The Ford Barn - View Single Post - So when would my car actually have been made?

rotorwrench · 02-15-2020, 10:07 AM

Three months is likely very accurate about most time any component would be delayed for production. Charles Sorensen mentioned that a full one half of Fords storage for assembly was in rail road box cars delivering the sub assemblies to the branch plants. Engines were moved in big cradles that held them vertically to make them easier to move on and off the rail cars. After the engines were removed from rail cars, they went into a temporary storage area where they were stacked up and units were taken to the line by some form of conveyor one unit after the other for assembly line installation. The order they were kept in was not controlled so nothing went together with numerical order. If there was a slow down in production for one reason or another, things could get stacked up a bit and cause delay in use of items that would have been at the back of the stack.

All US production Ford engine assemblies were stamped at the Rouge plant after they passed the test station but they went all over the country at varying speed and distances to destination. Delays can happen with the rail lines too at times. With Ford manufacturing over a million cars a year, there wouldn't have been much room for things to set around. Most of the old timers that passed on information about this stuff back in the early years of the restoration hobby agreed that 3-months would be about the longest period any assembly may have been pigeon holed before it was used up.

This makes it much more likely that a replacement engine was installed in the car at some point. The frame number, under the left front corner of the body, will tell the tale for certain. That's where the engine number was stamped on the frame the day the original engine was first installed in the frame.

With model A cars being popular for restoration for so long, it's also possible that a later body can be mated with an earlier frame & engine or the other way around. I've seen this happen before. The model A frames are all so similar that they can easily be made to work on any year of body.

02-15-2020, 10:07 AM	#10
rotorwrench Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: San Antonio, Texas Posts: 16,425	Re: So when would my car actually have been made? Three months is likely very accurate about most time any component would be delayed for production. Charles Sorensen mentioned that a full one half of Fords storage for assembly was in rail road box cars delivering the sub assemblies to the branch plants. Engines were moved in big cradles that held them vertically to make them easier to move on and off the rail cars. After the engines were removed from rail cars, they went into a temporary storage area where they were stacked up and units were taken to the line by some form of conveyor one unit after the other for assembly line installation. The order they were kept in was not controlled so nothing went together with numerical order. If there was a slow down in production for one reason or another, things could get stacked up a bit and cause delay in use of items that would have been at the back of the stack. All US production Ford engine assemblies were stamped at the Rouge plant after they passed the test station but they went all over the country at varying speed and distances to destination. Delays can happen with the rail lines too at times. With Ford manufacturing over a million cars a year, there wouldn't have been much room for things to set around. Most of the old timers that passed on information about this stuff back in the early years of the restoration hobby agreed that 3-months would be about the longest period any assembly may have been pigeon holed before it was used up. This makes it much more likely that a replacement engine was installed in the car at some point. The frame number, under the left front corner of the body, will tell the tale for certain. That's where the engine number was stamped on the frame the day the original engine was first installed in the frame. With model A cars being popular for restoration for so long, it's also possible that a later body can be mated with an earlier frame & engine or the other way around. I've seen this happen before. The model A frames are all so similar that they can easily be made to work on any year of body. Last edited by rotorwrench; 02-15-2020 at 10:16 AM.