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It sounds like you're saying that back when the whole car was painted one color, including the firewall, the firewall was skipped until after the bake oven, then it was shot. I wonder why they wouldn't have shot the whole thing at the same time while the "gun was in hand".

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Ok.
Body color painted first.

Paint was then baked in the oven.

Car then went through the anti-rust booth.

Firewall was then sprayed using a sheild around the front.

The firewall paint was not baked on.
This happened just before the car went into trim.

They didn't change the way the car was painted, they just added painting the firewall a different color.


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That was dads recalling of how it was after the change,
sorry about the confusion.

They did paint the whole thing at the same time at first.

The way I understand dad is it wasn't really skipped, it just wasn't worried about since it was a area that wasn't seen. But it was painted with the rest of the car. It was after they started painting it black that it was painted later. The other thing to remember is the cars were coming off the line at a rate of 1 per min. so painting the firewall in the anti-rust booth probally gave them some more time.

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One thing leaves me a little confused. I've seen many original firewalls that clearly show the crayoned paint or trim codes (sometimes option codes). I wonder if that's just because the paint didn't stick to the crayon ("grease marker"), and overtime, the paint just disappeared from the moisture and elements. When I've seen those on an original car, I sure didn't wipe them off to see if there was paint or bare metal under them. I left them alone!


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I asked dad that same question and he put it this way, the reason for the marks is because the build sheets did not go through the paint booth with the car. So the marks were there to tell them what the car got as far as paint and trim. They were definetly painted over. I am not sure what going through a oven would do to paint over a grease pen.
And dad doesn't really know much about what happened after the car left his area. Someone out there that worked later down the line might know of some of the other happenings.