65 Hipo Engine and Bracket/bolt Painting

[Dan Case]

     Sorry Dan ,
         My information came from seeing the notations on various Ford blue prints over the years. The heater elbow in question would not have one spec for assembly line and another for Parts and Service division. I doubt they were ever ''bare steel" on the blueprint.

Understood but how much plating thickness and how much dichromate conversion coating extent could be highly variable. It is also possible that there was more than one manufacturing plant and or more than one supplier that would mean almost nothing to the assembly line workers. To me it is not authentic to make every part on every car assembled months apart exactly the same in appearance UNLESS one manufacturing lot covered all that type of product.  One lot would not have covered the tens of thousands of 1965 Fords that used that part for example.

Then there are possibility of deviations. Assembly plants of all kinds know about deviations. They have some purchased part or material with at least one detail that does not meet specifications and or drawings. For all kinds of reasons, the assembly plant can accept the out of tolerance condition. That is another layer of variability at the end product level.

Service parts might not be made by the same company(ies) that made the assembly line parts, or same period, or manufacturing plant, or even country.  Today looking back decades that was another layer of variability.


My only point is I would not expect, in this case, every heater elbow in every 1965 Mustang engine that used this part, Shelby or not, over months of time to be exactly 100% alike in appearance. I recommend finding unmolested examples assembled in short time frame around whatever you are working on to see what assembly of the time was like.

[gt350hr]

   I see your point. I will say this not "all" parts were "perfect" . I'm sure you are aware as to how electro chemical plating is done and how parts like this are wired to racks for the plating process. These were very "low time" plated parts as I mentioned and probably not closely inspected for voids in the plating . They were sent in bulk boxes to the engine assembly plants for "line installation" . That is the way SAI got them. I saw a partial box full of them years ago. Fast forward to having one plated now days and the plater would "most likely' want to make it nice looking since you are paying much more than the pennies added to the cost of the original parts to Ford. It might "cook" for 10-15 minutes instead of three to five back then.
  Randy

[Dan Case]

   I see your point. I will say this not "all" parts were "perfect" . I'm sure you are aware as to how electro chemical plating is done and how parts like this are wired to racks for the plating process. These were very "low time" plated parts as I mentioned and probably not closely inspected for voids in the plating . They were sent in bulk boxes to the engine assembly plants for "line installation" . That is the way SAI got them. I saw a partial box full of them years ago. Fast forward to having one plated now days and the plater would "most likely' want to make it nice looking since you are paying much more than the pennies added to the cost of the original parts to Ford. It might "cook" for 10-15 minutes instead of three to five back then.
  Randy

Applies to most plated parts. Unless you tell them otherwise replating shops will probably put much more plating on than O.E.M's required.  They also tend to go wild with dichromate conversion coatings also.

[mygt350]

Seems like there could easily be some instances where SA removed the black painted water tube on the cast iron manifold and reinstalled it in the cobra intake. More likely, due to time/effort, SA used "new" tubes that may have been finished in different levels of zinc dichromate which is a gold color.  However, thin chromate coating wears off easily. Underneath the coating is silver because the chromate has to have a zinc base to stick to. Thinner levels of chromate and wear would appear more silver.

[gt350hr]

  The bulk box I saw in the '70s had silver zinc plated parts. Every individually boxed "OTC" part was gold dichromate plated that I have owned.
   Randy

[CharlesTurner]

Ford published the plating specifics in their parts plating schedule, which is reproduced in the AMK guide to fasteners and other places.  The thickness is called out as well as typical salt spray test specifics.  This covers all the fastener prefixes like S2, S7, S8, S36, etc..  As mentioned, there most certainly was some variance, but would expect there to be quality control tests done periodically.  I wouldn't characterize it as the wild-wild-west and don't mean to infer anyone has done that here, but it's important to note there were engineering specifications.

The gold S36 plating is zinc with dichromate.  Any of those parts have a shiny zinc base plating.  I have stripped the gold on pieces and re-applied with success.  The gold was most likely decorative or indicated certain usage.  I've noticed some electrical fasteners seem to have this finish more than basic zinc S8.