Top of Firewall Paint Line
 

Hopefully this is an easy one but I suspect not, anyway....when I bought my 67 Z last year, it appeared to have some original paint still on it. One of those areas is where the firewall semi-gloss black ends at the top and transitions to body color. It's a Norwood car and it appears the line was masked. The Harry Mann 68 SS built in LA also has a masked line. Where the confusion comes in (for me at least) is a well-respected restorer here in Michigan seems to blow-in the transition, even spraying body color on the trim tag. If you look at a couple 67 Zs on the Heartbeat City website, you can see evidence of this. I understand that depending on the day or shift, plant workers on the same job may have done things differently but it appears the norm was a masked line perhaps specified by Fisher Body. Can anyone shed some additional light on this?

Thanks

Paul

Paul, post some pictures of your cowl area so we can have a look. If the cowl panel was removed, that would be even better.

Masked line was not the normal process. Jon made a great suggestion in trying to determine what u have.

As noted above. Not mask lines. 68 L78. Of course 03D. Tag photo was back before I did a preservation on the car. The other 3 were during the preservation process.

Jon, I wrote the original post then it occured to me that my firewall paint was likely redone when the original owner started the restoration more than 35 years ago. I did look in Google photos for survivor 67s. I see Jerry M's low mile survivor that appears to have a masked line from the pics on his site. So based on the pictures above, if the Fisher Body folks did their job correctly, there was no masking of the transition line but the operator sprayed the firewall pointing the gun at an upward angle along the edge to minimize overspray on the top. The photo below I would imagine falls into the category of, yes could have happened but was not the standard, agree?

There is a foam used to mask door jams I have used that to mask if you don't want a tape line.
https://www.autobodytoolmart.com/pro...e-masking-tape

Paul,

The cars restored with the body color on the front of the firewall and over the tag never look quite right to me (personal opinion). Yes, there are some examples of cars where that happened but usually it is fogged on when GM did it and when redone it always seems to have more thorough coverage. The typical Norwood '67 Z had the stripe color contained under the cowl panel, sometimes crisply masked off under there and in other cases it is sprayed there without being masked. The ones which were not crisply masked under the cowl panel did sometimes have stripe color which extended more toward the front of the cowl. Below are some '67 Z Norwood examples. The typical LOS '67 Z, which yours is not, had the majority of the top of the cowl painted with a distinct masked line at the leading edge, but I have seen one example prior to restoration where it was crisply masked off under the cowl panel.

IF you are trying to determine details you cannot compare a LA built car to a Norwood built car and expect it would be the same.

You must use the same plant & same year model at the minimum.

For example did LA built 67's and early 68's have the white spray blob on the cowl tags?

I would have to research a LOT to do a correct 67 Z paint and stripe...

Were 67 Norwood and LA cars similar to 1969 model year in that the stripe on Norwood original paint cars is about 1/4" outside the wiper cowl panel recess where as original paint LA cars confine the stripe to the recess.

Top photo is 09B LA survivor and lower is a 10D Norwood the Black RS/Z 04C Norwood was the same. Every original paint car I have checked(50+Z28's and pace cars) has followed this for 1969. GRANTED the majority have been NORWOOD built 69's.

May not apply to your 67 but my 69Z is a 12D Norwood car and it doesn't appear to have been masked at the firewall. It's a black stripe car and it's clearly visible that they sprayed the gloss black under the cowl and just extended it all the way out the top of the firewall. Then a duller black transition can be seen on the forward facing firewall. My firewall blackout wasn't applied all that great either as there are areas of Frost Green showing through around the trans tunnel area and under the booster.

But that's 2 years later than what you're looking for.

Firewall on 09B LA built 69
Because LA was multiline they used color code numbers whereas Norwood used names... 71 71 on this firewall norwood would typically have L BLUE