I have to sandblast the hood hinges/springs from my Dart as the car is being painted soon. The hinges as they were taken off the car look like the end the hood bolts to was painted body color but the other end that bolts to the body is unpainted and just greasy looking. Shouldn't the whole thing be painted body color? Also, I was told to avoid blasting the spring directly as the spring will not work as well afterward. Does this sound right? It doesn't look to me like the sand would hurt anything but if this is true I will not blast that area.

You can paint the entire hinge, but the bottom half will be out of sight when the fenders are on. The factory likely put them on and later painted the car fully assembled so the bottom part didn't receive any paint.

Sandblasting the springs should be fine so long as you don't build up any concentrated heat. You can always sand or scotchbrite them by hand too.

As mentioned, the car was painted with the fenders on, so the bottoms of the hinges and the inboard sides got partial paint.

These 69 Barracuda hinges are in the original paints, the gray dip primer on the lower part, the hand brushed zinc rich primer applied at the factory to bolted joint interfaces since they would not get top coated, and the medium metallic green top coat.

The top photo shows the inboard side with partial top coat. The bottom photo shows the gray primer dip line left of the rivet.

These photos were taken before the hinges were de-rusted with Safest Rust Remover. I prefer to chemically treat rather than sand blast if at all possible.

The top photo shows the dark green zinc rich primer hand brushed on the bolted joint. The bottom photo shows the outboard side did get mostly top coated. All 4 photos are the same L hinge.

The rust remover cleaned all the rust off nicely and also took off loose paint especially on the spring.

Thanks guys.