steering column rebuild 69 b-body finishes

Bill,
Where was the car built you are working on now?

Mine is an LA car. coupler and lower shaft were black when I pulled the column. appears to have been spray bombed as the black on the inner shaft was also on the outside of the lower bearing and on the lower steering column main sleeve tube engineside and did not extend higher up the inner shaft (i.e., the inner shaft above the bearing was bare steel). to me looked like the column had never been apart. So my guess would be if the shaft was black from the factory the paint stopped before the point where the lower bearing would wind up when assembled. then at a future date when someone sloppily painted shaft column with a spray can they went up to the lower bearing with it....making the original paint if present difficult to unmask. i used lacquer thinner to remove the paint and to me looked as if could have been only a single coat as it all bubbled in a few seconds upon submersion.

The 1970 column I have apart is a late 1969 SBD Lynch Rd Plymouth B-body.
but I'll have to ck the plant and date on the 1969 car later today. It's a 1969 Charger R/T with column auto.

I've done a few columns and these 2 are the 1st I've found that I'm confident are factory paint.
And both will be repainted exactly the way I found them.

Here's another little tidbit from the 1970 column that will be redone.