Underside Painted or Coated

Q: Underside Painted or Coated

Here’s one for you old guys. When you bought a car back in 67-70 was the under side painted/coated? Were all these cars rolling off the line with shiny silver bottoms? I seem to remember my Dad talk about the dealer undercoating the car as an extra. And it was that black tar like stuff; cause that seems to be whats on the under side of my convertible.

A: As far as the underbelly of these “vintage” cars, they were painted. Undercoating was a dealer installed option. The owner of the car I just finished restoring opted to do without it.

Because of the superior coatings and galvanizing, the new cars actually do better without it.

A: My 1968 Sprint Bird came from dealer with an undercoating and a paint treatment called “Ming Paint Treatment”. ( and we think of dealer add ons as a new thing) The undercoating was /is a yellowish waxy paraffin substance that looks like beeswax. It was easily removed with lots of rags and mineral spirits.(better than scraping). All areas other than overspray of body color would be semi-gloss black. As far as I know the factory didnt offer rust prevention/undercoating until the 80s. A friend bought a T/A new in 78 and tried his darnedst to order car with it. He ended up going to Rusty Jones and having it done.

A: I will clarify this myself before someone reads it wrong.. The undercoating at each wheel well that is neatly masked off when sprayed on is factory. This was used more as a sound deadner that a rust proofing/ undercoating. Ive heard some people say they scraped it off, but if its not rusted around it ,so as to get underneath then I would leave it alone. It is hard to duplicate the texture of this sound deadner and this stuff really works good. As far as the rest of the underside of car factory didnt offer it. An option on the GTOs was to delete sound deadner and body dum dum. It saved alittle under 100#s and was mainly for drag racers..

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