here is the area in question
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as you can see , there is a difference between these grills . In 2008 , while working on her car , both sides of our 67 grill were broken like the pass side is . I found a good grill and was told it was a 68 grill ( the one with the gusset) . At the time , I couldn’t find a “68” pass side so I made a support out of aluminum for the orig grill. My real question is when did the casting change take place to add the support to the grill bar ?
There are several more differences. The headlamp door hinge has a relocated pivot for 1968 so the hinge will also not interchange. The wiring harness clips are different 67 versus 1968. The self tapping screws mounting the wiring harness clips are different from 1967 to 1968 - the 1967 screws are smaller diameter. In late 1968 model year (say mid July - August 1968) the connectors on the headlamp assembly wiring harnesses are revised to make the harness easier to install. The late 1968 version is pictured.
Thanks Royce…I was hoping youd chime in. Im guessing the mechanical changes were a 67 year end deal.
Would you say its ppretty hard to find a non cracked 67 grill vs a 68 grill. Obviously im not a purist( the first modification was the hardest ) so I guess my 67/68 grill combo will remain until the car goes away.
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The 1967 grilles typically crack near the center. 1968 grilles typically crack above and outboard of the low beam bulb. Both can be hard to find uncracked.
That gusset is not really a 67 thing completely!!! I have found 68 castings that still were not gusseted! SO until you remove the headlight shield around the bulbs, you won’t know what you have exactly… Although some of the other things pointed out here will also give you clues perhaps, but I don’t have access to that headlight casting at this time to say when all what started when, only that I’ve seen ungusseted main castings!
I have had thousands of them and never have seen one with a '68 part number and no gussets.
I’ve had tens of grills and found this one…! I guess of the thousands that you’ve had, none of them were the same as what I was surprised to see! Only takes one to prove your thousands as an incorrect assumption! Your probably only see Dearborn cars in your neck of the woods.
This grill half could still be on my son’s car…or buried in my spare parts. OR maybe it was on a grill that was already crushed and I was taking it apart to salvage what I could…pitched the rest in the trash! Donut recall!
You should know by now that Ford did all sorts of crazy stuff that defies normal logic… Nothing new here! Since I was living almost on top of the San Jose assembly site, it wouldn’t surprise me if there wasn’t another casting house that worked with pre-production pieces for the assembly plant! Maybe Dearborn shipped out some “pre” parts to keep the 68 cars rolling into early production…who knows.
Kinda like 67 Cougars with 68 part numbers on engine bits…yet the dates match the production dates of the car… These are real! Why not a 68 grill without a running change (the reinforcement)???
Wow! I went back to the shop to finish a transmission stand for a manual trans I want to store upright vs “trip on it” horizontal…and I decided to take a peek at the area where I knew there was a grill half… I was actually able to find the grill half and pull it out.
Imagine my surprise when it was a C8WY grill half with no reinforcement!!! To make it even more great… is that there was another grill half there, other side, that was exactly the same thing!!!
I had a third grill half but not pushing my luck and I couldn’t get it out without throwing my back out…it will wait! SO I snapped some pictures of the first piece I dug out. None of second piece as it was more of a PITA …needed parts removed and I didn’t have any tools with me.
SO, you’ll hafta believe these pic’s and that I have a matched set. My problem, is that I don’t recall acquiring a pair of grill halves anywhere…only singles…unless there was a pair in the trunk of the last 68 I sold,? Getting old is a bugger! Brain does cruel things!
Royce, here’s the proof. Believe it or not…but I’d bet you one of my mid engine Lincoln Mercurys that you are mistaken! Not all of the early 68 grills may have had the center reinforcement!
Cheers!
Steve
Hmmm how to post pic’s on this site…?
If you can blow up the second pic, you can see the C8WY in the center below the headlamps. If you compare the turquoise over spray on pic #2 with over spray in pic #4 hopefully you can believe that these pics are of the same grill half. Nothing to gain here by trying to mislead…after 41 years of helping people work on their Cougars, why start now?
That’s pretty weird. Maybe it has the relocated hinge point but not the reinforcement? I need to find an extra one to see if the part number is the same.
In the last photo of the previous post, l have looked closely and it appears to have a “68. type gusset” or web between the first and second vertical fin where it meets the upper horizontal bar. Not a great angle to view from and i have been wrong before
Having researched a number of Cougar parts I have found lots of changes occurring during the production run. Usually the end of the casting number has a letter showing the version progression. The first part may not have that letter or sometimes it is A. What follows may or may not get a new suffix. We found the suffix for quarter window trim going all the way to H. Some features were phased out and then later reintroduced.
I have found at least 6 changes in the 67 68 standard dash during the run. One reason some reproduction parts don’t fit is that they don’t take into account the different versions.
The C8WB-8150 is simply the “casting number”. The “part number” is what would appear in the Master Parts Catalog, and is also what would be stamped on the box that the grill was stored in! These numbers are hardly ever the same and in the MPC a “#” followed by some characters is to indicate an “as marked” value. ie A pulley may be stamped/marked simply C5AE-D but the part number in the books and on the box is something like C5AE-8512-E (Bogus numbers here folks, simply describing how Ford does it)
In this case there is no suffix on the casting number. Not unusual. What I do not understand is the other casting numbers and what they mean. SAE-H 67B-CT The SAE is Society of Automotive Engineering…an agency who’s job was to test auto parts for safety. The testing procedures can be extreme in terms of testing today’s electronic components, but not sure how this was applied to a headlamp assembly, or a sub piece. I have no idea where the “67B-CT” comes into play here. I know a guy who worked for a company doing SAE testing years ago…perhaps he can shed a sliver of light on this!
Cheers!
Steve
