engine compartment dressup decals

Looking for engine compartment decal for emissions decal. I painted the core support and scraped off the emissions decal "oops" now cant find one,any one have a suggestion on where to get one ,,,car is a 1973 Buick Regal 350 4bb w/air none GS. [ATTACH=CONFIG]304063[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]304064[/ATTACH]

A nice car!

At one point in time, like about 30 years ago, these decals were not really "sought after", even for collision repairs when the core support was replaced. IF we had the part number printed on the decal, we could manually call GM and ask if they could "pull the file" on that part and fax us the image of the decal on file. This meant that somebody would have to physically find the file, copy it, and then fax it to us. It took a while for it to happen. When we got the fax, it was "low-resolution" (as many faxes were back then), so it was somewhat cryptic in nature . . . and "black and white". It WAS something we could offer the customer (generally trying to figure out the vacuum hose routing under the hood), but it was not as nice as I might have liked. Still, better than nothing. Given the age of the vehicle, I don't suspect such requests could be done in that manner any more. Which leads to other options . . .

Sometimes, some of the service literature would have some of those decal reproductions in them. "Advance Information" type of service manuals, before the formal manuals were shipped to the dealers a month of so later. Possibly an "emissions system" publication for that model year, other than the normal service manual. These would all be in "black and white", though.

IF you can find a similar vehicle (same engine, trans, emissions standards), then you might be able to get a picture of the decal and go from there.

Unfortunately, those "decals" dried-out and would disintegrate with time, age, and engine heat. Later ones were more durable. I put several light coats of "clear battery protector spray" on one and it held up very well.

You might try some of the Buick repro decal vendors. It's possible that some have expanded their lines to include the emissions decals. Again, they'd have to match the engine and such to be accurate.

There is a thread in these AACA forums on how a poster restored an early Pontiac speedometer by using a picture, a picture-manipulation/editing program, and then printed a "water-slide decal" for his speedometer face. It's quite interesting and you might get some ideas from it.

Take care,

NTX5467

See http://www.classicbuicks.com/emissions_decals_tags.html - they show a BU for 1973. With the image you have, they may be able to make the correct one if they haven't already.

Good luck.