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itsworn · 6 years ago

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Watch This 1969 Yenko Chevelle Go From Barn Find to Beautiful

When you come across a rare muscle car, you make sure you cross your Ts and dot your Is when restoring it. When you come across a one-of-99 car, such as this 1969 Yenko Chevelle, you go way beyond correct alphabets. And when it is one of just seven known Garnet Red Yenko Chevelles, you make sure every detail is exactly as the factory built the car.

Such is the case with this 1969 Yenko Chevelle, which was purchased last year from the estate of the original owner. It was located in his garage with only 19,895 miles on the odometer, having been parked there since it was damaged in an accident in 1970. Annie Hartweg and I are co-owners of MuscleCar Restoration and Design in Pleasant Plains, Illinois. We made the purchase with the agreement that the car would be restored to the highest of standards with no corners cut.

[The full story behind this Chevelle and its find was the subject of our May 2018 cover feature, “Yenko Rescue”; bit.ly/2CrYMqv. Copies of the print issue are available at tenbackissues.com.—Ed.]

After two days were spent clearing out the garage to retrieve the Chevelle, it went to our shop for lots of documentation and history gathering. As with so many barn- or garage-find stories, more often than not there is a massive amount of rust damage that has occurred to these cars over time. Fortunately, that was not the case with this Chevelle. However, there was considerable damage done to both the body and the frame. It would need a lot of attention and fine detail work to be returned to the way the Baltimore factory had built it. There was not only damage from two unfortunate accidents, but also from the many four-legged animals that called this Chevelle home for the last 47 years.

Fortunately for us, our friends Jamie Cooper and Joe Griffith and their crew at Super Car Restoration in Clymer, Pennsylvania, are as dedicated to detail and correctness as we are. Jamie, Joe, and crew have been doing the paint and bodywork for MuscleCar Restoration and Design’s customer’s cars for several years and with good reason. It was only natural that we would hand over the duties of restoring the body of our personally owned car to them as well.

Speaking to the Chevelle’s owner, as well as to close family friends and people who had seen the car over the years, we learned about two separate incidents in which the car had been damaged. The first happened when the car was fairly new and the owner let another family member or friend drive it. This individual supposedly drove down the driveway not having a clue how much power the car had, and jumped the ditch on the other side of the road, landing squarely on the frame and rocker panels directly behind the doors. This damaged the frame and all but crushed the rocker panels from the doors back to the rear wheel openings.

Rumor has it the next accident occurred sometime in 1970, when the owner came out of a bar after playing pool and having had one too many. He crashed it into a guardrail or some other solid object, taking out the front clip, driver’s door, and quarter-panel. For reasons unknown (be it lack of insurance, his having been drinking and driving, or just plain embarrassment), the owner claimed the car had been stolen and then relocated. He then brought the car home and disassembled the front clip, likely in an effort to rebuild it, which never happened. Everything in the owner’s garage was disassembled, and nothing had been returned to its original shape. It seemed the car was destined to live the rest of its life in a mass of parts and disarray.

After bringing the car home, we and our crew at MuscleCar Restoration and Design donned full body suits and removed some 3 inches of raccoon feces and skeletons from the floors, seats, cowl, and trunk. We then completely disassembled everything but the main body and rolling chassis to get a firsthand look at the challenges that lay ahead. Much to our surprise, after pulling the original carpet back and expecting to find massive amounts of rust due in part to all the urine from the raccoons, we found nothing but original primered and solid floor pans. Unfortunately, we also found a fair share of damage from both accidents.

Super Car Restoration would be faced with fixing a bent forward frame, a firewall that was damaged in the area of the driver’s footwell where the clutch Z-bar had impacted it, two rocker panels, a missing door, a rolled drip rail on the driver’s side, and a very badly damaged quarter-panel, not to mention a small dent in the center of the taillight panel. For reasons that no one can explain, the owner had cut a very large hole in the quarter-panel as if to remove the window regulator, which could have been easily removed from inside the car by simply taking out the seat and side armrest panel. Because the whole area was so badly damaged, it was agreed that a new GM N.O.S. panel would be the only way to fix this, and so the work began.—Rick Nelson

Fixing the Chevelle’s Quarter and Rocker Panels It may surprise you to learn that Jamie Cooper buys a lot of his replacement sheetmetal the same place you do: swap meets. The cars coming out of Super Car Restoration are at a level of quality that pretty much demands factory sheetmetal, so his first stop at a car event is the swap meet to look for new old stock (N.O.S.) or original parts. Some he will buy for a specific project; others he puts in inventory.

“If I found quarters for a 1969 Camaro at Spring Carlisle, I’d own them,” he tells us. “We do tons of Camaros and Chevelles, so I know I’ll eventually need them. The N.O.S. wheelhouses for this Chevelle I picked up at Carlisle two years ago. You don’t want to pass this stuff by.”

Many of his customers have done some (or all) of the parts collecting prior to the car arriving at his shop, a process that can take years. Rick Nelson supplied both original and N.O.S. sheetmetal for the Chevelle.

Nelson says, “When we first dug the car out from its 47-year-old tomb, we were unable to locate any of the front clip other than the original front fenders, which I felt were unusable as they had been twisted beyond repair. I then located an entire Malibu front clip that had been taken off a car in the 1980s. Everything I needed to put the front clip back in place was there, other than an SS hood, which I later located.”

The passenger door is original to the car, but, Nelson says, “for reasons unknown other than possible severe body damage, the driver’s door was not located when the car was found. Using an N.O.S. door skin is one thing, but there was no way I was going to use an aftermarket door, more for the fact that it was a completely non-original GM part than the fact that it might not fit well. A good friend of mine, Luis Caceres-Rivera, not only located an original 1969 driver’s door for me that was in excellent shape, but then he hand-delivered it to Super Car Restoration, which took more than an eight-hour drive for him.”

Cooper says, “In the GM world we’ve been fortunate to have sources for N.O.S. parts. Do they fit good? Absolutely not. Not every time. From storage to swap meet to this guy to that guy, they’re not 100 percent perfect. You always have to massage them.”

On the other hand, “take-off original sheetmetal was on a car for all that time and bolted in the position it is supposed to be in, so it will usually fit much better,” Nelson believes. “If you are lucky you are also using original assembly-line sheetmetal and not over-the-counter replacement sheetmetal, which can vary in both shape and in very small stamping details. This is why I elected to use original assembly-line parts on the front clip, bringing them back to bare steel and fixing minor imperfections while keeping all the small details that an assembly-line fender would have.”

The rear quarter-panel that appears in this story “was a slightly different situation,” says Nelson. “Finding an original assembly-line part still on a car would be hard to come by, not to mention the immense amount of labor it would take to remove it while keeping all the detail. For this reason I elected to locate and purchase a very nice N.O.S. quarter-panel.”

To give you an idea of the bodywork processes done at Super Car Restoration, the photos and captions here describe how Cooper and his crew repaired the Chevelle’s ruined driver-side quarter-panel and rocker panel.—Drew Hardin.

Quarter-Panel & Outer Wheelhouse

Even though the original owner had removed the front portion of the quarter-panel, there would have been no saving it or the outer wheelhouse. Joe Griffith starts the repair by drilling the factory spot welds and removing the damaged outer wheelhouse and what was left of the quarter. Once the old metal was removed, all the welds were cleaned and we began to assemble all of the outer sheetmetal. This is a procedure that’s done several times during a restoration.

The initial mockup was done while the car was still on the frame machine. This included fitting the N.O.S. outer wheelhouse and quarter-panel, as well as all of the sheetmetal. The outer body would be completely assembled before any panel would be welded into place.

When the quarter-panels were installed on the car, they were spot welded along all of the pinch welds. They were also brazed at the lower dogleg where the quarter-panel meets the rocker, and where the quarter-panel is connected to the decklid filler panel. This was done first, which held the quarter-panel in place.

Even in areas that won’t be seen when the car is assembled, we duplicate factory assembly practices to make the car as accurate and authentic as possible. Here, Griffith uses a Pro Spot welder to reproduce the factory’s wheelhouse welds. Not only does the Pro Spot welder give us the look that we want, but it also makes a good strong weld.

For a concours-correct restoration, you will need to use a resistant spot welder to install quarter-panels. Many people just use a MIG welder, but that doesn’t give you the factory-correct look. When replacing the quarter-panel, it’s important to duplicate how the panel was installed, including the location of each spot weld, as well as the size and depth of the welds. By changing the tips in the welder, the weld time, and the current, we can duplicate the look of the original spot welds.

The quarter-panel tucks in under the roof skin and originally just had a few spot welds that held it in place before the seam was leaded shut. We still choose to fill that recess in with lead, but we weld that seam up solid before doing so. Lead keeps that seam from reappearing as heat expands and contracts the metal.

The lead process starts with tinning, which is spreading solder on the area so the lead will properly bond to the metal. The lead is melted into the seam using a torch, and flattened with a wax-coated wood paddle. Once the lead cools down, Griffith smooths and shapes the surface using a 6-inch DA with a 36-grit sanding disc.

Rocker Panel

Although both outer rocker panels were damaged, the driver-side rocker was much worse. The top side of the rocker panel where the quarter-panel is spot welded was rolled in about an inch and would need to be pulled.

We hoped to be able to pull and save both rocker panels rather than replacing them. Jamie Cooper welded a steel plate to the top of the driver-side rocker panel and began to pull the rocker back into place. Because of its inherent tubular design, this piece is an extremely strong area to pull, so we had to be careful not to tear it. If that were to happen, we would have had to replace the entire rocker, and we wanted to save as much of the car’s original sheetmetal as possible.

As hard as this rocker panel was hit, and since there was no access through the back side of the panel, it was difficult to metal-finish the outside of the rocker correctly to make for a quality repair. Griffith decided to remove about 18 inches of the rocker panel to gain access to the back side. This would allow him to straighten the panel and work it back into shape before welding it back into place.

Here you see the fruits of Griffith’s labor coming together: the repaired driver-side rocker and N.O.S. quarter-panel being mocked up with a driver-side door to get the fit and gaps right.

Giving the Floor the Attention It Deserves In many restorations, car floors do not get the attention they deserve. It may be due to budget constraints or because the car owner (or the restoration shop) has the attitude that “it’s just the floor.” But when one is doing an assembly-line-correct, concours-level restoration, the floors are a key part of the project. Done correctly, they look like a work of art, even though much of the final product will be hidden from view.

There were six assembly plants building the Chevelle in 1969, seven in 1970. The cars they turned out definitely did not look the same. Take primer, for example. Not only was primer color different from plant to plant, but it even changed from year to year. In the Baltimore plant, where this car was built, the 1969 Chevelles were sprayed with a red oxide primer that was more of a reddish-brown than it was in 1970, when the primer had more of a rosette color to it. In the Arlington plant, by contrast, the red oxide primer was more of an orange-red, and that was the only plant that used that primer color.

Processes were different from plant to plant, too, and even from car to car within the same plant. Seam sealer may have been applied in one area of a particular car and missed on that same area of another. Why these kinds of things happened sometimes boiled down to the line workers themselves. They were under time constraints, with just minutes to get their tasks done and move on to the next car. If they fell behind, they may have skimped on certain areas, overlooked areas, or gotten sloppy when it came to properly covering an area.

Bottom line: No two cars are exactly alike. We spent days photographing and documenting every inch of this car, so we could duplicate the factory finishes as well as how they looked after assembly-line application. The photos here show how we made use of that information to restore the Chevelle’s floor.—Jamie Cooper

The floor’s restoration started with the removal of all the seam sealer, primer, and paint. The outer body was machine-sanded to bare metal, but the floors were sent out to a local shop to be sandblasted. Here you see the body and floors in bare metal. Luckily with this project there were no major rust issues in the floor that required fabrication after being blasted.

According to PPG, rust will begin to form on bare metal within two hours of blasting. It’s virtually impossible to get primer on the car in that timeframe, as it can take hours to just get the sand out of the car. Our rule of thumb is to have it in primer within 24 hours of blasting. We do no bodywork on bare metal; instead, we shoot the body in DP90 black epoxy primer first (2 to 3 mils thick). It offers maximum corrosion protection, and the black color presents a good visual. You can look down the side of the car and see how straight it is. Dings and dents become obvious when you block-sand the DP90.

The floors were sprayed with CRE921 high-build epoxy primer. We use a high-build epoxy primer on the floors because two or three coats give us a film build of 6 to 8 mils. That helps when we are sanding out some of the imperfections, such as pitting left behind from the rust (visible in the light shining on the floor).

Hand-sanding and repairing the pitting on every square inch of the floors is a labor-intensive and painstaking job. Even with several of our crew working at once (from left: Scooter Rice, Shawn Cooper, and Joe Griffith), several hundred hours went into sanding and repairing these floors to make them look flawless, all while trying to keep the natural impressions and stamp markings in the metal.

Here’s the floor after sanding. If you have ever wondered why a concours restoration takes 1,200 to 1,500 hours, this is why. Everything on the car is touched, even areas that won’t be seen when the car is finished.

The trunk extension that attached the trunk floor to the lower half of the quarter-panel was originally a galvanized panel and was normally not primed completely with the red oxide primer. We use a couple of different paint products to duplicate the galvanized look.

We were also careful when spraying the red oxide color so as to not bury the galvanized panel in primer.

The underside of the dashboard was another area that typically wasn’t covered very well with the red oxide primer. Often bare steel was left exposed after paint blew in when they primed the outside of the dash. Over time that area would begin to flash rust. Because we are looking for longevity in a restoration while still keeping the original look, we used PPG’s basecoat called Liquid Metal to resemble the bare steel.

Because Fisher Body painted cars with the doors on, paint would blow in and make overspray patterns on the floor. We duplicated that look (without actually painting the car with the doors on) by shooting single-stage body-color paint where it would land to create the correct overspray pattern.

After the floors were primed and before Fisher Body sprayed the body Garnet Red, black seam sealer was applied to the inside of the floors. As we noted earlier, this application will vary from car to car and is why we documented where the original seam sealer was before removing it.

The galvanized floor plugs were installed at the same time, and an off-white seam sealer was used for this application to hold the plugs in place permanently.

Before the outer body was painted Garnet Red, a thin coat of washed-out black was sprayed on the belly of the car, partly covering up the red oxide primer. Because it was a thin coat, the red primer peeked through in certain areas, like the transmission tunnel. Note, too, the Garnet Red overspray on the outside edges of the floors, the result of Fisher Body painting the body as an assembly with the doors and trunklid installed.

Refinishing the Chevelle’s Body Shell It would be impossible to encapsulate in this short space the hundreds of hours of work that go into top-quality bodywork and paint. What you see here, instead, is a “greatest hits” collection: the repair and replacement of certain key body panels in the previous two stories, and an overview of the body and sheetmetal paint process on these pages. Along the way, Super Car Restoration’s Jamie Cooper has shared some valuable information about the long and often tedious tasks involved in a top-tier refinishing job, tips that should help you whether you are tackling a paint project yourself or interviewing prospective painters to do the job for you.

The photos and captions here illustrate the major steps taken by Cooper and his crew to bring Rick Nelson’s Yenko Chevelle from bare metal to body drop. Below, Cooper discusses the pros and cons of paint types, something of a hot-button issue in the refinishing community.—Drew Hardin

Solvent or Waterborne? More often than not, when talking paint products with potential clients, we get mixed reactions when we talk about waterborne basecoat. They hear the terms waterborne or water base and they panic. Whether they are leery of new technology or because there’s water in the paint, or both, most people are just not real receptive to it.

Although waterborne basecoats are the latest technology, they are far from new. Waterborne paint technology was introduced to OE assembly plants in 1986. Waterborne technology gives you a much cleaner, brighter color than solvent systems. This was a big reason the factories went to it a number of years ago.

The waterborne basecoat we use (including on this Yenko Chevelle) is PPG’s Envirobase High Performance, otherwise known as EHP. It was introduced to shops in 2006. Some of the advantages of EHP over solvent basecoat include less odor and improved air quality. EHP also gives you better metallic control than solvent basecoat, while requiring less product to achieve coverage. Where solvent basecoats are said to leave roughly 0.4 mil of film build per coat, waterborne basecoats leave half that, for a smoother, flatter surface to apply clearcoat over. Among the many benefits to the thinner overall coat is that it’s much less likely to crack when body fasteners, like fender bolts, get tightened. EHP has better adhesion than solvent systems and is much more flexible, which in combination reduces the risk of stone chipping. If you do get a stone chip, it’s much smaller.

Waterborne basecoats are much different from solvent. Not only do they require dedicated waterborne equipment (including a specific paint gun), but the drying process is totally different, too. Solvent systems are more prone to trapping solvent during drying, which can stay in the paint film for months, or even years, causing problems.

With a waterborne paint, creating turbulent airflow across the wet paint enhances flash times. EHP can be sanded to remove dirt specks or two-toned faster than solvent. And because there’s almost no solvent in the waterborne paint, there’s much less chance of it being trapped in the film, which helps the durability of the whole paint system.

Whether you are a believer in waterborne products or not, they are our future. Some states, such as California, already mandate their use because of air quality regulations. That trend may spread in the years to come, and there could come a point when we may not have a choice as to which one to use. That won’t be an issue at our shop; we are already believers.—Jamie Cooper

Taking the Chevelle to bare metal involves different processes depending on the area being stripped, even in the case of a single part, like this door. The inside of the door is sandblasted because there is no danger of warping the metal in that area and blasting will remove all the old paint from hard-to-reach corners. Then the inside and outside of the door are sanded by hand. Every square inch of the car, whether you will see it or not once it is assembled, will get worked to make it flawless.

After stripping, the body and its pieces are wiped with PPG’s DX cleaners 394 and 330 before the car is sprayed with DP90 epoxy primer. Note that every member of our crew wears gloves to prevent the oil in their hands from contaminating the metal.

We do not do bodywork on bare metal. We coat the panels in DP90 epoxy primer first. DP90 is used for its excellent corrosion protection and adhesion to do bodywork over. The epoxy primer, and every paint product applied to the car, get at least one bake cycle at 165 degrees for one hour after being sprayed. This force-dries the paint product to get the solvents out.

As a bonus, the DP90’s rich black color provides a good visual for seeing how straight the panels are once they are block sanded. High and low spots become very noticeable.

After sanding, we blow all of the body dust out of every crack and crevice before going on to the next step. Bodywork is done at this stage, and once it is finished we spray two more coats of DP90 to cover up any bare metal left by the bodywork. It also goes through at least one 60-minute bake cycle and is allowed to dry for several weeks before being sanded. Once all the bare metal is covered with epoxy we mock up the car for the second time to make sure we are satisfied with the panel gaps. (The initial body mockup was done prior to stripping.)

If we are good with the gaps, we start sanding the epoxy primer to get ready to spray VP2100 polyester primer. Sanding the epoxy primer gives us better adhesion for the polyester primer.

Sanding the primer also gives us the opportunity to fix any pinholes that might have been hiding in the bodywork. Here, Scooter Rice uses a light to check for holes. Any that are found are filled with 3M finishing glaze.

The PPG VP2100 polyester primer helps level and fill minor imperfections such as pinholes and sand scratches in the body filler. It locks up harder than urethane primer surfacer and gives you an even and consistent sanding surface. The polyester primer gets a dry guide coat before sanding to help show low spots or any stray scratches left behind in the body filler. The sheetmetal is then removed from the body, and we begin blocking it starting with 220-grit board paper. Once all the guide coat is sanded off, we are left with a smooth surface to spray urethane primer over.

The polyester primer helps fill imperfections but is too porous to be painted over directly, which is why we prime over it with ECP urethane primer surfacer. We used ECP17 for the Chevelle because its Garnet Red basecoat calls for a G7 undercoat. PPG has seven shades of primer, from G1 white to G7 dark gray, each shade designed to give the color that you are spraying proper coverage and hiding. If you choose the wrong shade of primer, you may have to put additional coats of color on top of it to get it to cover, or, even worse, you will not get the correct color match.

We block sand the urethane primer surfacer with 400- and then 600-grit and finish by machine sanding with 800-grit using a 6-inch DA with a soft interface pad. The orbital sander will remove the straight-line scratches from blocking with 600. Note that every time we finish sanding with one grit of paper we reapply the dry coat to ensure that the scratches sanded in with the previous grit are removed. Sanding this way gives us an acceptable bed of urethane primer over which to apply the Envirobase High Performance (EHP) waterborne basecoat. The Chevelle is then mocked up one last time before painting.

As with any color, no two color variances of Garnet Red will be the same between paint companies. Each company has a different formula, and although the paints may bear the same name, they may not be a perfect match to the actual factory color. We sent a sample of the Chevelle’s original paint from the side of the cowl area to PPG’s color lab in Cleveland, Ohio, to be formulated. Although this car still had its original paint, this is an area of the car that was never exposed to the sun and would not have faded over the years. PPG then analyzed the color and sent us the proper formula to create the exact factory match using its EHP waterborne basecoat.

The waterborne EHP basecoat not only requires its own spraying equipment, but thinning it in order to spray it is also very different from solvent basecoats. Waterborne basecoats are thinned using deionized water and a viscosity cup (a cup with a small hole or orifice in the bottom that permits the basecoat to flow through it). We submerge the cup in the paint, lift it out, and time how long it takes to drain the cup. Colors such as this Garnet Red spray best with a drain time of 23 seconds.

We apply three coats of basecoat, spraying the first coat as we would our last, keeping the millage consistent on every coat. We always allow at least 30 minutes of drying time between coats, longer if the weather is humid. While solvent likes heat to dry, waterborne paint likes turbulent air. Between each coat we spray the car with a Jet Dry, a handheld blower hooked into the spray line. I start at the right front corner and work around the vehicle, letting the air glide across the paint.

The basecoat is followed by four coats of PPG’s EC550 Ultra Gloss Clearcoat, a high-gloss overall clearcoat designed specifically for use with EHP waterborne basecoats. After clearcoating, the body will go through the first of several one-hour bake cycles. Because the solvents in the clearcoat not only need heat but also time to completely evaporate from the clear, we will bake it after painting as many as four times and will usually let it air dry for at least four weeks before we start wet sanding and buffing.

Wet sanding the outer body and sheetmetal parts is long and tedious, but it is our last opportunity to get the body blocked straight. Scooter Rice and Joe Griffith start block sanding the clearcoat by using 600-grit paper and homemade blocks that Griffith made from Lexan. These blocks are hard and give him the shape and size that he needs to fit certain areas on the car. After blocking with 600 they move up to 800, using guide coat between grits to make sure that the scratches from the previous grit are removed. After sanding with 800, the car was put in the booth and given its final bake cycle to ensure that all solvents were gone from the clearcoat.

After baking, Griffith and Rice block sanded the clearcoat with 1,000-, 1,200-, 1,500-, 2,000-, and finally 2,500 grit paper. Griffith chooses to finish the sanding steps by himself with 3,000- and 5,000-grit on the DA sander to remove the straight-line scratches from blocking.

We like Meguiar’s products for buffing the paint. The first step is the 100 Pro Speed compound used with a WRWHC7 rotary wool heavy cutting pad. The second step is 205 Ultra-Finishing Polish using a WRFP7 rotary foam polishing pad. The buffing alone took more than 40 hours. After the painting is done, the paint procedures are far from done.

Griffith picked up the chassis from Rick Nelson so we could drop the body on the chassis. This allows us to properly align all the body parts before we deliver the rolling body and chassis back to Nelson. Nate McCoy runs the lift and slowly drops the body while Shawn Jarvis (front) and Shawn Cooper align the chassis by wiggling it around on the wheel dollies.

We also put the front fenders on the car before returning it to Nelson. That way if he has to remove and reinstall the fenders, he knows the fit was right before they came off and where all the shims go to remount them.

Yenko offered its body stripe in only two colors, white and black. And the same stripe was used for both Chevelles and Camaros, cut to different lengths to fit. There was no set way in how the stripes were laid out, and no one person whose job it was to put them on. This explains the inconsistencies seen from car to car and even from one side to the other of the same car. Lynn Yenko herself was known to stripe many of these cars. Before we removed the original stripes from the body of this car, we put a lot of time into measuring how they were laid out.

After more than a thousand hours of metal fabricating, bodywork, and paint, it was time to give this Garnet Red Chevelle its identity back. We reached out to our good friends Brian Henderson and Joe Swezey from Super Car Workshop for their help. They have striped more than 30 Yenko cars over the years and have documented several original-paint cars to duplicate the exact style and widths of the stripe.

The last thing we do is a final inspection, wipe, and polish on the car. You can get fingerprints on the car when you’re reassembling it, and the car can get dusty, even though we’re working in a clean part of the shop. Jarvis and McCoy are doing the last wipe-down, making sure there are no stray finger marks and nothing was missed.

Firewall Markings As part of the restoration process, many people like to put assembly-line build notations back on the firewall as they were done at the factory. Unfortunately this is often done incorrectly. When the body was being produced, Fisher Body workers would write these notes on the bare steel firewall in various locations. These would alert workers down the assembly line as to some of the major options going on the car, what color the car would be, the car’s body series number, and so on.

The 1969 Chevelles typically did not have as many of these markings as 1970 models. On a Chevelle you might find the number 13637, which is the body series number. Other numbers would spell out the transmission (M21, for example), stripes (D88), an SS engine option (Z15), color (RED), or a color number (52). I have seen mostly color names on 1969 Chevelles and color numbers on 1970 models. You may find no markings, or you may find a firewall that looks like a college chalkboard. It depends on the plant and the timing. Same goes for where the notations are on the firewall, as that depended on who was doing the writing.

We often see these markings written on top of black firewall paint, but that’s not always correct. Some plants wrote the color number on the bare steel, while others wrote it on top of the black paint. My experience shows this depended on the paint order process—whether the firewall blackout paint or body paint came first.

Jamie and I both apply our firewall markings over primer because the car is primered immediately after blasting to protect against flash rusting. We use a grease pencil similar to what the factory used. Lacquer paint would not stick to the grease pencil markings, so years down the road, the paint would come off the areas that were marked, making them appear that they were on top of the paint originally (whether or not they actually were).

You may also find slash marks that were, in fact, added after the firewall paint to note locations for such things such as cowl hood relays or ground straps. Those are usually the exceptions.

The bottom line: Do your homework, and be very careful and slow when removing the firewall paint so as to expose any of these markings, where they were, the color of the markings (usually yellow), and if they were on top of the paint, on the bare steel, or both.—Rick Nelson

Care in stripping paint off the firewall will help reveal original assembly-line markings, like this note about the Chevelle’s color.

The original firewall marking was photographed so it could be exactly reproduced after the Chevelle’s firewall was primered.

On Color Sanding

As the painter in this shop, let me be very honest about something. Although the painter usually gets the credit for an amazing paint job, I am not the reason the paint looks so flat and has such a high glamor. Wet sanding the outer body and the sheetmetal is time consuming and takes real talent and patience to do correctly. The sanding process from 800- to 5,000-grit takes more than 140 hours. This is what makes the painter look so good.—Jamie Cooper

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