Front Sheetmetal--original paint/assembly order?

[Brad54]

This probably fits in the Original thread, but I don't remember seeing it there.
What was the assembly and paint order for the front end sheet metal.
Were the fenders, inner fenders, core support and grill surround assembled first and then painted black and body color, was the core support and inner fenders assembled and painted black, then the sheetmetal attached and painted, was it all painted separately and then assembled?

What about the hardware? Was the hardware painted, cad-plated, black-oxide finished or what?

-Brad

[Keith Seymore]

I'm not intimately familiar with 60-66, so take this with a grain of salt:

But for squarebodies, all of the metal which was received from the outside was already primed black. Color was sprayed on the show surfaces of the hood and fenders and then the wheel liners added (fenders were installed with the wheel house already attached). Front end sheetmetal was sprayed separately from the cab/box, sometimes at an entirely different location within the plant.

Additionally - there were two ways of assembling front end sheet metal to the vehicle: either "piecemeal (one piece at a time, starting with setting the rad support loose on the chassis) or "buck build" (the front clip or "doghouse" was assembled off line in a fixture and brought to the vehicle as a unit). The GM preference seemed to come and go, with some plants using one technique and some another. At Flint assembly, when I started, Line 2 (Blazer and Suburban) used the buck build technique and Line 1 (Pickup) was piecemeal. Same product, same plant, two different build processes.

Hardware varies based on which parts they were holding on. There were a few parts added before paint so those fasteners would get painted (for example, for those plants that added door latches in the cab shop). Usually the bolts are added after paint and so they would retain whatever finish they had: phosphate or cadmium or whatever.

K