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Reply to "anyone have vintage engine compartment photos to share?"

Lee,

Don't ya hate it when hindsight is better than the foresight?????

A buncha years back, I had unfettered access to car #508. About 3 miles from my house........I failed badly in taking advantage of this!      One day I did go look at the car, the owner had a number of the bits off of the car, special early jackshaft holder, and some others........CRS at the moment.....    I thought I had some pictures, but this was likely in the times of no digital camera yet..... or perhaps it was just no camera!!!    What I do recall is looking at the dates on a 289 HiPo engine! I believe that they were the latest dates that I had ever seen on such an engine, with either late 67 or early 68 casting dates.  They did all line up with the dates on the dual point distributor and the correct hipo carb which was nice to see in that no one had bodgered this thing up with bogus parts yet!

Now the previous owner called this a "67 Goose" but I tried to refute this with simple window dates all showing 1968 manufacturing marks.......  "well the body was made in 1967..." is all I got back......!

I was thinking about your date difference......from smog valve to date that 1046 would have been built.....certainly later than April 1968.....! ( I believe that #878 had April 69 window dates largely.)

DeTomaso did a lot of rework to fit the pumps/valves to the cars...new bracketry and hoses... I suspect that these parts were removed from the engines as received from Ford or were shipped separately.    ( I never found a large batch of stock Mustang smog pump brackets or water pump pulleys at the factory....doesn't mean they weren't in a dusty old corner....but DeTomaso wasn't fast to throw old parts away....(different story!)....)   It would not surprise me that a number of these pumps were stacked away to be installed later/as needed, OR not at all.  I am guessing that air pumps were not needed in Europe, and likely these cars received air port plugs in the heads instead of air injection rails......but I haven't had enough exposure to Euro cars to know for sure what was done here. (We need more feedback on air pumps from Europe!)    So to have an "older" pump/valve installed on a newer engine wouldn't be out of line......

I can't see DeT leaving an engine (or a partially assembled car) sitting around for a year and a half in light of the production difficulties at Ford's engine plant......   BUT, stranger things have likely happened, including restamping of serial numbers etc......!      The true tell, would be the dates on the rest of the engine parts (and windows!) to give us the real story.

I've always advocated owners documenting casting/production dates from the engines and components as well as any dates found stamped into the Girling front/rear brake calipers.    A giant spreadsheet of this info would go a LONG way to proving or formulating any theories as you suggest.        Just a bugger that we need to build it backwards.... and some dates are just plain hard to get at....!

If there are sequence numbers ie stamped into ZF or engine intake, that would be nice to see also, but I suspect these are more random and couldn't be used to suggest much other than perhaps a "batch".....if they happened to be stamped all at once ie upon receiving them vs sequentially assigned to chassis under production as they rolled off the line??

"Justa inna time-a" was likely more like "whatta we gotta thatta we can use-a!"

"Just get it outta the door!"

Ciao!

Attachments

Images (3)
  • 100_0398: 508 front
  • 100_0396: 508 engine bay
  • DSCN1713: 507 rear view
Last edited by mangusta
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