[DeTomaso] Earliest Outside Gas Filler ?

[MikeLDrew at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/26/07 19 10 27, 6d9gt500 at comcast.net writes:


> This car was owned by a Ford/Lincoln Merc dealer new.. to 1992 or so. 
> Attempted to contact him...
> with no response. The changes are well done.. not some hack job. So, I think 
> he looked at the later cars and told his service dept to bring it to spec. I 
> like the fuel door.. seems to get all you guys fired
> up !!
> 

That's my suspicion too.   It's interesting to note that he didn't attempt to 
mount the front turn signals 'properly' when he installed the front bumper.   
The L-models mounted the turn signals in metal pods which were welded to the 
front valance panel; your car appears to have the turn signals just hanging 
from the underside of the bumper.

Did he mount the bumpers on the hydraulic rams?   I wouldn't be surprised if 
they are simply bolted in place, rather than mounted using the factory system 
on the L-models.   Making them fully functional would be quite a big job, on 
an early car which lacked the structure underneath to support the hydraulic 
rams.

Ford's Technical Service Bulletin #14 has an article which details how to 
retrofit the outside-fill fuel door to an early car.   The first line is "The 
external fuel filler introduced in production in April, 1973 can be retrofitted 
to earlier models."   The procedure is several pages long, and ends with a list 
of all the necessary retrofit parts.

In any event, even though it has a bunch of anomalies, yours looks to be a 
great car!

Mike


**************************************
Check out AOL's list of 2007's 
hottest products.

(http://money.aol.com/special/hot-products-2007?NCID=aoltop00030000000001)