Jez it’s been more than a whole month and we haven’t had anybody ask about painting a 216 engine, what’s the world coming to!
My sleeping pill comes in the form of an 8 1/2” x 11” 55 page full color glossy, in other words I read myself to sleep each night. Well I was skimming through my latest issue of the G&D and ran across that age-old question once again in the “Ask the Experts” column.
Now I gotta say right off, this is for the purists out there, so if your engine was pampered pink or baby blue or sea green, chrome covered with SS hardware when you got it and you believe it to be original then don’t waste your time reading any further.
This answer comes from long time member Gene Schneider, who’s opinion I have come to respect because of the years of exposure and research that he puts into his usual response. So here’s one more observation of the way they were delivered.
“The engines were assembled before they were painted with the exception of the fan, distributor, starter, generator, crankcase road draft tube and oil cap (on pre-1949 216 engines). These parts were black. The blue/gray parts would include the balancer, manifolds and their attaching parts (paint burnt off the exhaust manifold rapidly), the acorn nuts retaining the valve cover, oil cap on valve cover, the flywheel housing and its under pans and all bolts retaining the engine parts and the exposed edges of the gaskets. The spark plugs were even installed before painting. A little paper cap protected the insulator but the metal hex was painted. This was always the way you could tell if the engine still had its original spark plugs.”
I haven’t mentioned the actual engine “color”, this has been discussed hundreds of times around the hobby and again, the one you chose is up to you if you want to play “fool the experts” or “it looks good enough for me.”
Thanks Gene for sharing this info with us.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
