I haven't been with the car it's whole life. Mine is painted blue along with the bolt and the lower part of the distributor. Car is a 1969 Dart GTS, built 2/13/69. I am the third owner. The first was an old lady that bought new and the second was her son who didn't have the car long and wasn't a car guy. The rest of the motor looks just how old it is so I doubt it was ever sprayed. The car would be a survivor if it weren't for the early 80's repaint and replacment parts. Only thing I'm not sure of is if the distributor is a reman or not. if it is then I would say it was painted because the lower part has overspray. Ill get some pictures in a few min.

What makes me think the paint on your distributor and clamp might be factory is that the oil sender has no paint on it and it's pretty well known that they were added after paint, if the clamp was painted later on in it's life your oil sender would have almost certainly been sprayed as well.

I have seen a lot of 69 340's with painted clamps, I will see what pics of original owner cars I have laying around.

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I wish I still had the one I noted it on, it was a very unmolested car and you could see where the paint had "fogged" the distributor and petered out about a 1/3 of the way up.

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It's quite possible that for some period of time the distributors were installed before paint and simply had a loose fitting mask over them which allowed the overspray to hit the clamp and distributor bases on some of them. It could also be that they changed this process in later years and that some were painted prior to the distributors being installed. Also, I haven't seen much good original evidence on 4 speed examples (which had cast iron dual point distributors vs aluminum single points for automatic cars) was there a difference? We may never know the details but any clues we find would be nice to see so keep posting!

The original clamp from my 71 340 Cuda convertible.

BS27H1B344342

SPD 3/31/71

Mound Rd. engine (Blue)

Copper plainly visible.

Bill Rolik

Look closely:

You can see some remnants of blue paint on the tip, and on the interior of the clamp adjacent to the distributor base. One of the very few original items not on the engine in the car was the distributor.

BR

Yep, I see it Bill. Was the dark color underneath or on top of the copper plating? Head markings on the bolt?

Dark color appears to be underneath.

BR

BUT!

Here you can plainly see the paint on the rear of the block!

BR

One more of the clamp.

BR

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BUT!

Here you can plainly see the paint on the rear of the block!

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But mostly bare under where the clamp masked it. Paint coverage on the back and other less visible areas were likely highly variable depending on the individual painters efforts.

Correct.

There is no way to tell exactly how much paint WAS there. But given the paint pattern on the block and clamp, I am curious to see if any other examples pop up and show that some paint was on the distributor as well.

BR

Scott,

Here is the bolt, which is the typical example found for this application.

BR

I'm especially interested on seeing an original manual trans version. I've seen a number of aluminum distributors with a fog of color on the bases (orange and blue), at first I considered it "Day 2" stuff, but having seen quite a few lately I'm thinking many might have had factory overspray. That said, so far I haven't seen any cast iron distributors with any factory looking paint. I've also wondered if the bolt and clamps held some kind of a temporary cover over the distributor hole in lieu of the distributor for paint masking.

My bolt was different but it was a Windsor engine and likely a different hardware vendor.

Yes, I am inclined to believe that, at least in my case with a Mound Rd. engine, that there may possibly have been a plug in the distributor hole, since the entire pad on the rear has paint, as did the entire clamp. but there is nothing on the sender unit or on any used 71 distributor that I have ever seen.

BR

Since today is apparently "paint pattern" day, here are some shots of the rear of the block, showing the overspray on the edges of the flex plate, as well as on the flex plate-to-crankshaft bolts.

BR

Original torque convertor.

#1

BR

Photo #2

BR