Hitman's Pontiac Trans Am Forum
Trans Am Information => Trans Am Information => Topic started by: Burd Turd on May 25, 2011, 11:23:30 AM
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F
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Appears to be.
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really correct is no decal at all. the unleaded only is molded into the plastic.
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My car had a decal in 78.I replaced it in the 80's, it was lifting, but never checked for correctness of the new decal.The one on there now is from a pontiac dealer. There is just a flat spot where it would go, I've never seen it molded in, a couple of pic's please!
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It was a decal. That one looks correct.
Where did you get it? I don't think the repo's look the same.
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It's been so long, I don't remember. It says dz12 on the back, I thought it was a re-pop. I gotta go look at the one thats on my car, it's a gm pc. I'll do a pic.
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The pictured decal looks correct to me...and yes, there is a rectangular area on the bumper where the decal goes.
I have seen a few old bumpers where age/time has "stenciled" the letters of the decal into the surface of the bumper
(somewhat how the hood bird decal "burns" itself into the hood itself over time).
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H
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really correct is no decal at all. the unleaded only is molded into the plastic.
mine has it molded into the bumper also. reads unleaded fuel only. must have changed this from 78' to 79'. does not have the recess for the decal like yours does burd, and this is the original bumper on my car. is in the same place on bumper that your decal is at, right below fuel door.
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For my 78, is this the correct decal?
(http://i1183.photobucket.com/albums/x466/rogerbb/carlyscamera632.jpg)
This is a repop the letters are to fat for original.
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Here is the one on my car now, I got it at the pontiac dealer back around 1980-1984.
(http://i1183.photobucket.com/albums/x466/rogerbb/carlyscamera634.jpg)
This is original see how the letters are smaller and spaced apart from the repop.
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So in 79 it was molded in the bumper, can anyone put a pic of that up?
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That one looks like the one I got for my 79 Z29. The repro on my car now looks different, more like the one pictured above.
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Here is a link
http://www.stencilsandstripes.com/pr_pont_tran3.asp
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Here's the best pic i have right now. really hard to see, but if you look real close under the fuel door you can see it. this is molded into the bumper, not a painted over sticker. not a very good pic of it, but the best i have right now.
(http://i1109.photobucket.com/albums/h422/usrwin/posting%20album/IMG_0615.jpg)
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So in 79 it was molded in the bumper, can anyone put a pic of that up?
my 77 and all my 79's are molded into the bumper. no decal.
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Are those both Norwood cars?
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yes
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I have never seen one molded into the bumper... I am interested to see photos of those. My car is a Norwood OH car as well.
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I'll get them for ya.
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GM wouldn't mold the bumper and also install a decal. Now on the Saturn, they mold the name on the back bumper and you can buy a decal that highlights the name. But it would make no sense to mold the unleaded fuel only notation and also install a decal over it. I think Jeff got it right when he said the decals tend to burn in.
I'd also be interested in seeing those pictures. But I do have an open mind on this. Never ceases to amaze me what I learn about these cars.
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if you look at my previous post in this thread, i know it's hard to see, but i does say unleaded fuel only and this is NOT a decal. this is imprinted into the bumper cover on my 79, this is NOT a sticker that has been painted over. if it was a sticker, it would not be as profound. if you run your finger over it, you can make out every letter by just feel alone. not sure about any other years, but every 79 i have seen has this in the bumper. don't know that it matters, but mine is a Norwood car too. also, if you look at PG, Year One, NPD, CI, or any other repro parts supplier, they do not list this particular decal for a 79 model year.
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I can't see anything at all in your previous post. I can make out every letter on my 78 by feel too and it's obviously a decal. Has your car been repainted?
If you look at the link above that shows those decals for sale they indicate 1976 to 1981
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i will try to get a better pic. yes the car has had one repaint, but this is not a decal that has been painted over. i'm sure me and 4-speed are not the only one's out there that have this.
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They painted over the decal :o
Check this out you can see in one of the pics the decal on the bumper and this car has only 6.7 miles.
http://www.beckortauctions.com/index.php?subp=1&sct=1548&pg=ap&pid=22184&ap_sub=fp
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I asked for pic's, no one gonna pony up?
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In ohio, the guys at the plant burned em in to screw us up. I have never seen one burned in. We gotta have a better photo that you can see.Maybe the company that fixes em does it when there is a repair.
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As Jeff indicated, the decal reacts with the bumper and leaves a mark.
I bought a shaker that had the T/A 6.6 decal on it. I pulled the decal off and you can still see and feel the T/A 6.6.
I'd post a picture but my decal has just about had it.
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I asked for pic's, no one gonna pony up?
Here you go guys. i know what you are talking about, but this is very defined, not like what you are talking about with the shaker decal, and if it were a decal, you would be able to see the square edges of the decal and the lettering would not be as defined. no edges here, and very defined. in my opinion, no way this is a decal. the decals do not have raised lettering like this, they are smooth all the way across. will not magically raise over time.
(http://i1109.photobucket.com/albums/h422/usrwin/posting%20album/IMG_0919.jpg)
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Looks like paint over a decal to me. The decal's letters are raised like that, but I'd like to hear from Brett on this. In fact, some of the decal is missing on mine and it's smooth in that area but the remainder of the letters are raised. The edges aren't and neither is the area around the letters.
Did you own the car before it was painted? or did you buy it that way?
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car has had one repaint just before i bought the car. most of the decals i have seen you can't feel the lettering. i'm not saying you are not correct, just really does not feel like a decal. would think the paint would come off it were a decal, especially as much as this one gets wiped down. i knew that decals were used, just thought gm may have changed it. if it is a decal, it is a very well defined one.
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Here's a picture of mine. The letters are all raised and where a partial letter is, the missing section is flat.
[attachment deleted by admin, over 90 days old]
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I think the guys have to believe us guys that had their cars for 32 years, it looks like the paint over a decal to me too. I have never seen them molded in in all my years of looking at birds. Funny that the "molded in" is the exact size of the decal
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Well, there's lots of little details and no one knows them all. That's the beauty of this forum. I know I've learned a bunch from this forum.
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You gotta love it, hard to believe this never came up before, One more thing to check at the shows. I would like to see a shot of 4SPEED's bumper.
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Hey, i'm not going to say you guys are wrong at all. it just really does not feel like a decal. but it very well may be. just something to discuss, like you said. i too, have learned a lot from this site.
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Yes, it's not a matter of being wrong or right. The purpose of going through these discussions is an attempt to determine what actually is the case. Lot's of hands have been on these cars over their 30 years of life which makes the task difficult.
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I'm not saying i'm rite, I learned alot here too, I'm just saying I know the history of my car , i'll bet all those have been re-painted at least once, mine was back in 79, and I put the decal back on, I'm going to look at MARTINIQUE78's car tonight, he has another long history car, lets see what is on his. I forgot to look at the car show on sunday, could've checked 2 more.
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i don't have any to compare to close to me. every car show i've been to in the last 3 years, i've only saw one other t/a, and it was a 71. not very many of them on the road where i live. as far as i know i'm the only person in my area that has one.
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I have 4 rear bumpers for 79's, and 1 on an 81. All are smooth with no embossing. One still has a decal that was painted over. It looks similar to embossing, but I'm sure it's the old decal.
Here's a picture I saved of a low mileage unrestored 79 unleaded decal:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v159/67SS427/79tabluecamelr.jpg)
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Thanks, good to know. so must be a decal.
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My March 1977 build Trans Am, unrestored 11,000 mile original, has a decal.
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The one from Winks79 does look interesting....... I mean I have never seen one embossed in the rear bumper like that. It is also hard to imagine that it is painted over decal because the way the paint barely fills in the area in the middle of the "A". But anyway, I have never seen an embossed one and that looks close, but being that it is the only one I have ever seen I can't determine it yet. I still learn stuff every day as well.
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Maybe 4-speed can get us a good pic of his so we can compare them.
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right now I cant, as I filled the area in on my bumpers on my 79 and 77. but when sanding the paint off the area the letters were clearly raised. as they would go to yellow from the plastic of the bumper before the rest of the paint came off.
but when I get time I'll dig out the other 77 bumper I have and look at it.
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this is the only pic I have right now of the area. sorry you cant see it really. but the letters are rased/molded into the bumper.
(http://i846.photobucket.com/albums/ab27/4_SPEED/77%20W72/009.jpg)
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i can see the area you are speaking of. the guys are going to want a closer pic though.
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I'll have better pics up soon. I'm going to a friends house to get pics of a bumper thats never been re-painted.
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this is a 78 t/a . still in whats left of its GM paint.
(http://i846.photobucket.com/albums/ab27/4_SPEED/100_5546.jpg)
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I was told that the urathane was raised because over the years the sticker protected the paint and urathane underneath. Mine was raised but had the decal and it appears the bumper above had a decal as well.
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I'm seeing a decal too.The above pic looks like a rectangle, the same size as the decal.You can see a decal short of the area that fades out.
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OK I give,,, your right , im wrong.
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Ok, can anyone see where the decal stops in that pic? These photos are so faint if there is raised letters you can't be sure. I'm not convinced yet, we need a better pic. If all these bumpers are out there, where are the pic's.
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Bird gine me a couple days till I get the camera back, I found if I shine a light across it the letters can be seen very clearly. I do not know where you see a decal at in that picture as there are no remnants of a decal on that bumper. I have other T/A's with the decals and non of them have the letters raised as much as this one does and were the decal is missing on them so is the raised lettering
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I think I can see (harder to judge by pix vs in person) the faint rectangular lines of a long gone decal in the pic (just inside the ends of the molded area where the decal goes).
I don't think the decal is still there as it would/should show body color (Martinique Blue in this case) through it(as opposed to the yellow of the urethane) if it were still there. I think the edges of the decal "burned in" to the bumper over time and left an impression in the urethane(as I stated earlier regarding the letters themselves).
Not trying to argue a point (it just isn't worth it IMO)...just offering my opinion of what is shown....and the fact that of all the bumpers ('76-'78 style and '78-'81 style) that have passed through my hands and in front of my eyes over the years, I haven't seen molded-in raised letters, just decals or burned in impressions.
Who knows what the answer may be.... :-\
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I'm done on this, at the nat'ls this year i'm going to wander around and no one knows me and i'm going to check out every bumper, when I went to the dealer in 1980 to get a decal, they didn't say, It's embossed why do you need a decal? these weathered cars are too hard to tell, we need a garage stored car like mine w/ raised letters.
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mine was and is a garaged stored car, although it has been repainted once. i can see where the decal stops on 4-speeds, but on mine. you do not see that at all. i really don't care if it is a decal or not, was just something that looked a lot different on my car that i really had not seen on any others. no big deal, even Hitman said he did not think mine looked like a decal. something to look out for in the future.
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It is just thta I have worked on over 100 Trans Ams in the last 8 years (between restoring them and/or parting them out) and not one of them had raised letters embossed into the bumpers. 95% of the cars I worked on were from 1976 to 1981 (4-1976, 18 - 1977, 24 - 1978, 26 - 1979, 1 - 1980, 5 - 1981 [not counting the parts cars or friend's cars]). So I am not saying it isn't possible, I am just saying if that was the case with emobssed letters, that it was something that was rare or a different manufacturer for a short period or maybe an aftermarket replacement or GM replacement or something of that nature. But it was not something that was normal or widespread. So my best guess is still that it was something to do with the sun or something that effected the bumper and left these as remnence of the decal. As far as distributors not listing the decal for 1979.. well, Phoenix Graphix does have it listed (part #7508UFO), NPD has it listed (Part #C-DZ12), Performance Years has it listed (Part #DZ0012), Classic Industires has it listed (Parts #DZ12)....... and so on. Anyway, this is one of those arguments that will go on because there is not proof one way or another.
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my guess would be a replacment bumper , even now when you get keystone bumpers or others they almost always do stuff like that
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I can't speak about pre-79's, but here's one of my 79's. You can see how this has an embossed look with an old paint job over it. But it's a decal, and the right side of the decal has split and is peeling up a bit, making it more obvious that it's a decal. This car has had only one repaint at some point in the past before I got it, and it looks like lacquer paint was used. Lacquer thinner is a pretty strong solvent and there's alot of it in lacquer paint, so one theory could be that the lacquer paint reacted with the decal and made it swell up like it did.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v159/67SS427/FUELDECALONMYSILVER79.jpg)
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I can see where there's some confusion on this one. I had a '78 Formula rear bumper soda blasted about a year back. It was all black but from an original 2-tone Formula. Once stripped you could see the outline etched into the bumper skin where the pin stripes had been between the two colours and also the Unleaded etc wording even though no decals were left during previous repaints. Whatever was in the decals seemed to have had a slight reaction over the years onto the surface of the bumper, you could feel it with your finger nail, the letters and where the stripes were, also discoloured like a stain even after paint removed.
And for what it's worth they also blasted a nose cone without removing the Formula decal first, resulted in raised lettering where paint/decal was blasted away at different rates but completely different to rear bumper and clear what had happened. It was not an original nose cone fron 2-tone vehicle so no lining or colour change lines to be seen.
Here's 2 pics, first one shows the fuel decal location but the photo doesn't clearly show the lettering up close. The second you can clearly see the different staining on the bumper side and where the pinstripe ran between black and gold paints. The lettering was more raised than the striping though.
(http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i195/Aus78Formula/Rearbumperstrippedcentre-1.jpg)
(http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i195/Aus78Formula/Formularearbumpersidestrippedliningetch.jpg)