Anyone know the stock color on the bracket that holds the smog pump and AC pump on my 67 327 engine? I thought mine was black originally but I stripped it down today (through the current black and the blue (long story)) and found orange..??? Is it orange or black?

Thanks in advance.

Eric

Black I believe. Since it was installed at final assembly time and not when the engine was assembled, it'd be black. Anything supplied with the engine itself from Flint or Tonawanda would be painted orange, anything added at final assembly would be black - and that would include all the brackets and braces with the exception of the rear alternator adjustment brace on the L79 engine.

I'm not the one to answer questions about 67's, but the 68 BB smog bracket was bolted to the block at the engine plant, so it was orange. It can be seen in my sig picture below.

Could that be because K19 was still, technically, an option in 66 & 67 but standard fare on 68s? RPO K19 is in the 66 & 67 factory assembly instruction manuals but not in the 68 manual?

Correct, there's no K19 that I've ever heard of for 68. The smog pump bracket was installed at Tonawanda, with all the 68 big block codes, except the EK and ET blocks.

On a 67 small block, the A.I.R. (smog) pump lower bracket (the one that is held on by the top water pump bolt and two intake bolts) should be orange. It was installed on the engine at the engine plant, before orange painting. See Section K19, page A5, of your 1967 'velle assembly manual. See also the two attached pictures, which are of my unrestored original paint and interior 1967 Camaro SS 350. Engine has never been out of the car.

Also note that if your car has A/C, then the upper waterpump bolt that goes through this bracket should not be orange. The engine shipped with a stud there (for the neg. battery cable), which would have been painted orange. But on an A/C car the stud and a spacer (behind the smog pump bracket) were removed, and the AC bracket went in the hole where the spacer was, and a regular bolt went in in place of the stud. All that happened at the car assembly plant, so the A/C bracket and the replacement bolt are not orange.

Regarding the question above about A.I.R. being an option in 67, bear in mind that the 66-67 A.I.R. engines have a different suffix code than non-A.I.R. engines. So it would not matter if A.I.R. was just an option on the car or not, because the A.I.R. engine assembly (as shipped from the engine plant) was different from a non-A.I.R. engine assembly regardless (different exhaust manifolds, different RH valve cover in some cases, and addition of some of the A.I.R. bracketry in some cases).

I would speculate that the reason this particular bracket was installed at the engine plant was because of the involvement with the two intake bolts. The engineers may not have wanted those bolts being removed by the car assembly plant for attachment of the bracket, due to the specified order that the bolts are supposed to be torqued on the intake, sealing issues, etc.