Engine was painted with the distributor in it, but there was a mask placed over it.. the pictures shown in this thread at what I have observed over the years. Certainly all the promotional pictures, as shown above, show the distributor assembly being paint free. Those pictures represent what the engine was "suppose to" look like. Definitely not painted on purpose. Varying degrees of overspray. I saw a picture of the mask they had over the distributor at one point in time, but that was years ago and I can't recall the source of the pic. JW
Most of the originals I have seen have some overspray on the lower half, and it’s hit or miss on the vacuum line. I’ll try to dig up some pics
This is how it was painted on the 25k mile 1972 I bought from the original owner. I replaced the cap and water pump, the rest is original and correct. Lots of red paint, even on the vacuum advance hose and distributor wire. Here is a picture from the Buick engine plant. By looking at the flexplate designs, you can see that both 350s and 455s are shown in the photo. You can see that the distributor is already installed (I added the red arrow pointing to the vaccum advance) and the engines have not been painted yet (the oil pan is still bare metal and the timing cover housing is still bare aluminum. While we are on the subject of red paint, the fuel pump was also installed before the engine was painted. This is the original pump on my 25k mile car. The bottom of the bowl is not painted but the aluminum portion is heavily painted red. In this factory photo the engine has been painted and the cap and wires installed. Look closely and you can see that the top of the fuel pump (aluminum portion) is painted, but not the bottom bowl.
Nice pics Gary! Your '72 certainly got the full treatment. OT but can you imagine how much molten iron they were going through daily (think about all the cast parts) & what an amazing operation that must've been & then the machining & assembly of all those parts. Idk how many assy lines there were but IIRC Flint alone was 8 (incl. Big cars, Riv.) & then the GMAD plants, with each line needing another engine, rear, steering knuckles, steering box, etc. every minute or so.
If you have one of the engine books they talk about using “paint mules” to cover parts of the motor when it was painted. They also painted the engines differently depending on the model year, so if you are using original parts as a guide, you need to make sure the pieces are from your model year only. The fuel pumps had a “cup” installed on the bottom to keep the paint off. Again I have seen the distributors painted differently, but had a 70 unit with the upper half of the vacuum canister bare and the bottom half & distributor painted red. It almost looked like the paint mask rested on the top of the vacuum tube when the engine was painted. The water pump bypass hose & clamps also get painted red if you are trying to be exact. I have also seen where the lower bracket for the dash pot was red as well. Also depending on the year, the distributor cap will either have a patent number or will say patent pending. ,,,,,,,,and if you want to get really crazy, the oil filter would have been one of the white ones with the lettering and was then painted red as well. Plus the bottom of the oil filter would have been either smooth or have embossed writing on it, depending on the year. Yes if you want to, you can drive yourself crazy with all this. Duane
