FE-FC Holden Discussion Forum

Were FE/FC's painted the body colour or black underneath, or were there some painted both ways?
Cheers,
Graham ;)

Hi Graham,

My 56 FE's (Sydney Build) are painted the body colour underside and body colour to whole of engine bay.
Incidently, the steering columns are also painted body colour.  It appears that later cars, especially FC'c have the steering column painted black.
Cheers,

Geoff_K

Hey Graham.
My car (FC May'58 ) was painted body colour underneath and all engine bay.
Regards
Alex

so is mine but it is a black car anyway,so was probably easy for them

Hi Guys,
From the cars I've seen (mostly FC's), including my '59, the bodies were dipped in the dark grey/black, which went about 1/2 way up the side & doors. Then when they were painted, they had a lot of overspray (underspray??) of body colour under the sides. When they have many years of mud, grease, etc built up, it appears as though they are body colour. When you clean the crap off, it is just overspray. I know FB's & EH's are the same, and because there was no great change in the way they were painted, I presume the other models were the same.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Graham.

Hi Guys,
Graham comments that the cars were dipped black/grey to half way up the doors.
My 56 FE (Desert Tan, Sydney Build) is so hungry for paint that I don't believe it saw black/grey dipping at all.
When I took the doors off, many hidden areas from the sill up to the roof have no paint at all (I'm surprised it has any metal at all left: only I know the car spent 27 years garaged at Mangoplah; 3 years in the weather; and 18 years garaged in Liechhardt)
I think Sydney was so rushed at pushing the car along the line that it probally only got one coat of paint, and that coat of paint was applied about 5 minutes before they fitted the door trim, as the door trims were stuck to the doors in places with wet paint.  The wet paint patches occurr on 3 door trims, in several places on each trim.
No trace of undercoat, but when the shell goes to the blasters shortly I will get a second opinion!  No wonder they rusted.

Cheers,

Geoff_K

This is variable over the models.  I am almost 100% that 1956 FE's were painted underneath but that it was cut back as a cost saving measure later on. I can't really say when, but agree with Graham that late FC's were black underneath with some overspray.
There are so many variables for individual cars that looking at one or even six cars only is not enough to make a judgement.
Busy weeks, quite weeks, Friday cars, apprentice painters, different plants, different managers - all work together to mean that some cars could have very little body colour paint or lots of body colour paint underneath.
Ken

looking at the pictures in the 'Old Holden Top 100', I gett eh impression that FE front subframes, under the mudguard, are body coloured.  Dunno about under the floor though.

G'DAY,I JUST FINISHED TAKING MY SUB-FRAME OFF TONIGHT IT ONLY HAS BODY COLOUR ON THE INSIDE OF THE ENGINE BAY AND BLACK UNDERNEATH IT AS FOR THE FLOOR IT APEAR'S TO BE BLACK TOO.BUT THE INSIDE FLOOR PAN IS RED LEAD AND THE UNDER DASH(PEDAL /HEATER/FEET) EREA IS TWO TONE SAME AS THE REST OF THE CAR.I SCRATCHED A BIT OFF AND IT TOO HAS THE RED LEAD TREATMENT,HOPE THIS MAY HELP TO FIND A CONCLUSION OH YEH IT'S A FE- 58  FOR THE RECORD.AS MINE IS A SYDNEY CAR TOO THEY MUST HAVE HAD A FAIR BIT OF TIME TO MASK IT UP  I'LL TELL YA BECAUSE IT'S TWO TONE ALMOST EVERYWHERE.THAT'S MY COMMENT ANYWAY,UNTIL THEN(COL58FE) ;)

Well for what its worth, I was under mine yesterday fitting chassis rails. When I hit the under side of the floor with the wire brush to clean a bit of the mud and sh#t off. The floor was same as body colour except for r/h/r its yellow, but its a rust repair by last owner. Mine is a FE Specail Sedan 1957.

Regards
Sarge

My car was a July 1959 FC totally original and untouched.After pressure cleaning and scrubbing with detergent and scrubbing brush underneath it revealed a total black floor withheaps of overspray from the sills and firewall . Atotal paintstrip revealed a dark coloured undercoat following a diagonal line on the rear quarterswhich , a factory photo from Graham from ACT confirmed happened as the body was removed from the dip of "rustproofing". Under the rear wheelarches carried a lot of overspray as well .

Neil,
I'll find that photo & try to work out how to post it up here for all to see.

Cheers,

Graham.