Staggered shocks

[Carolina_Mountain_Mustangs]

Hello mustang68,

Nice! Good to have forum members who were actually there during the manufacturing process. Question, what did Ford do with the dies once the production run was over? We all know of the original tooling Label that some parts are made from. Are they purchased from Ford or their vendors who supplied parts?

Thank You!

mustang7173

I was a supplier to Ford for many years and at one time made parts for I think 15 different vehicles. The tooling is the property of Ford and when they go out of series production the tooling will go to a stamper that runs short runs for service. Not every part goes to a service part. At the end of a model they take a look and decide they will make say 500 of a part that goes to ecoat and then service.

The big use service parts like front end parts, due to crashes, run longer than say a roof would that is seldom replaced in a crash. When the tools go to service they are usually greased down and stored outside in the weather. They might get ran every couple years and when Ford decides that is enough they are sold for scrap. You can get a license with Ford to obtain the tooling and run parts and they get a percentage of your sales. Dennis Carpenter in Charlotte, N.C. does this some.

One of the largest if not the largest supplier of just service parts is Gerstenslager a division of Worthington in Ohio. A friend of mine worked there and they scrapped tooling like the induction hood for the Z-28 2 4-V set up. That hood is like gold now.

We also made lots of the Aluminum trim in the 60's and 70's we made ever grill for the Ford pickups. We shipped the tooling to a service parts stamper and had to scrap all our production samples. I tried to get them but was told the contract with Ford would not allow it. So NOS grills for every model pickup and van went to the crusher, 10s of thousands of dollars. That will make you cry if you love cars.

The prints for the parts was another thing that I wanted but they would not let me have and I was the engineering manager. A print for a T-bird quarter panel was about 20 feet in length and had all the views and dimensions of the part and all the engineering changes it went through listed. This was before CAD designs. I did manage to get I think the 63 galaxie and 64 galaxie grill prints. The drawings would have been great to hang on the wall in your garage. Now everything is CAD and printed drawings are consider uncontrolled documents.

Now to make you feel even worse when you go to buy parts or a car. In todays world most of the cars at Ford go for under $1,000 for a body in white. That is a body that the "Buck Tag" that we all know would be attached to. That is all the sheet metal that would go to the e-coat line to be dipped in primer. A front fender costs less that $15.00 and small parts are figured by a cost per stroke of the press. Parts like the plates for the staggered shock mounts would be maybe .10 ten cents a hit plus the cost of the material @ $.25 - $.35 a pound.

We stamped parts for lawn mowers on the same equipment as parts for Ford, BMW, Toyota.

I see the GMC ad on TV saying they make their trucks from "Rolled Steel". Well everyone makes everything that is a stamping from rolled steel. There are forgings and castings made from steel but pretty much all steel is rolled.

I know too much info but I need to write a shot paper on how the parts are tooled, produced and assembled.

David

 

[mustang68]

Hello mustang68,

Nice! Good to have forum members who were actually there during the manufacturing process. Question, what did Ford do with the dies once the production run was over? We all know of the original tooling Label that some parts are made from. Are they purchased from Ford or their vendors who supplied parts?

THANK YOU FOR NICE COMPLIMENTS.The plant I worked at put cosmoline on our DIES.(after a new model would come out) for storage outside.

We would some times bring them back in to stamp out service parts.That was a lot of work to clean all the DIES and getting a GOOD PANEL,three or four DIES to make a outer door skin. Production would have to "RUN AHEAD" to free up the presses to run service parts. Because of the size of DIES and the tonnage needed, we limited to certain presses that could be used. Outer door skins and quarter panels were needed for service parts, not floor pans or rails.

When I started working at the plant at the age of 18 there were over 5,000 employees, now there are around 700.. Larry

l

mustang7173

 

[Carolina_Mountain_Mustangs]

Sometimes the factory put things on that dont belong by mistake or because it didnt make a difference. My car has a sway bar mount on one side but not the other. It was not ordered on my car as an option but it did have the competition suspension option for automatic cars which does not include staggered shocks.

Anyways the upper shock mount on the car body will be the hard one to find, since it is welded to the trunk floor. If you dont care about originality you may be able to make a mount.

Proably easier to get some traction bars of cal-tracs

Since it was a warmer day today and some of the snow was gone I went and looked under the 72 Q vert. with C-6 that I just bought and it has staggered shocks. When I can get under I will see if the brackets on the floor were added or factory spot welds.

David

That's a great picture beautiful car beautiful background.

When I ordered a Maverick in 1971 they still did not have the V-8 as an option so I had the 250 6 cyl. in a grabber green one. You could get H.D. suspension on them for just $10.00 more. That gave you 5 lug wheels, better shocks and an 8" rear with heavier springs. Don't know why more did not have it for such a small price.

The competition suspension is listed on the window sticker of my 73 Mach 1 as a NC option. It was part of the Mach 1 package.

David