As you may know I have several 69 big cars (including a Canadian 2+2). Despite having found an NOS nose and one nice used one on eBay over the years I still can't give all my cars a nice nose piece so I'm trying a new twist;building a sheetmetal shell to replace the original "rubber" mat'l. I took a completely crumbling core and chipped off all the rubber stuff to give me just the metal base, then we formed a top, bottom and vertical spine in 18g steel (my body guy is super crafty with sheetmetal) using a mint original nosepiece as a reference.
Should be ready for paint next week, going on my 2+2 which is ready and waiting for its spray of the lower body.
Here is the in progress nose as installed, looks very promising. I didn't like the fiberglass one because I wanted to replicate the lip where it meets the hood. There is a hollow and then a protruding lip that gives that nice finished look when the hood is closed.
x2 A lot of work, but worth it on such a prominent part.
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Prince Edward Island
'64 Parisienne CS "barn find" - last on the road in '86 ... Owner Protection Plan booklet, original paint, original near-mint aqua interior, original aqua GM floor mats, original 283, factory posi, and original rust.
The 2+2 is finally back in the garage after 9 months at the bodyshop. I told them there was no rush, they took me literally I guess! Anyhow very happy with the end result. Apart from the bottom corners of the front fenders there was zero rust in the car and no major collision damage but man this car had a thousand little dents and minor fender benders. The first shoot of the Burgundy was wrong so we reshot it with the correct color. All the jams are still factory paint. The stripes are as correct as I can get them; using the residual striping in the door jam, the factory assembly manual, brochure illustrations and some old pics of a original paint gold 2+2 we did our best to replicate the front and rear extremities. The rear tapers straight line as it goes back and wraps around the bumper scallop. The front also tapers but it has a curve right up front to a point. Short of finding some NOS pieces this is as close as anyone can come for now.
I can see why the original owner order the Palladium Silver two tone, it matches the stripe colors and even the top white pin matches the interior color (factory 2+2 stripes had the top stripe contrasting the other two)
We had to custom blend the burgundy color, the PPG formula is way way off. We had the manager mix another pint and he came up with the identical (wrong) color. Here is the PPG Burgundy as compared to the color chips in my original 69 Showroom Sales Album. BTW, the factory paint in the Jams matches the factory color chips beautifully so we used them as a guide to do the custom remix.