It is tough enough to get an original look to the alternators, but it is even more difficult to keep it looking that way.
That bare, open aluminum soaks everything up.
While not perfect, I glass bead the cases and then experiment with flattening agent in 2 part clear till I get the look I want. It lasts indefinitely and looks very near to original when done right. Been doing it that way for decades.
So if I have an NOS alternator made in 1970, exposed that way, it's surface will therefore not be as when first made.
Not like that NOS one has been hermetically sealed for 50 years.
So therefore it's still a crap-shoot as to what's 'original'.
This subject has been debated for years and years. Weathered, real world look vs how it came out of the package at the Chrysler plant. Here is another example of this situation; many of the suspension components under our cars were bare metal. Between the finished car sitting outside at the Chrysler plant, being transported on open transports in all kinds of weather, then sitting outside on the dealer's lot, what condition is '
correct' for those bare metal parts? Clean, fresh metal? Rusty? If so, how rusty?
And all of the lighter plating under the hood and such would also weather very quickly. The bare aluminum alternators would not remain looking like they had just left the foundry for very long. They tarnished and tinted without any use at all, just like the pics above.
A lot of guys subscribe to the '
as the car came off the transport at the dealership' component condition. But even that is a crap shoot. Our cars were shipped (for the most part) on open transports throughout the year and in all sorts of weather. So would the vulnerable components be the same on a car shipped in the dry warm summer vs one shipped in the dead of winter with snow, sleet, rain, and salt being thrown on them? Probably not.
So, pick your idea of the 'perfect, original' finish. The one that was installed at the Chrysler plant. The one that may have came off the transport. Or the one that was on the the car after just a little road time. They are all likely to be different.
