Trim?

Hello boys and girls,

Some of our cars have lots of shiny trim around the wheel wells and along the side (am I missing any?) and some have none.

I bought mine without but I have a feeling it used to have trim. How can I find out if my car had trim like this? Should my marti report say anything about this?

Thanks,

Vince.

My coupe has chrome wheel arch trims and body side trim. Had a look on my Marti report and only thing it could be is "appearance protection group" perhaps? Maybe look inside the doors or front of rear quarters for signs of holes being plugged up?

Hello boys and girls,

Some of our cars have lots of shiny trim around the wheel wells and along the side (am I missing any?) and some have none.

I bought mine without but I have a feeling it used to have trim. How can I find out if my car had trim like this? Should my marti report say anything about this?

Thanks,

Vince.

Click to expand...

Vinnie,

You need to go look through the Facts book for the 73 mustang. I think if you got the Decor group it deleted the wheel opening bright molding along with the rocker molding. If you got just the regular you got the rocker molding and wheel lip moldings. I can not say for sure when you got the molding so go look at the Facts Book. I think they are scanned in the Data or fun Stuff pull downs.

Finding the wheel opening molding NOS is tough and I am told the repo ones just do not fit.. I have a set of the rocker moldings for a project but have not tried to install so cannot speak to the fit yet.

The appearance protection package got you a spare tire lock that most got tossed. I have one on my Mach 1.

My Marti report doesn't mention any packages. Now I have a 73 but the 71 facts book says that a "standard" grande should have wheel well and rocker moldings. Makes sense coz there are holes for them in my car I believe...

My Marti report doesn't mention any packages. Now I have a 73 but the 71 facts book says that a "standard" Grandé should have wheel well and rocker moldings. Makes sense coz there are holes for them in my car I believe...

Click to expand...

I think your car has been modified to have the decor group/ Mach 'look' and the other items have been removed.  The previous owner changed the color of your car and added the black lower body color and stripe. Your car still has the chrome around the headlights ( with the decor group they are black ) . Since the decor group is not on the Marti report, my conclusion is that the car originally came with the rocker and wheel moldings, but didn't have the lower black and stripe...  I also think the grille has been changed to have the decor/Mach look.

The car has been repainted (not too great...) by a previous owner. it used to be saddle bronze. Some day I want it to be that colour again. The hood ain't original either i reckon. The grille never occured to me, thanks for mentioning that. So I might start looking for trim and grille...

Marketing Material was often incorrect. But here is a page from ford.

http://mustangattitude.com/cgi-bin/showcar.cgi?type=show&pic=/1973/1973_00087_06

The text would indicate wheel moldings. But two of the three pictures do not show this. You might be able to see if the holes are still in the wheel moldings. I doubt someone would take the time to cover them up.

Thanks for that Mike! I think I can see a bit of trim just infront of the pass. front wheel in the top left pic. I actually have holes in the edges of the wheel wells. Haven't checked the rockers.

I searched for holes last night and could only see the ones in the wheel wells but none in the rocker panels. Anybody know how they are attached and where any holes should be?

I searched for holes last night and could only see the ones in the wheel wells but none in the rocker panels. Anybody know how they are attached and where any holes should be?

Click to expand...

Vinnie,

There was a discussion about this a while back that I remember. Pretty sure the trim holes in the rear wheel quarter panels came on all cars whether or not it got the molding. I do not remember what the conclusion was on the fender holes though.

Jeff

I do think that all cars came with the holes for the wheel well trim. For the press shop to do die changes and to keep track of multiple part numbers would not make sense especially the front fenders being the same on all models. You could get the wheel trim on fastback but not Mach 1 so I expect to see the holes in the Mach 1 quarters also. It would be difficult for line workers to align the trim and put self tapping screws in on the line. So the holes are there to speed things up and also align the trim correctly.

The rocker moldings are held on with trim clips and a couple nuts on studs in the trim clips. Those holes would be specific to model and could not be in all parts. The build tag or Buck tag would tell you the story on that. Anything that had to go into the body during build for say spoiler, mirrors, trim packages that required extra holes, air conditioning. So I am not up to speed on the codes on the Buck tag but there are threads on the forum that cover it.

Vinnie, your Grande came standard with rocker panel and wheel opening moldings. The Exterior Décor option was restricted to base hardtops and convertible only. There are repo wheel opening and rocker panel moldings available now. Our ace in the hole Don (OMS) would be the one I would check with first to get an honest answer on quality and fit. I have found some OE moldings but you don't want to know the costs. Very $$$$$! The original Ford moldings included attaching hardware and from what I've seen the repo do also.

As David posted, the fenders and quarter panels all had the screw holes for the wheel opening moldings. This was done to cut down on parts complexity and possible delays on the production line. Each station only had seconds to perform their task and having to drill holes and mount the moldings would have been to much of a bottleneck on the line. I have a NOS fender for Money Pit #2 (Red Mach1) and it has the screw holes in it.