Have a '58 Plymouth Question

[Nick Winter]

Does anyone know if there was anything special about the underside of the body like the gray primer and paint overspray thing on later unibody Muscle cars built by Plymouth?

[george 53]

Nick, those cars (57,58,59,60 )are cab on chassis. that means they were two seperate units. You can paint a little over spray on the VERY EDGES of the underside, but not like the 60 an up cars. You paint the frames on those cars a nice semi gloss bkack an your good ta go! Maybe one of the other guys can get more into detail on it, but basicly that it.

[Rick Schmidt]

Not sure about the answer to your question but there only 1 reason I can think of why a builder who like building movie and tv cars would be asking about a 58 Plymouth hehe

[Nick Winter]

Nick, those cars (57,58,59,60 )are cab on chassis. that means they were two seperate units. You can paint a little over spray on the VERY EDGES of the underside, but not like the 60 an up cars. You paint the frames on those cars a nice semi gloss bkack an your good ta go! Maybe one of the other guys can get more into detail on it, but basicly that it.

thanks George, that's real helpful.

Not sure about the answer to your question but there only 1 reason I can think of why a builder who like building movie and tv cars would be asking about a 58 Plymouth hehe

You got it.

[Jon Cole]

Nick;

I have about 1 1/2 pages of '58 Plymouth photos. Maybe of some use?

http://public.fotki.com/JCole/11_mopar-1/11_plymouth/

Link corrected on 11/29/2009

Edited November 29, 2009 by Spyder

[Guest]

Hey Jon, your link takes you to the Lambo pic. Could you repost the correct one? I could use those pics myself.

[Art Anderson]

Does anyone know if there was anything special about the underside of the body like the gray primer and paint overspray thing on later unibody Muscle cars built by Plymouth?

Unlike modern cars, which are painted robotically, cars of the 50's had their paint applied, on the production line, by essentially the same hand-held DeVilbis or Binks production spray guns used in body shops (but with the paint delivered to them through pressurized hoses instead of a color jar on the bottom of the gun).

For body-on-frame production, the body shells themselves were generally dipped in some sort of rust-preventive, at least up to the beltline (not that the rust preventers of the time did much actual good!), then primed by hand held spray guns. After the primer was baked dry in a pass-through oven, the bodies were sanded, rinsed, blown dry, ready for final colors.

These kinds of body shells weren't on a moving conveyor assembly line, but generally mounted on wheeled carts, which could be pulled along by a cable, as through the drying ovens, and pushed by hand into the spray booths. It took a crew of at least two painters to get the job done quickly, each painter taking half the body shell. One of the steps there was for the painters to squat or duck down, run the spray guns along the bottom edges of the rocker panels (actually a box-section of sheet metal pinch or spot welded to the lower edge of the rear quarter panels, and a full box section at the bottoms of the door openings, rather than the narrow edge that most model car bodies have). With the body shell perhaps a foot or so above the floor, this meant that the spray gun had to be used at an oblique angle to the bottoms of the rocker panels, meaning that there was overspray inward on the outer edges of the floorboards, perhaps 6" or so in from the sides, fading into the raw primer, which in those years was almost universally red oxide primer.

The same was also almost universally true of firewals back in those days as well, they being painted the same color as the lower body main colors, but the painters didn't spend much time ensuring that the lower edge of the firewall, where it meets the upward angled "toe board", so the body color paint generally faded from color to primer at that point, across the firewall's lower edges or the upper edges of the toeboards.

Front fender panels seem generally to have been painted on both surfaces, inside and out, that being done with them hanging from hooks stuck through the bolt holes on their upper or rear edges where they mated to the body or underhood structure, but probably not painted as well as the exterior surfaces.

None of this overspray would have hit the frames, as all this work was done before the body shells were dropped by hoist onto the assembled chassis on the final assembly line.

Art

[Jon Cole]

Hey Jon, your link takes you to the Lambo pic. Could you repost the correct one? I could use those pics myself.

Thanks for the heads-up, Lee!

Okay, lets try this again. Here is the link to the first page of my "1:1 Plymouth" Everything is listed alphabetically by title; you can just jump forward to pages 4 and 5.

http://public.fotki.com/JCole/11_mopar-1/11_plymouth/

[MrObsessive]

Jon's 1958 Plymouth pics Pt. 1

Jon's 1958 Plymouth pics Pt. 2

[Nick Winter]

Unlike modern cars, which are painted robotically, cars of the 50's had their paint applied, on the production line, by essentially the same hand-held DeVilbis or Binks production spray guns used in body shops (but with the paint delivered to them through pressurized hoses instead of a color jar on the bottom of the gun).

For body-on-frame production, the body shells themselves were generally dipped in some sort of rust-preventive, at least up to the beltline (not that the rust preventers of the time did much actual good!), then primed by hand held spray guns. After the primer was baked dry in a pass-through oven, the bodies were sanded, rinsed, blown dry, ready for final colors.

These kinds of body shells weren't on a moving conveyor assembly line, but generally mounted on wheeled carts, which could be pulled along by a cable, as through the drying ovens, and pushed by hand into the spray booths. It took a crew of at least two painters to get the job done quickly, each painter taking half the body shell. One of the steps there was for the painters to squat or duck down, run the spray guns along the bottom edges of the rocker panels (actually a box-section of sheet metal pinch or spot welded to the lower edge of the rear quarter panels, and a full box section at the bottoms of the door openings, rather than the narrow edge that most model car bodies have). With the body shell perhaps a foot or so above the floor, this meant that the spray gun had to be used at an oblique angle to the bottoms of the rocker panels, meaning that there was overspray inward on the outer edges of the floorboards, perhaps 6" or so in from the sides, fading into the raw primer, which in those years was almost universally red oxide primer.

The same was also almost universally true of firewals back in those days as well, they being painted the same color as the lower body main colors, but the painters didn't spend much time ensuring that the lower edge of the firewall, where it meets the upward angled "toe board", so the body color paint generally faded from color to primer at that point, across the firewall's lower edges or the upper edges of the toeboards.

Front fender panels seem generally to have been painted on both surfaces, inside and out, that being done with them hanging from hooks stuck through the bolt holes on their upper or rear edges where they mated to the body or underhood structure, but probably not painted as well as the exterior surfaces.

None of this overspray would have hit the frames, as all this work was done before the body shells were dropped by hoist onto the assembled chassis on the final assembly line.

Art

Wow that's Etremely helpful, I don't have any Red Oxide primer so I used Dark Grey primer.

Jon's 1958 Plymouth pics Pt. 1

Jon's 1958 Plymouth pics Pt. 2

Thanks Bill.

[Jon Cole]

If I keep screwing up links like I did above (at least twice!), I'm going to have to dye my hair blond! All five of them!

Thank you Bill for the correction.

[MrObsessive]

I'm going to have to dye my hair blond! All five of them!

:lol: