<VV> '64 hood on '63, etc.

[Charles McKinley]

Bill,
	Good eye! Indeed, it started out black, but it was a piece I got from  
a junkyard car and the black paint was a little shabby so I repainted  
it with red Rustoleum to give the car a little bit of dash. At one  
point, I also repainted the original black center stripe on the long  
aluminum strip across the nose red, for the same reason, but then it  
made the car look as if it had a nosebleed, so I wire-brushed it off  
and left it as bare aluminum.
	I confess that I have no particular interest in trying to keep the  
car as original as possible, because frankly I thought some of the  
original design was really bad. The front seats when I got it were  
mostly duct-tape and in my opinion crappy seats even new, so I  
replaced them with a pair of very nice burgundy buckets from a wrecked  
1985 Chrysler LeBaron convertible. Also, the stock steering wheel was  
a joke, so unnecessarily oversized that I could hardly get my legs  
under it, and I replaced it with a pretty standard Grants wheel with a  
much smaller diameter. The original horns didn't work at all so I  
replaced them with a Fiamm triple air horn, located in the trunk. One  
other color item that really worked well was the corvair emblem on the  
engine lid. It was of course originally some sort of chrome over pot  
metal and was full of blisters and pockmarks. I cleaned it up as best  
I could and then dipped it in red Rustoleum, so now it's a bright red  
logo on the black engine lid and looks very sharp. I know the purists  
will cringe, but so be it. For a while I had red pin stripes (the tape  
kind) down the centerline of the trunk lid and engine lid and along  
the peak line of the body contour, but they weathered to pink so I  
took them off.

Cheers,
Chuck

On Apr 7, 2010, at 4:34 PM, Wrsssatty at aol.com wrote:

> <Right about the 64 hood.>
>
> Chuck, et al.,
>
> While we're on the subject, shouldn't the paint inside of that  
> triangle shaped front trim piece that houses the Chevy bow tie be  
> painted black, not red?  Did you do that yourself?  Don't get me  
> wrong, it looks cool in red, especially on the black but I was  
> wondering about that.
>
> ~Bill Stanley