Topic: 69 Shelby/Dearborn Rear Fender Well Body Color

[ddonzella]

Jeff,

On a March 4 2010 post in this section amongst other things you described the body color painting of the rear wheel well as " a good amount of paint including some on the frame rail as seen in the wheel well".  For a June 12, 1969 Dearborn Shelby do you have a photo of the extent of the area that received actual body color paint in the rear wheel well? example, from the fender lip on the front and rear horizontal sides all the way back to the frame rail? Was the top of the fender well painted body color from the fender lip back down to the frame rail?

[J_Speegle]

Lets see if I can "paint" a picture of the process.

When the painter applied a nice coat of paint to the fender lip, from the rocker panel at the front of the wheel well up over the top and down the back edge to the pinch weld of the quarter panel to the trunk floor, 90% or more of the paint went to other surfaces other than that thin fender lip. Allot went onto the sound deadener directly above, behind that fender lip but often produced a shadow (thin with a very soft edge) directly behind the lip. On the top 3rd of the wheel well the inner panel is angles such that the overspray shadow was increased due to that angle.

Next as the painter applied paint to the quarter panel - passing the flowing paint gun over the wheel well opening (flowing all the time) a great amount (100% of the paint coming from the gun) passed into that opening directly on the inner surface of the wheel well and frame rail below it. In addition the large amount of overspray settled on the bottom of the floor in that rear end tunnel and surfaces near by

To illustrate this I offer the following pictures.  Pictures can often be difficult to find since many owners blacked out the wheel wells over the years or cleaned them - strippign away the top surface from the somewhat soft sound deadener (at least somewhat flexible) removing the top paint


Hope this helps

[ddonzella]

Perfect! Thank You