I have come up with a confusing question, does anyone know about the sump on a HK GTS 327? Surely Chevrolet plants did not install sumps on Australian built cars or did they? In other words were the sumps on 327 engines manufactured here or in the USA?

No doubt they would have tested the motors in the USA and Canada, but does anybody know if Holden changed the sumps in Australia to fit into HK GTS 327 Monaro's or were the sumps ordered in a certain configuration and made as a special order for HK GTS 327 Monaros or were the sumps off another USA car that worked on the HK GTS 327 Monaro's.

That's great information and totally reasonable, it starts to make more and more sense that there is no way Holden would have painted any of the HK 327 engines unless in extreme circumstances which we wont speculate about. We can also assume the gearboxes and bellhousings were also painted in the US and Canada at the time and there would be no need for Holden to do any painting of any of these parts. This brings us to another point, and that is the rams horn exhaust manifolds.

Now I notice that on the cover of the Scientific Publication they are painted the same colour as the engine, but in most cases these are just press photographs that should not really be used as a correct reference because a photographer of publicity executive would have had precedence over what was depicted on the cover to sell the books, if they thought the rams horn manifolds looked better painted for a cover of a book or magazine than that's what they got.

The question is does anybody know without doubt whether the rams horns were painted or not, I have three sets here and none have a spec of paint on them, not that that means anything on an exhaust manifold, but it doesn't make sense that an engineering company as big as GM's would think its a good idea or even allow to paint the rams horn exhaust manifolds sounds like a recipe for an engine fire.

Here is Tonawanda engine plant in 1959 in the 2nd and third photos, the bottom three photos are at a VAP - two of them in that VAP's engine dress. The top photos is also at a VAP with transmissions being attached to engines.

https://euclidsbridge.wo...da-engine-plant-c-1959/

Also have a read here. Will take you a good half hour. The basic process for HK was the same, just ignore the bits about when and where tags and VIN were attached. Plus as far as I am aware HK V8 were not body dropped. When you get to the Chassis-to-body at Van Nuys you can see the painted Camaro log exhaust manifold, these are 1968 or 1969 engines.

http://www.camaros.org/assemblyprocess.shtml

Edited by user Thursday, 25 November 2021 6:38:32 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

The gearboxes were attached here and sometimes painted. Different between Australian VAP’s too, pretty sure Dandenong left them raw. I doubt it was much different to the US setup where gearboxes were attached soon after engine dress.

They had to be painted here, remember some plants painted them and some didn't. Same with the HK-HG M20 4spd. I have personally pulled apart untouched 253 M21 HT or HG and the boxes were raw, and a lot of Dandenong V8 HK cars have turned up the same. Yet Pagewood looks to have painted the box once attached to the bellhousing.

Smitty will attest to a lot of this as he worked for GMH. All engines, all boxes came from the same source in Australia. Same with all mechanical parts. All imported stuff came through the same source within Australia. Even the paint came from the single origin. The whole notion people have come up with the years that BAP and VAP sourced stuff locally is just fiction. GMH appropriated everything under single contracts for economy of scale reasons. The stuff they built themselves was either built in the Victorian engine plant or made/assembled (or pressed) at Woodville, plus a number of other smaller facilities. Anything they cast came from their one foundry location. Anything they bought in from Australian suppliers was all sourced from the one supply source by whomever had the contract at that time. BAP's and VAP's simply put it all together, with the logistics looked after by head office. All the local plants had to do was supply power, labour, air, water and natural gas. They didn't press anything, they didn't really fabricate anything other than sew up trim in the local trim shop. Everything was supplied to the VAP's as dictated by the schedule and it was all send either from Woodville or Fisherman's bend. I know this is in broad terms, and there will have been variations where it made sense (like if the supplier was in Sydney or Brisbane they may have sent the required bits directly rather than ship to South Australia or Victoria and back again).

As for BAP and VAP variations in how they did things, well it will simply be a combination of the age of the plant and historical reasons. You can see in that Camaro article that Van Nuys and Norwood did the chassis to body join differently. I saw similar variations between BHP Newcastle and BHP Kembla in how they operated their BOS - it was simply an age and historical difference. In HK you see it in when and where the tags were attached in the build process. Or how Pagewood and Dandenong painted the front panels with the body in the BAP, whereas Elizabeth painted the front panels in the VAP. Remember Pagewood was the oldest plant by the time HK came around, and they kept following their old established ways. Whereas Acacia Ridge was brand new and built very differently to the others. This was the 60's. Communication was by phone or Telex or post. You can fly to Singapore from Sydney today faster than you could have driven to Melbourne in 1968. The Internet wasn't even made public until 1969, and the World Wide Web that people incorrectly call the Internet today didn't exist until 1991 and not really used to much extent until the later 90's. Co-ordination of production schedule and thus inventory to meet that schedule was done by mainframe and mainframe access communicating via low speed modems. So there was no real means to make all VAP locations do things identically, and there was little reason to do so. In the capital cities most cars would be sourced locally, and 99% of people would never notice that this car had a painted body tag but that one is nude, or that GTS327 has a raw gearbox but this one is painted. Once the cars were 12 months old and out of warranty GMH didn't give a damn, the only money they would make out of the cars after that was to supply parts for another few years and get a kickback from GMH dealer licencing.

Both of them look totally wrong colour to me.

I have now done some samples of the KBS Rocket Red and some comparisons of this paint to the Duplicolor Paint Cans and also my original paint 327 Engine. The outcome is no real surprise, I have tried to photograph all of these colour in the best light situation to show the shades, but from my point the Duplicolor Chevrolet Orange still looks to be the closest match

Below is a sample board of the four colours, the two top colours are the Duplicolor Chevrolet Orange at the top followed by the Duplicolour Chevrolet Orange Red underneath, then the third one down is the KBS Rocket Red which is the same colour as the Duplicolor Chevrolet Orange Red and then the bottom colour is what is advertised on ebay as X2 Red.



Below is the paint can from KBS known as Rocket Red



I have added below a few pictures of my bellhousing, the first picture shows a KBS Rocket Red and Duplicolor Chevrolet Orange Comparison



The rest of these photographs are of my oil pump housing, various angles and colours, but looking at it in person the chevrolet Orange is the closest.



The final photo below is of the head, again Chevy orange vs Rocket Red



I would say that if anyone painted their GTS 327 engines Duplicolour Chevrolet Orange, Duplicolour Chevrolet Orange Red, or KBS Rocket Red everyone would have a hard time seeing the difference, unless they were side by side.

If anyone's interested.
I had my type.2 327 paint colour matched and they got it spot-on.

My bellhousing still had plenty of good original paint applied by McKinnon Industries in the later half of 1968.
Also found a good sample area on the original 68 date coded harmonic ballancer, and most of the timing cover had original paint in near mint condition also.

This late 68 McKinnon red colour is far redder (if that's a word) than DE1620 and no match to Dupli-color DE1607.

As for the X2 and the Rocket-Red on the 1968 Dulon G.M.H colour advisory page?
Nope, no match to either of them, and not close. Dont know how accurate those sheets really were.

So anyway I'm now convinced there were at least two, and more than likely many different GM engine reds.

Get your original bits colour matched.

I'm calling it McKinnon RED.

Wayne

Edited by user Sunday, 7 July 2024 10:39:30 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified