I had the chance to pick u pa NOS air cleaner for my 64 Starfire, but of course it is all in factory black paint. I am wondering what the correct colors are for this? I assume the base is chassis black. Was the top half a flat silver from the factory?

ALso, I see there are some replacement decals out there, some vinyl and some in aluminum. I assume the originals were aluminum attached with glue. I noted that the vinyl ones out there have 'Use Premium Fuel' but the metal ones do not. But seems I recall this fuel info was on the original metal decals? Anyone replaces these before? Thanks!

 

Whomever sold you a black painted air cleaner for a '64 Starfire , was either sadly misinformed or just plain dishonest .
Starfire air cleaners were finished in " unpolished chrome " . That is , a part would be chromed " as is " . With no effort to polish the part first , as would be done in a normal chroming process . Yes , the base was " chassis black "

 

Mmm maybe not dishonest. As it was an Ebay purchase by me, buyer beware, as they say. I also found it does not have the alignment tab and notch to line up the top onto the base. But, I really just needed the baseplate, since someone chopped the crap out of my current one to make room for a generic fuel line modification to the carb. So this base will fix that, and I can add a notch no problem. I suppose this part, 6419073, was perhaps for a 98, as the parts book just said 1964 394 with 4BBL.

As to the top, interesting fact about the chrome. I see a lot of these in all sorts of colors so good to know the original. If you were to restore this item, I suppose you could just polish it for that shiny look? How would you get back to an 'unpolished chrome' factory look?

 

I was going to try painting a set of valve covers with some of that "chrome look" paint that they have at Ace Hardware . Let you know how it turns out .
My air cleaner is chrome , so we'll see how close it matches .

 

1964 Starfire aircleaner/base and valve covers are painted silver. It's a "warm" silver.

The "pie pans" for the aircleaner decals are a thin aluminum and originals were silk-screened. I'd have to look at my 64s to be sure but they both have their original piepans and I think they have "Premium Fuel Only" on the pan. The "Ultra High Compression" ribbon is also on an aluminum backing.