incorrect Ram-Air hood paint

[Kit Sullivan]

Several years ago, Jeff Ford was the editor of "Mustang Monthly" and the magazine was doing a long-term restoration of his yellow 72 Mach 1, which the magazine had named "Lazarus" due to the depth of the restoration it wasd doing to the car.

Certainly a beautiful restoration every step of the way except for 1 area: The paint shape on the ram-air hood.

That issue of the magazine had an article on exatcly how to recreate the factory shape of the ram-air paint on 71-73 Mustangs. Unfortunately, they got it very wrong with regards to the 71-73 mach 1 style paint treatment.

Specifically, the leading edge of the paint design was claimed to be too far back from the leading edge of the hood.

The distance that the design is too far back is off by exactly the same width as the hood molding on the leading edge of the hood. I surmised that they simply had the correct measurements but laid them out from the wrong spot on the hood.

This is all borne out by looking carefully at factory publicity shots of the car (specifically a light blue 73 Convertible) and comparing them to Jeff's painted hood on his 72 Mach 1.

Any car that is painted following Mustang Monthly's "official" directions will have the edge of the design in the front going directly over the character line creases in the hood, giving an odd look to the shape of the paint scheme.

Way back in 2002, Pheonix Graphics used the hood on my car (as well as a couple others, I think) to document the actual shape of the factory-applied ram-air design. Thier template is based on those measurements.

My hood had been repainted by then, but I had so many exacting photographs and documented measurements that they wanted to see how the hood was painted and what my original photos showed.

I sent a e-mail letter to Jeff Ford at "Mustang Monthly" explaining the discrepancy, and his response was that i did not know what I was talking about and he was the expert. That is when I sent him all the pictures of my factory-painted hood and the pictures of the factory publicity shots that when compared to "Lazarus" showed that his car was incorrect. His e-mail repsonse was that he didn't have time for an "idiot" like me.

Later, Jeff Ford and I unexpecttadly met one another at Old Town in Kissimmee when I had my car there for the Saturday Night Cruise. Not knowing who I was, he walked around my car for a couple minutes and came up to talk to me about it. He said it was a nice car, but he quickly got around to telling me what was wrong with it.

As soon as he started telling me this, I instinctively knw who he was: His picture had been in the magazine a zillion times, and he had a "Mustang Monthly" polo shirt on...even an "idiot" like me could figure out who he was.

First, he told me that my chrome-plated sport lamps were not original. I told him he was wrong, they were on the first cars built in late 70. He said nope, I must have changed them. (I have never changed them, I am the original owner and they are original equipment).

Then he told my hood was painted wrong. As he tried to tell me what was wrong, I revealed to him that I was in fact the "idiot" letter writer and I proceeded to tell him what a disservice he had done to hundreds of car owners by knowingly continue to give them verifiably false information. He spun on his heels and left quickly without saying anything else.

I have forgotten about that for the most part, but it rears it's head every now and then:

I recently saw a freshly painted Mach 1 on this site, and it is clear the owner used the "MM" article to lay out the stripe. It is incorrect. The car is beautiful, and I am sure the owner wanted it to be "right", considering everything else onn the car looks amazingly perfect.

Too bad this damn article is still around to mislead so many people looking to do it "right".

 

[coreysvt]

That's one thing that really grinds my gears. I hate to see a mach 1 hood painted incorrectly.

 

[Boss1Ray]

Kit -

If possible, please provide a template or drawing of your hood paint layout. I too have been troubled by what appeared to be incorrect for the hood painting on many the 71-3 cars. And I am guilty of posting the Mustang Monthly article on here... Great...

I think a related drawing/template could make it a lot easier to understand.

Also check out the search box in the upper right of each page. Use this to search for old 'hood paint' threads and give your take on what has been posted.

Thanks!!!!

Ray

Edit: We all have learned Kit worked with Graphics Express. Not Phoenix Express!!! Here is the Graphics Express website:

http://www.graphic-express.com/1971-1972_mach_1_mustang_stripes.asp

 

[mdan575]

Unfortunate but getting original photos is a problem these days. Even the photo's I have seen for my Mustang way back in the early 70's don't really show alot of things like that. Especially stuff like the hood paint in a reasonable camera position to get a measurement for later restoration.

Really sad such a well known Mustang magazine has such a know it all moron like that on staff.

 

[Don65Stang]

Having an incorrect template being touted as "factory" layout is wrong, wrong, wrong!

My 71m-4speed STILL wears the original factory paint and functional ram air paint scheme. I really need to take some exacting photos of it with some sort of ruler/measurement showing correct dimensions.

Another thing that is technically incorrect is to have the functional ram air two-tone paint scheme and not have the twist locks. If the hood is TuTone then it should have twist locks...at least for the 71-72 cars. In 73 I don't know. I've seen Marti Reports where the TuTone hood was an option without functional ram air but I have no idea if the factory put twist locks on those cars.

Kit, please attach your original location pics to your initial post and I will move this thread to the wiki section.

 

[Mister 4x4]

Proper placement hood templates are available through vendors. The instructions included are pretty clear and concise... finding a painter who will actually READ the instructions is the tough part.

http://www.cjponyparts.com/mach-i-hood-stencil-1971-1973/p/SKSH4/

My understanding on the NASA hoods, if the Ram Air kit is factory installed, hood locks came as part of the package with the black-out/argent trim. Hood locks on non Ram-Air hoods were optional, although I don't believe the black-out/argent trim was available [on non Ram-Air hoods].

 

[Don65Stang]

My understanding on the NASA hoods, if the Ram Air kit is factory installed, hood locks came as part of the package with the black-out/argent trim. Hood locks on non Ram-Air hoods were optional, although I don't believe the black-out/argent trim was available [on non Ram-Air hoods].

Hood locks from the factor only came on cars equipped with functional ram air. Since twist locks are fairly easy to add, dealerships could have made that an option on any of the cars with a NASA hood since it already had the provision for the twist lock hardware.

The "TuTone Hood Paint" was a factory option in 1973 on any of the cars with a NASA hood with non-functioning ram air. The part that is not known by me is if the TuTone option included twist locks. I have no data about twist locks in '73 nor have I heard from any original owners with this option. Maybe I should make a new post about TuTone hoods in 73 with or without twist locks to solve this mystery.

 

[hyena429]

My understanding on the NASA hoods, if the Ram Air kit is factory installed, hood locks came as part of the package with the black-out/argent trim. Hood locks on non Ram-Air hoods were optional, although I don't believe the black-out/argent trim was available [on non Ram-Air hoods].

.

The "TuTone Hood Paint" was a factory option in 1973 on any of the cars with a NASA hood with non-functioning ram air. The part that is not known by me is if the TuTone option included twist locks. I have no data about twist locks in '73 nor have I heard from any original owners with this option. Maybe I should make a new post about TuTone hoods in 73 with or without twist locks to solve this mystery.

I think tutone hood paint hoods got twist locks in 1973..Think that is

Ya great post about the hood stripe..Mine was painted on very wrong waaaaay before i owned it...And i have got in a few tussles with mustang monthly about the weight of our cars....They state online that our cars ballooned too almost 4,000 pounds...I emailed the editor and got in a heated email exchange with them on false weights..First they stuck by there guns and tried to say it was true..I would say nope... and post weights and curb weights from old shop ford manuals and so on...And they would say..We will look into it..And never fix it....I guess i was wrong and they really are 4,000 pounds "rolls eyes" lol

 

[72HCODE]

I'm glad i do not read any mustang type magazines. i get much better information for free on the net.

please post a template of the correct hood paint if possible i would love to archive it for future use.

 

[Mister 4x4]

I have a template (for when I get mine painted), but it's full-size. I'm not so sure they even make a scanner that will handle something that big.

 

[Kit Sullivan]

The problem with most factory-painted hoods being used as templates is that the factory rarely, if ever got this detail "perfect". On the paint line, hoods destined for ram-air were shunted to the "two tone line", a smaller side-line area for optional two-tone paint.

The front section of the design was a stick-on paper template paint mask. It wrapped around the front of the scoops and extended as far back as appoximately where the back edge of the scoop inserts were mounted on the hood.

The strsight stripes from there to the trailing edge of the hood were simy laid out with pre-cut strsight paper temlplates.

So, the factory mask was a 3-piece affair. If you look closely at ANY original factory painted hood you will most likely see a small glitch in the paint on both sides of the hood where the templatee pieces come together.

The problem with measuring a factory hood is that many the examples still left are different from esch other due to sloppy line work at the factory. Many of the templates were not as carefully located they should have been from the fsctory. Many who have measured a factory car make thier measurments from the edge of the hood to the edge of the paint stripe. If the template was placed incorrectly, then that factory measurement will be "off".

Before there were aftermarket templates available, I wanted to get it "right", so I made some educated assumptions:

First, I assumed that the template was naturally intended to be applied to the hood exactly centered, left-to-right. That only makes sense to me. On my factory painted car, there was a 3/4" difference on one side as to the other in the apparent placement of template. So my original home-made template was measured across the desjgn, not from the edge of the hood. I felt that no matter how poor the placement of the template may have been, the shape and measurement of the design itself would always be the same. I measured it meticulously, and traced it full size on butcher paper.

When I centered the new template on the hood, I saw that the edge of the design was nust about exactly 2" inches from were the outside edge of the scoop was,( on both sides of the hood, so I knew it was centered ckrrectly)

The curved shape of the template follows EXACTLY the curved character line molded into the outside edge of the forward scoop area.

I again assumed that 2" was a uniform measurement and made adjustments fore-and-aft of the template and it fit PERFECTLY, following the 2" rule I adolted. The curved shape of the template maintained 2" from the curved character line percectly. My third assumption was that it was intended tbis way.

This gave the template a distsnce of ( surprise) 2" from the leading edge of the hood.

For the straight sections up to the widshield, I followed the 2" rule, not thinking there would be any reason for it to be different.

The issue with many "know it all experts" ( myself included, unfortunately!) is that we sometimes fkrget that what the factory intended ( the correct way) is not always the way they were assembled. This means there are factory-produced cars that are legitimaley "right" because the factory made them that way, but are also " wrong" because they don't conform to official factory documents!

My determination of the "right" way to paint a ram-air hood is really just extrapolation and a little math. But since there are no factory instructions for the placement of the template, no one can say fkr 100% sure.

But...I think it is accurate to assume the design was planned to be symetrical. So that is where I headed.

 

[Don65Stang]

Excellent post Kit! Thanks for the write up. Now about those pics...

 

[Kit Sullivan]

Yeah,, all my mustang resto stuff ( pics included) are somewhere in my warehouse. ( no computers for pics back then!). I will look for them and post asap.

 

[Wolverine]

I always found Mustang Monthly to be wrong more often than me. Never knew an article to be complete.

 

[vamach1]

Here is a hood that was at a Ford display a few years back.

Did they get it right? I would say not exactly.

Here's a picture from about 1985 before my Mach1 was painted.

 

[Mister 4x4]

Nope - it's missing the 'XXX Ram Air' decals - and they hung it sideways.

Who knows what else they messed up? rofl

 

[Kit Sullivan]

Nope, that blackout is very wrong. Front angled sides do not follow the curve of the character lines, the front edge is too far back from leading edge of hood and the corners are too sharp

 

[Kit Sullivan]

Here you will notice the uniform 2" distance form the shape around the outside character lines in front of each scoop. Also the front edge is 2" from the leading edge of the hood...not 3" as "MM" stated.

 

[Boss1Ray]

Edit: We all have learned Kit worked with Graphics Express. Not Phoenix Express!!! Here is the Graphics Express website:

http://www.graphic-express.com/1971-1972_mach_1_mustang_stripes.asp

Here is another bad (terrible)example of incorrect hood paint on a 73 convertible on CL ( big thx Dana (rpmcarter) for posting in another thread! )

http://houston.craigslist.org/cto/4660318743.html





Ray