though no one could tell me what Factory was. All I know is, 22 years later the tin still looks great. Worked for me, but the key is solvent prepping before priming.

I still say no to powder coating. The finished look is too rough.

Forget about painting SSE's. They were never engineered to be painted & virtually nothing will stick when heat is applied. Enjoy the shiney finish.

Branch pieces - I wasn't aware that they ever changed the color, though I've been proven wrong before. The J-tubes and connections should be satin black. Crossover pieces should be gray, like the muffler. Ford gray works well, but won't take the heat. So, here again, I go to RustOleum high temp light gray. Once again, not Factory....whatever that was.

For the intake runners, do a search on this site. Someone nailed it about 2 years go. Think it was a VW paint, but search.
Pat