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Thread: 1973 model year question for the experts

  1. #21
    DC:
    I pulled the light yellow smugglers box door off of an untouched tub last weekend. I am certain it was absolutely the first time that thing had been removed and it was all original underneath.

    Another interesting factoid...I pulled the grey gasket off to clean it etc. and there is light yellow body color paint under the gasket.

    I had an early 911 friend pose the question...Is it possible Porsche may have painted certain colors differently in late '72 - '73.

    I think Porsche was new to base coat clear coat....especially in Silver and as we know, almost all of the silver cars had paint issues pretty early on. I wonder if the single stage colors were applied in a different manor than the base coat clear coat finishes and one of those resulting differences was how some of the add on pieces were painted. Clearly they didn't put clear down on the inside of the front trunk or the back side of the hood or the backside of the rear decklid etc. Seems they only applied clear where it needed to be shiny

    Hopefully folks can post pics of different colored cars to see if this theory has any legs.

    I know, I'm grasping......DM

  2. #22
    Maybe there were also different procedure at the points of paint application (Porsche factory vs Karmann) ...
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  3. #23
    Senior Member M_deJong's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Biancaneve View Post
    Maybe there were also different procedure at the points of paint application (Porsche factory vs Karmann) ...
    There was, but Karmann run ended in 1971.
    Mike de Jong | '71 911T/E 2.4 Tangerine | '74 911S 3.2 Ice Green

  4. #24
    Senior Member HughH's Avatar
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    I have a memory from talking to an old school paint guy almost 20 years ago that in those days Porsche also used different colored undercoats to create some of the colors - especially in the "signal" colors. Freddie Hernandez or one of the restorers and paint people should know. that may play a part in different shades being seen in what i understand was an area that only got a light dusting of top color coat
    Hugh Hodges
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  5. #25
    Senior Member mohrgan's Avatar
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    On my original 73.5 T, the smuggler's box cover is painted body color.
    -Chris Mohr

    S Registry #1978

  6. #26
    I think the black color sometimes seen on these lids is not paint, but what today we would generically call an e-coating. Porsche was dipping the bodies in this era, prior to painting them. I can't say exactly what processes were used in any given year but it's likely that a dip in a phosphate solution was introduced at some point and e-coating was introduced along the way.

    It's useful to understand how Porsche painted these things, either by taking them apart or by watching period films of the body production. You learn that the bodies were partially assembled prior to priming, so many areas received no paint or primer at all. There are lots of areas that got missed becuase there was something blocking the spray and "shadow areas" were created. Yank a front fender off sometime and you can see what got no paint at all, the extent of where the undercoating spray reached, where the primer spray reached, what got finish color paint overspray, etc. It's not real consistent from car to car, or from side to side.

    When the primer and paint coats were applied, there were two guys doing the spraying and they each did roughly half of the car. They worked really quickly, only really tried to get paint on the parts that would show, and they split the duties a bit. One guy might have been slightly ahead of the other and would raise the engine lid after the top surface had been painted. He'd paint his portion, then the other guy might come along later and spray some more in that general area. You can see when they got to the trunk, they mainly tried to spray the rubberstrip/drainage channels on the sides of the trunk and the tops of the inner fender area. They didn't spray the whole trunk. It's easy to see on many cars that the guy on one side painted a lot more of the inner fender than the guy on the other side. Keep in mind there was more than one coat sprayed, so the spray patterns on each pass might have been different.

    Looking at the lids, you'll see some that were "painted" when open and others when closed. It's possible that they were open in one finish coat and closed in another. It may have been simply down to whether one guy or the other got the lid open, or not.

    To summarize, I think these things started out black (from pre-paint dipping), got (some) primer paint on them and then possibly also got (some) finish color paint on them.

    JR
    Last edited by javadog; 01-09-2013 at 06:30 AM.

  7. #27
    Java:
    Take a look at the photo's of the lid I posted....the black paint does not wrap around the side of the lid..indicating it was sprayed, not dipped and the back side of my lid is body color (light yellow) as are the channels where the gray vinyl gasket was glued in...indicating it was originally painted yellow.

  8. #28
    I can't tell from your photos whether the yellow on the sides of the lid is over or under the black. The yellow on top looks like overspray on top of the black. Maybe I missed them but I don't recall photos of the underside of the lid. For what it's worth, here's an original May '72 black car. Note that the black color on the lid is not the same black as the finish color. Note the gray primer overspray, the fact that most of the paint was applied with the lid open and the guy that painted the passenger side of the car got a lot more paint in the trunk than they guy that painted the other side. Also, take note of the "shadows' in the black overspray on the side wall. Horizontal areas that were perpendicular to the spray gun got a lot more paint than the vertical surfaces.

    JR
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    Last edited by javadog; 01-09-2013 at 07:47 AM. Reason: can't spell...

  9. #29
    Java:
    You didn't miss it, I did not post a pic of the bottom of my lid....it's light yellow...body color of the car it came off of

    I think we may be able to draw some conclusions:

    1. lids were painted both open and closed with body color and it depended if it was Heinz or Fritz that was painting that day.

    2. 2 guys painted the body and sometimes, the lids were flipped to the open position or to the closed position 1/2 way through this part of the painting process which accounts for some overspray over the black or vice versa

    3. The lids and their rivited hinges were probably initially painted black and installed on the body some time prior to when Heinz and Fritz started spraying away

    The reason I started this whole diatribe was...I am restoring my '73S. The original lid on my car went missing when the dealer installed A/C...which is long gone. As such I was trying to figure out how to finish this area in the resto.

    I think the answer is to take a closer look at my car and see if it the original lid was painted open or closed by looking at the overspray....follow that as a lead and tell my guy to slam a couple of German beers at lunch and let the paint fly

  10. #30
    I think that placing this part on a sawhorse next to something else being painted might be a good idea. Wouldn't want to get to much paint on it...

    Happy trails,
    JR

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