Upper firewall paint changeover

[Bill]

Ed/Jeff,

   Just as an FYI, while 1584 did have paint work after rolling out of the factory, the engine compartment was original (IE: neglected) without any rattle can touch up (left front radiator support and corner of left front inner fender panel had some rattle can do to some deformation that was repaired with a hammer in the early 70's). It was not until my misguided use of a high pressure steam cleaner (better too much pressure than not enough was my mindset at the time), that I found the factory color under the original blackout. Forget about the overspray towards the front passenger side showing in my original picture, as that was from the later paint work and was above the factory black. Just some added detail that was not posted originally to this thread.

Again, I appreciate your insight.

Bill

[Grumpy]

I had a new 70 Mach1 drag pack car. Early car. Was at the dealer in late August early Sept 1969. Cowl was painted.

[SChatman]

356 build date 1-8-69 ((Dearborn) had a black cowl when I got it 25 years ago. It had been repainted an unknown white over the original Pastel Gray and it was such a crappy paint job that I can't imagine they'd have repainted the cowl.

[J_Speegle]

Yes jeff i know  all mach 1s had hood blackout but starting in early april mach 1s AND boss 302s had blackout hood treatment so thats why i think that was the start of the blackout cowl paint. I never seen any ford docs on this but by looking at unrestored cars built in early april 69 era dearborn cars thats what i have found in my research but we need to find a closer date changeover ( from unmolested cars only) at the dearborn plant anyway since b9s b2s shelbys cougars & many mach 1s were built there.............

That's what I've been using and will use if we go through this again. Challenge is (well just a little more effort) we will need to get real built dates for the examples once we establish a tight range of when the change took place to narrow it down to hopefully the week at least