Source of blue tinted paint on underside of '67 Los Camaro floor

[Stillwater Camaro]

I am restoring my '67 LOS Camaro and had to replace the trunk floor and a rear footwell due to rust and old crash damage. In cleaning the rest of the floor, I find it seems to be painted a blue tint color. I'd like to paint the replacement parts to match, rather than paint it all black. Looking for information about this paint and if it is available.
Thanks

[67conv6cyl]

LA built cars had more body color painted under rear floor trunk and frame rails then Norwood built cars was your car a shade of blue originally?

[Stillwater Camaro]

No, Gold. On other forums, others have seen this hue on their floors too. I didn't see any mention of this in the research sections.

[bcmiller]

Can you post pics?  The size limit is 200 KB.  If you can't figure out how to post you can email them to me and I can resize.

[Stillwater Camaro]

I'll see if i can get a clean pic today. I'm under it cleaning the crud off for paint anyway. Difficult to get proper light under there as it's on jack stands.

[Stillwater Camaro]

Actually, I have one from when I put a patch in a few years ago.

[169INDY]

Body Pan floor plugs were installed AFTER paint so they would be bare galvanized plated steel and these have paint applied from some owner in its history.

Fact check me boys, Do I have this correct?

So the blue was applied outside of factory building-construction.

[Stillwater Camaro]

I was wondering why someone would paint the underside blue on a gold car, but now I recall seeing blue paint over 2 coats of gold and under2-3 coats of white in some places I stripped, so it may all make sense. Recently sanded all of it off in the cowl... the color does look similar.

[Stillwater Camaro]

I was washing the left frame rail to get ready to scuff and found evidence that the floor was painted by Fischer. I removed the axle bump stop and I believe I am the first person to do that since the day the car was built, and the blue color is under that too. As well as a dusting of Gold overspray. The overspray is heavier on the frame rail, but some must have gotten by. There are runs in the blue in the torque box area that have gold dust on them too. It's even inside the tube for the shackle bushings. Then I scrapped off a small area of the original undercoating and the blue is under there as well.

[bcmiller]

So the body tag shows Gold?

How does the body tag compare to the VIN?

But you said the blue is on top of gold, right?

[Stillwater Camaro]

No, the gold body color is on top of the blue. Neither tag has been off and the body number is in line with the build week.

[Delco115]

Post a picture of your trim tag, please.

[Stillwater Camaro]

Curious what that will show to you.

[Stillwater Camaro]

This pic is from a highly documented, original, untouched Z28 that was certified at MCACN last year. The blue hue on the floor is the same as what I am finding under 50+ years of crud. This Z is Mountain Green and was built at the end of the '67 run and mine was built the 3rd week of Feb.

[169INDY]

I am Amazed by the Blue in the inside diameter (Bore) of the Rear spring bushing Mounts-

Wow What is going on here?

Could there Really be a LOT more to this-

[bcmiller]

I am confused.  You said this earlier.

I recall seeing blue paint over 2 coats of gold and under2-3 coats of white in some places I stripped

Is the blue definitely UNDER the gold?

Back in the 80s we restored a few cars and took them down to bare metal with soda blasting.  And recently my nephew decided to take his previously un-restored 69 down to bare metal and shoot with epoxy primer etc.

After almost 60 years, a lot can happen.

[Stillwater Camaro]

That was in reference to the pic I posted of the 3 colors in the cowl... not the underside.

[bcmiller]

I feel pretty confident that the car was repainted at some point with the blue paint. The fact that the blue is over the gold in the cowl area supports that.

[FRANKTHECRANK]

Ok so, the blue being inside the shackle bushing tube and under the bump stop, while seemingly unlikely, could be explained away if they were indeed removed for a paint job. But how does the blue get under the factory undercoating?

Has there ever been a case where a car was painted a color, perhaps the wrong color, on the assembly line, then ran though the paint stage once again when the mistake was discovered? Then once the correct paint was applied, in this case the gold, "then" the undercoating, bump stops, shackles, etc,...were applied or installed?

[bcmiller]

Possible?  But I don't know of any cases of a car color being changed in the assembly process.

[Petes L48]

Are we even certain that's factory sound deadener/undercoating on top of the blue paint?  As stated earlier, a lot can happen over the years.

[Stillwater Camaro]

Are we even certain that's factory sound deadener/undercoating on top of the blue paint?  As stated earlier, a lot can happen over the years.

What appears to be dirt on the coating is Gold overspray. I cleaned that area twice with Simple Green, just to be certain it was paint and not years old grime.

[Mike S]

 Didn't John Z once say that it was common when cleaning spray guns to spray under the chassis? Not sure where in the process that was done and if the LOS plant did that too.

Mike

[Sauron327]

 The wheelhouse undercoating was applied after paint at the factory. I see blue but no gold beneath the undercoating.

[Kelley W King]

My brother and I stripped his 69 with trim tag showing white. The car had a repaint done in white but when we took it apart and stripped it we found traces of a similar blue in the package tray and other hidden areas. Not on the bottom I remember. It was enough for us to question the trim tag as to original to the car. The vin and tag numbers checked out and rivets looked untouched. It was an 04 Norwood X33. The interior was black.

[Jon Mello]

I am a former owner of that Mountain Green car certified at MCACN.  The blue on the underside of your February car is more like a purple and not anywhere close to the same shade of what is under the Mountain Green car.

[GMAD_Van Nuys]

I read JohnZ's write-up on how Fisher Body painted vehicles and he noted that cars requiring major repairs would be routed to be repainted:

"If a unit required a major paint repair that couldn't be accommodated in the normal in-line cycle time, it could be diverted off the main line at the end of the repair booth into a parallel loop that ran in the opposite direction and fed the unit back into the main line ahead of the main repair booth; the re-run loop could accommodate about 20 units."

I started working at the Van Nuys Plant in 1978 and never heard of a car being repainted another color, but who knows what happened when they began to build the 1967 Camaro.  My 1979 Trans Am that was built at Van Nuys is painted Solar Gold and I can see gold paint on the under body that isn't covered by undercoating. 

[bcmiller]

From JohnZ’s assembly article.

"Every time that consecutive cars had different colors, all of those guns had to shoot thinner from the manifolds to the guns (through the floor grates) to clean out the previous color, then charge the line with the new color before they could spray again, and that had to take place in about four seconds."

[Stillwater Camaro]

Put the body on a roto and cleaned with Simple Green. The paint is everywhere, even under the rear brake hose bracket and hard line clips. If this is not factory, someone did a hell of a job stripping this car to the bare shell to paint it...
Jon, the color in the first pics isn't accurate, as I was laying on a creeper under it and the lighting was poor. With the body rolled up, into the overhead led lights, this is very close to the pic of the Z car, but there is much more on mine...

[bcmiller]

I don't know what to tell you. Hopefully others see this and respond.

[Stillwater Camaro]

I had a feeling I had seen this before and went back thru my archives to a '67 GTO I restored many years ago and I believe that has something very similar on the floor, but it was so rusty, it's hard to say for certain. I replaced everything from the firewall to the rear bumper on that car, but some of the pics show a bluish hue thru the rust and dirt. One thing I am looking at is, the Fremont plant built A bodies for all the makes, Pontiac, Buick and Olds, besides the Chevrolet's Chevelle and Camaro. Was this something that would have been normally painted on the higher end cars ?? Was mine an employee ordered car that got a little something extra on the way down the line ?
When I started this thread, I thought this was a normative practice and was only looking for info to replicate it. Instead, it seems to have opened Pandora's box and could lead to new information, if someone with experience and sources, cared to go down that rabbit hole...

[GMAD_Van Nuys]

JonZ's article on painting describes that primer was hand-sprayed on the entire body:

http://www.camaros.org/assemblyprocess.shtml#fisherpaint

I remember when the Camaros and Firebirds came out of the paint oven after being primed as they were located on the second floor of the Van Nuys Plant and during the summer, it was hot!

[bcmiller]

I don’t know for sure but I just bet it’s not original. It’s NOT uncommon to take a car down to bare metal when restoring. Did it a few times in the early 80s with Impalas.

* edited to add word NOT

[Stillwater Camaro]

This car NEVER received a restoration of the level you suggest. It has had shoddy repair and paint work done to it in the past and I have documented every part of it through out my EXTENSIVE restoration. There is no way anyone took this down to a bare shell, sanded to bare metal and then painted the bottom blue. This isn't my first rodeo either, as they say. I've taken a number of cars down to shells and rebuilt them and have a very good idea of what I'm looking at. You haven't seen it in person nor have a good explanation of why it is blue, other than you don't want to believe it's original. I'm really tired of you being negative or any useful advice as to how this car got the bottom painted blue.
How do you explain the blue paint on the bottom of the Z28

[MO]

No Camaro's built at Fremont.

[bcmiller]

This car NEVER received a restoration of the level you suggest. It has had shoddy repair and paint work done to it in the past and I have documented every part of it through out my EXTENSIVE restoration. There is no way anyone took this down to a bare shell, sanded to bare metal and then painted the bottom blue. This isn't my first rodeo either, as they say. I've taken a number of cars down to shells and rebuilt them and have a very good idea of what I'm looking at. You haven't seen it in person nor have a good explanation of why it is blue, other than you don't want to believe it's original. I'm really tired of you being negative or any useful advice as to how this car got the bottom painted blue.
How do you explain the blue paint on the bottom of the Z28

Believe what you want. No reason to get upset.

I gave you an honest opinion. It doesn’t mean I am right.

[Z10Mike]

Stillwater Camaro:
After following this thread, I suspect there could be more to this blue paint than just an early amateur restoration.  Is there any owner history?  Are there any unique options on the car?  Is the blue paint a glossy top coat or a tinted primer?  Early production car?  Very curious, indeed.

[bcmiller]

It is buried earlier in the thread but this is the build data

3rd week of Feb

[Stillwater Camaro]

The only owner history I have is the previous owner on Point Reyes, CA. I got nothing else with the car. I've never felt it was worth getting the shipping data for the car, as it doesn't have the original engine or transmission, which was a powerglide. Maybe I should re-think that and see who it delivered to. There is a guy on the Yenko site that seems like a magician at finding old newspaper ads for these cars, but he hasn't come up with anything from the CA plate. He wants the shipping data to work with too, so I may as well get it.
Options: besides the SS350/powerglide, it has a console, the wood look steering wheel, speed minder, deluxe interior with the fold down back seat and the rs option. No radio came with it, but the speaker and rear brace was still there and, what appeared to be, the original package tray cardboard was under the shag fur cloth covering it and did not have a rear speaker hole. Power steering but manual 4 wheel drums.
As for the paint, after cleaning with just the simple green and cotton cloths, I can rub it to a fairly decent shine, more than I thought a primer would provide, but if it is lacquer, maybe it will shine some ? I'm not experienced with that product, but if it went thru a "blending" oven, it may have brought out a shine. It certainly is smooth. I haven't wiped a test area with lacquer thinner, but I suspect it will wipe off. I'll try that later this afternoon. I want to see if there is any evidence of black primer, or dip paint under it. If there is, it's very thin, as I don't see any black under, or around the edges of the blue.
I thought I had a pic of the TT on Photobucket, but didn't find it yesterday. I'll upload another and post it.

[Stillwater Camaro]

More cleaning and documenting of...whatever this is...
This was interesting. This clip has a plastic like washer under it to seal the hole ?





Rubber floor pan plug, with paint.



Traction bar bracket to floor fasteners that wasn't used, as the car is an auto. Paint in the threads.



This is, also, an interesting sequence. The undercoating appears to have been applied before the plastic drain hole plug was squished down into it.



The undercoating on the pan in the previous pic was, mostly, carefully removed to reveal the paint under it.



I, then, wiped the pan with clean water to remove any cleaner residue and took pics of the application method. The paint was applied from the center of the floor facing out, as evidenced by the "leeward" sides of the beads having nearly no paint on them.

[FRANKTHECRANK]

And the plot thickens,....lol. Certainly looks like factory applied paint, but that tag calls for  "G" Granada Gold.

[Dusk Blue Z]

Great job on the clean up.

[Stillwater Camaro]

Latest unveiling... original, untouched factory undercoating in the right rear wheel well. Normally, I go after this with an air chisel and dull blade and have it all off in 10 minutes. I didn't see any evidence of the blue primer in here, but started, carefully, scrapping down thru the undercoating looking for any sign of blue. As I got to the bottom of the undercoating, I was seeing a color I thought was bare metal, so stopped in that area and tried another. When I got the same result, I scrapped harder to clean up the metal and there was the Blue !!  When I put the trunk floor in 4 years ago, I had used the air chisel around the edge for welding and had gone to bare metal. I used scotch bright pads to clean the edge of where I had bare metal to show the 3, distinct, colors of bare steel, blue primer and, what I then realized was, Gold overspray on the primer. ALL of this UNDER the factory applied undercoating....

[cook_dw]

Being a LOS car, is there a chance that the car prior to this one was that color and it wasn't caught that the operator failed to clean out or swap paint tanks.?.  Not saying this was the case but just typing out loud if you will.

[Stillwater Camaro]

Don't think that is the case here, Darrell. I've talked with a few other people who verified they had LOS cars with this color underside too, but not as much as mine. I called Camaro Restorations in NY and talked with them and they have only seen a few LOS cars, mainly Norwood, but remember 1 or 2 having the bluish underside and not knowing what it was or where to get the paint so repainted black. I'm beginning to believe that is the case with many of the LOS cars that have been restored and people seeing them now, think it is original. 2 of the people had '69's, so my thinking this was a '67 only anomaly got thrown out too.

[Sauron327]

I own an LOS 67 and have had some roll through my shop and did rotisserie restorations on them. They had virgin, untouched original black bellies. Curious about the percentage of cars that had blue bottoms.

[MO]

Do you guys have TT info on the cars you are aware of? Maybe you could get a consensus from build dates as to a time frame or maybe a grouping of cars?

[camaronut]

The wheelhouse undercoating was applied after paint at the factory. I see blue but no gold beneath the undercoating.

I think you hit it...................I'm thinking someone pulled a switcheroo on the trim tag sometime in the car's past.  I hope I'm wrong.

[1968RallySport]

I own an LOS 67 and have had some roll through my shop and did rotisserie restorations on them. They had virgin, untouched original black bellies. Curious about the percentage of cars that had blue bottoms.

I have a ‘68 second week of December ‘67 build and the bottom of the car is also black. If fact it’s the same color as the firewall.

[68 Ragtop]

Why would someone put a gold trim tag on a blue car? Oh yeah, 3L 4P might be a reason. Time to start looking at upper body areas for original paint blue or gold color.

Was the VIN posted? Look very close to the match up with trim tag date and body number.

[bcmiller]

I don’t see the VIN posted yet.

[Kelley W King]

Just thinking, does the "blue" appear to be one of the blue option colors from 67?

[bcmiller]

My guess is this topic will continue to fade away.