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I am doing some initial sanding on the front chassis box beams of my ’35. It is in a state where the original black paint is mostly there but rough and peeling off leaving the red lead primer. It has pits that resemble surface rust, but since the red lead is in the shallow pits without filling them to the surface, I believe the original chassis finish was not the carefully finished total filled and prepped surface one sees on many frame-off restorations. I think I am looking at the rough spots from a mill finish when it was originally made. Any comments on whether this was the case, always the case, or did prep work standards drop as the end neared and production dropped? Just curious.
For a “production” car, there would not have been the attention to detail when painting the chassis as there would have been painting the car body. The original finish probably looked fine, but was not anywhere near the show car standards that the show car circuit demands these days.
I’d bet that a car fresh from the factory, magically transported to the show field now, would score 95 or so points. Just an opinion of course.
The exception would be a chassis or a major car show vehicle made then, when attention to detail and finish would be critical to show off the marque….
We sure do now “Guild the lily””! of our masterpieces. Would doing that to the Mona Lisa be considered by our judging standards a 100 point restoration? After all the original paint is fairly deteriorated!! Just a thought. Cheers
Jak, I agree….today’s standards would have demanded her grin/smile be straight, for example…
Yer right David!!
Depending on what shows you plan on attending and getting yoru car judged at, I would NOT over restore the chassis. The Pierce Arrow Society will deduct for over-restoration.
Other car club judging may expect a non-factory finish on the chassis.
If it were my car, I’d finish the chassis as from the factory.
Greg Long.
Over chroming, philips head screws, welding fender seams, sealed beam headlights, adding super shocks, fogged glass,adding special guages, etc are obvious insults to a proper restoration. There are other more suttle things that hurt just as much those of us who know these cars. Of course it is nearly impossible to create a car restoration that is really ‘factory perfect’. All our best efforts just produce a fantasy car that looks like the real thing, though it can never really be. But we need to try any way. We really don’t own these cars, but are custodians of the remaining pile of nuts and bolts, abd chunks of cast iron. Restoration should be taken seriously, with love and care, and real understanding.
Well said William!!! It is a WONDERFUL truth—-we are but temporary custodians. But were it not for people who LOVE them they would not exist anymore. Cheers
Thanks for every ones response, actually over-restoration and worrying about judging points wasn’t a concern – just curiosity about whether anyone has noticed cost-cutting shortcuts as production levels plummeted through the ’30’s.
This is going to be a tour car, not a museum piece. I’m afraid I have a less rigorous view of restoration. I have been looking for a rear view mirror for twenty years. If I still don’t have one when the car is ready to drive I will find a substitute rather than hide it because it has a non-authentic part. I think that still puts me somewhere above the 95 percentile in authenticity when the term “restoration” now seems to include attaching a 350 Chevy with automatic, independent front suspension, and power steering column to a bare frame and body shell that came from what once had been a Packard or Pierce.