All—
I’ve seen a few un-restored 50th Anniversary Trans Ams since purchasing mine in 1995 and always noticed that the wheels, headlight buckets, and grilles were a lighter, brighter tint of gold (closely matching the original stripes) than mine. I always chalked it up to the fact my car had been repainted by a friend of the previous owner in 1992 and that he had chosen one of the darker “bronze” tints from the hood bird for all three items.
Last year as I was preparing for the Bandit Run, I decided to restore the honeycomb wheels on my 1976 50th Anniversary Trans Am. Under the hexagonal center caps, what appeared to be the original “brighter” gold paint was still intact.
Using the original lacquer paint code as a base, I had a shop mix up a quart. It was VERY close to the shade of gold under the center caps and I had the shop tint it to match it perfectly.
The wheels came out looking GREAT. The problem was, the headlight buckets and grilles were still the darker “bronze” tint. I did not have time to pull them off and repaint them to match so I just ran the Bandit Run with the mismatched pieces (see following photograph):
There were three other 50th Anniversary T/As on the run. None had been restored and appeared to have the lighter gold on the headlight buckets and grilles. Again, I just assumed that my headlight buckets and grilles had been repainted the wrong tint of gold in 1992.
Fast forward to March of this year…I pulled off the headlight buckets and grilles with the intention to repaint them to match. In sanding down the headlight buckets, I broke through to bare metal in a few places where the paint was thin. There was no evidence of any primer and (unlike the honeycombs) there was no color change through the sanded layers. I went ahead and painted the headlight buckets the same color as the wheels. When compared to the grilles, I was really shocked at the difference in color:
In looking closely at the grilles, I cannot find any evidence of a repaint. So now, I’m second guessing myself. Were the headlight buckets and grilles painted a different shade of gold than the wheels? Did the color somehow darken over time? I did some searching around on the internet and started seeing evidence that there are 50ths out there with darker grilles and headlight buckets compared to the wheels.
I’d hate to paint over the original paint on the grilles particularly given their excellent condition and am thinking of repainting the headlight buckets to match—although I think it is odd having that much of a difference in the tints and would prefer to match the wheels.
Is there anyone out there that can shed some light on this for me??
Thanks,
Tinman5