Original color of alternator

I have a 70 barracuda 383 2 barrel. Anyone know what the original color of the alternator was? Mine is blue/teal color and my research is saying aluminum color

Bare aluminum.

Water pump also?

WP is engine color

Does your car have AC?

The alternator is bare aluminum but there a glob of paint on it that believe tells you what the part number is.

If you are asking about the alternator cases, they were bare aluminum, as already stated. I have a hint if you want to keep them looking like new and not tarnishing over time. Have a shop take the alternator apart, and then glass bead the aluminum housings to get them good and clean. Then mix a good amount of flattening agent to some clear coat. The flattening agent knocks the gloss down on the clear and since it is white, it adds a bit of tint to the clear. Be sure and spray the pieces with the spray gun far away from the pieces so that the clear is much dryer than you would normally spray it to give it a textured finish. It may take a little experimentation to get it right. But with the right combo, the finish looks nearly perfect to bare aluminum. And stays that way.

Never glass bead blast aluminum if you want it to really look like original. Call Dixi auto to get it done correct

Not quite the correct answer. Alternators were bare aluminum but with a chromate conversion coating applied. Henkel Alodine 1201 for brush application may be the same or similar. Product description: "Nonflammable, chromic acid-based, coating chemical that will produce a chrome conversion coating on aluminum and its alloys. The coating formed by Alodine 1201 is gold to tan in color and it becomes a part of the aluminum surface."

My information comes from Jim Ridge at Dixie Restoration who does an outstanding job on restoring alternators and starters. According to Jim alternators got the coating.

Photo shows a finish other than bare aluminum with a hint of yellow or tan and a slight rainbow effect.

I agree.......here's a couple pictures of an NOS case

You are wrong about that IF you intend to clear coat it. Ever done any paint and body work? The finish allows the clear to bite, same as sanding a fender or door. After clearing, the end finish very nicely duplicates the finish in the pics here. And stays that way. To only leave the finish that the glass beading leaves would be wrong. Same as leaving a fender sanded, but not painted.

But as with most of the finishes on the engine and under the body, the alternators posted here looked like that when unboxed and installed, but certainly did not look like that after just a short time of regular service. To me, most restored Mopars look like a collection of new parts fresh out of the box, not as a complete real-world car as they would have came off the transport or as they looked after just a short time of driving. You know, how they really looked 'in the wild'.

This kind of stuff usually has more to do with a particular look that the owner has in mind rather than having the car/engine look like it really did going down the road in it's prime.

I said if he wants it to look correct. If not he can do what he wants.They weren't clear coated either. I have talked to Jim Ridge about blasting and was told he couldn't do anything with it if it had been blasted. The thing is, once it's blasted, you can't go back and unblast it, the texture of the metal is changed for good.

A vibratory cleaner, with a user that knows what each media does is the correct answer.

Years back I ran into a rep for Wheelabrator corporation that had five such machines in his own personal pole building.

The guy was a car guy too. He could reproduce any surface finish on cast metal. I would give him my parts and he would drop them off to me a week later. Even had him run some tarnished supercharger blower scoops through the process and they came out looking fully polished. If you looked close with a magnifying glass you could see the micro scratches, but for a drag car, they were fine.

So your source's way is the only way, right? You are referring to one and only one method of refinishing. As posted above, there are other methods. I only offered a method that is very close to O.E., is easily accessible, affordable, and permanent. And my method was accepted by the judges at the Mopar Nationals. My '71 GTX was awarded 95 points and was OE Certified.

The OE Cert judges had no problem with that method of finish for that car's alternator. But you do.

As to 'correct', that is a very relative term.

Does the OP want the alternator to look like it had just been coated at the manufacturing plant? Does he want it to look like it looked off the transport? Or like it looked at the time of retail delivery, which could be months later? Or like it looked after awhile of daily driving? The pics above of an alternator after all these years is my point. Many, if not most of the finishes on our Mopars when new, did not wear well.

And as I said, I personally have never thought the temporary look of an item fresh from the manufacturer was an accurate representation of what it would look like after a short time. Whether the part sat on a shelf in inventory, or sat on a vehicle sitting at the plant, hit inclement weather on the transport on the way to the dealership, whether it sat on the dealer's lot for weeks or months, or what it looked like a short time after retail delivery.

And that doesn't even go into the issue of whether every single alternator ever produced during that era looked EXACTLY the same. We know better. Especially with Mopar.

Today, 50 years later, people argue/discuss what every item on a particular car from a particular plant looked like originally. Well, what it looked like often changed by the week and the month. And often never looked like it did the day it was actually produced by the time the new owner was actually driving the car. The finishes were simply not meant to last.

OP; pick your preferred look and go for it. Satisfy yourself, because there is no way to know just exactly what that alternator looked like at the time of that car's retail delivery.

Here is an NOS 1971 Alternator I picked up last year at the Mecum car auction from the Juliano collection.

That alternator would be a 70 right. 8th week. Late 70 build.

There are restorations of cast aluminum that are glass beaded with the proper bead, cleaned, tumbled to get a more correct finish. Then can be coated with a conversion.

Frankly, if an alternator or any aluminum cast part has had oxidation and corrosion the surface has been changed. Let alone absorption of contaminants. Now you can't sand blast it and remove metal. Beading is about removing contaminants and closing pores (peening).

If you see enough alternators you will also notice a lot of mismatched parts, and those industrial tumblers used by the rebuilder would remove a lot of metal, including casting markings and the stampings. Let alone they drilled extra holes for additional field wire.

So any process can change the surface if not done properly.

Here is the same alternator after Jim Ridge @ Dixie restored it.

Nice! I hate seeing bead blasted parts on high end cars! That alternator looks sweet.

I bet there are a lot of beaded parts you don't even know where done that way.

Jim does do nice work.

The "colour" is based on the two digits listed on your broadcast sheet under ALT(alternator). If they are 72, as most of what this thread has been showing, then it would be orange. If your 383+2 car is an A/C car, then the two digits would be 78, for 3438 178(stamped on the alternator), the colour would then be green. Is your car an original A/C car? The motor colour for your car would be originally a blue colour, being a 383+2 car.

This 3438180 60 amp half case is NOS.Looks like bare aluminum with dull shine.Date hard to see but it's 47 69.

See how different the finish looks on this alternator vs some of the ones posted earlier? That is my point. As with just about everything Mopar, one NOS example does not mean that every one ever produced looks like it. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if there were alternators installed that had no coating at all for one reason or another.

Mopar wasn't interested in all of their alternators looking exactly the same. Nor were they concerned about how long the finish lasted. If the darned thing didn't fail during warranty, they were satisfied. Mass production causes that.

I am really a bit surprised that people today say anything on our old Mopars would only have come one way. There may have been a finite range of possibilities, but almost nothing on these cars would have come one and only one way.