Painting cowl vent area

[Mrbill426]

Is the cavity beneath the cowl screens supposed to be blacked out (flat?) or left body color?  It's a 1972 model.
Thanks

[anlauto]

I don't believe there is any cowl black-out in 1972. Those areas inside likely stayed darker due to lack of any paint coverage 

[Cuda Cody]

The year and color matter.  I think the black out cowl was a 1970 thing only, right?  And not on dark colors like EF8 (dark green), EB7 (dark blue) and black.   

[headejm]

There has been a couple of discussions on here in the past about blacking out the cowl area including the cavity where the wiper mechanism resides. I don't believe there is a definitive agreement on this. I've seen just as many 1970 E-bodies with blackout as without. My FC7 did not have the blackout so I did not add it when I recently had my car repainted. 

Update: SPD 508

[70/6chall]

My early built '70 Challenger has had the blacked out cowl area since it was new. The car is K2 Go-Mango, just saying. Thanks,   Al

[Burdar]

The cowl blackout was discontinued sometime during 1970 production.  No 71s-74s should have it.  With the screens on and that area being so close to the hood anyway, you'll never see body color down in the openings.

[RUNCHARGER]

FM3 didn't have it, I forget SPD (April probably) on this one although I have copies of the tag and sheet somewhere. My Oct 69 cars had it.

[mopar jack]

not an E body but my 71 road runner, built early August 1970 is blacked out.

[headejm]

The cowl blackout was discontinued sometime during 1970 production.  No 71s-74s should have it.  With the screens on and that area being so close to the hood anyway, you'll never see body color down in the openings.

Anyone know the SPD when the cowl blackout ended? @6bblgt ?

[6bblgt]

e-body cowl paint
1970 all year except TX9, EB7, EF8 (any deviation would be a mistake & s4it happened)

1971 RR & GTX had cowl paint with an "AIR GRABBER" hood

[6bblgt]

cowl blackout on my mid-July 1970 built 1970 FF4 Challenger R/T 

[Mrbill426]

Got it, perfect

The cowl blackout was discontinued sometime during 1970 production.  No 71s-74s should have it.  With the screens on and that area being so close to the hood anyway, you'll never see body color down in the openings.

[Mrbill426]

Thanks for the info guys! 

[GoMangoBoys]

We just painted ours the other day.  What we did was definitely not "correct", but we did what worked for us.  The cowl inside is black, the parts that might be visible through the vents are black, the rest of the cowl is body color.  I did not care for the "correct" randomly sprayed black that was done on the top of the cowls and we could not find anything definitive as to which cars got blacked out cowls.  We went with a body color cowl that does not have body color visible through the black vents.  Not correct, but what we wanted.