Underside colors - why do some match car color?

[Moneypit440]

Daily dumb question:

So I look at a lot of e-bodies on eBay, like the 'Cuda I accidentally bid on and bought earlier this month (hey, my wife believes that story so play along).

I notice that  a lot of restorations have undersides that are obviously freshly painted and match the body color.  Then there are the cars like my Cuda and Challenger that basically have a black bottom.  I am assuming that the black underside is a factory or later undercoating, and that the "matching colors" restorations came off the assembly line with the dark undercoating.  What is the real story? 

Whatever the answer is, it will knock another $5k each off my estimated valuations of my cars, so be gentle.

[anlauto]

personal preference

[Rich G]

All cars were painted one color, top to bottom. To restore a car and repaint the bottom is a ton of work and a lot of money if you are not doing the work yourself. For a driver it is easier just to spray a fresh coat of undercoating on it and call it a day. It will look nice and neat and protect the bottom. The problem is when people use undercoating to hide rust and bad patch jobs.

[Bullitt-]

All cars were painted one color, top to bottom.

I'm afraid you are misinformed. My '73s underside was only primed in medium grey and only had undercoating in the wheel wells, body was dipped in primer from what I understand. This is the case with all e-bodies that I am aware of. There is some overspray along the sides that is present on many on the underside, mine did not show any evidence of that however. I've owned the car since '75 so I know it's history quite well.

[mopardave]

the A and B Bodies often had 2 different color paints for the inner door panel area. All Ebodies in general had one top coat color of paint, after the dip.

[torredcuda]

I'm afraid you are misinformed. My '73s underside was only primed in medium grey and only had undercoating in the wheel wells, body was dipped in primer from what I understand. This is the case with all e-bodies that I am aware of. There is some overspray along the sides that is present on many on the underside, mine did not show any evidence of that however. I've owned the car since '75 so I know it's history quite well.

  Mopars that have the complete underside painted body color are over restored and not correct as they left the factory.

[PlumCrazyRTSE]

Mopars that have the complete underside painted body color are over restored and not correct as they left the factory.

  In addition, some cars were undercoated from the factory and there are some restorations that take that into account and attempt to duplicate that undercoating.

[RzeroB]

I'm not saying anything one way or the other, but like this subject, there seems to be a plethora of subjects open to debate as to how "the factory did it" and therefore what is "correct". It never ceases to amaze me how with such a large company as Chrysler employing tens of thousands of workers to produce hundreds of thousands of cars, there is no empirical proof of how it was done on the production line. You would think there would be something written somewhere - production procedures, written instructions, procedural guides, etc. Never ceases to amaze me how there is apparently no real records of any procedures that they used to assemble the cars.    

[torredcuda]

There are drawings that show how to spray blackout areas and such.

[Skunkworks Challenger]

I can't vouch for any car but mine, 1970 Challenger RT Los Angles production 12-11-69, was painted top ,bottom ,inside , outside in FJ5.  It was also heavily undercoated afterward  but I'm guessing that was done at a dealer (not sure) but whoever did it must have been getting paid by the pound of material applied.  It was very heavy.  Guess I thought they were all done that way.

[burdar]

NO cars came completely painted in body color on the bottom. NONE.  Now, the amount of overspray on the bottom could have varied from car to car depending how far down the painter wanted to bend.  The same goes for the interior.  Depending on how the exterior was sprayed, you could have more or less body color overspray on the inside.

[72bluNblu]

NO cars came completely painted in body color on the bottom. NONE.  Now, the amount of overspray on the bottom could have varied from car to car depending how far down the painter wanted to bend.  The same goes for the interior.  Depending on how the exterior was sprayed, you could have more or less body color overspray on the inside.

I agree with the underside, they were not intentionally painted body color. I've seen some with very little overspray, and others that had enough to almost make you think they were trying to paint it.

But I'm going to have to disagree about the interior paint. This is my '74 Duster with its original paint. That's not overspray.



It's true, the bottom of the package tray isn't painted, or the backside of the bulkheads etc. But the interior was intentionally painted body color, they just didn't bother with all the nooks and crannies.

[burdar]

Maybe A-bodies used a different painting process...or maybe the painter was just cleaning out the gun.  My Challenger had very little overspray on the inside.  The body dip line was clearly visible.  Maybe Dave Walden will see this and post pics of this cars for reference?

[72bluNblu]

Maybe A-bodies used a different painting process...or maybe the painter was just cleaning out the gun.  My Challenger had very little overspray on the inside.  The body dip line was clearly visible.  Maybe Dave Walden will see this and post pics of this cars for reference?

Maybe, but I don't think so. This is the floor of my '71 Dart GT (yes, another A body). Although worse for the wear, you can see that it had full coverage on the floor. The shifter bracket is oversprayed, which tells me they intended to paint the floor but didn't change the angle of the paint gun to get the bracket. The Duster was built at the St. Louis plant, the GT was built in Los Angeles. My EL5 GT, built at the Windsor plant, as equally good coverage on the inside. It also has pretty darn good coverage on the bottom too, unless you actually roll underneath you'd think it was painted.



To get away from the A bodies, this is part of the floor on a 1971 Plymouth Satellite Sebring Plus (B body) built at the Los Angeles plant. Although this obviously isn't the entire floor, the coverage of the paint tells me it was intentionally sprayed, and I suspect if I pull up the rest of the carpet I'll find that the entire floor looks about the same. This is also the original paint.



My Challenger does not have that sort of coverage, but its been re-painted. The tunnel on it is primer black, and I assume was part of the respray, so its not any help. I'm sure it varied by plant though, as pretty much everything Mopar did varied more than a little from plant to plant.

[burdar]

http://www.cuda-challenger.com/cc/index.php?topic=84614.120

Check out the bottom of the page.  There is a lot of black and blue overspray but it wasn't intentional. IMO  You can clearly see a lot of the dip primer on the trans hump.