Thanks, Chad. Now I'm curious if the few cars with original engine tags also have black painted intakes.
Believe we found that connection during the discussion in the prior version of this site (before the crash) Seems that the worker was not well instructed to exactly what was to be done or they forgot to tell him. Things were corrected in the next batch and consistent (in general) on those that followed.
Mistakes or individual screw-ups possible. That's the reason for your request
I know of 11 cars that had black painted intakes. 7 of them are known to have their original engine tags. The other 4 may or may not have their original tags. I have not been able to determine that yet. Either way, that's a pretty tight correlation considering that the overwhelming majority of 1965-66 GT350's did not have their original engine tags.
About your mention that a “
worker was not well instructed.” Is that an established fact? Or is that the best reasonable explanation offered to date? If it’s an established fact, would you please share the supporting evidence?
I ask because I have an alternate theory. I think the black painted intakes were installed by Ford at the Cleveland engine plant. And they had original engine tags because that was required of engines when they left that plant for tracking purposes. I don't think the workers installing engines at San Jose and other facilities tracked and installed engines based on the appearance of the engine. I think they worked based on the engine tags. So any engine installed by Ford would require an engine tag – at least when it rolled off the Ford assembly line.
For most of the 1965-66 GT350’s that tag was separated from the car when SA swapped the cast iron intake for the aluminum Cobra intake. A few (like 5s363) came through that process with their engine tags still there. But that was a rare exception. Probably caused by a tag simply sticking to the temperature sensor during the intake swap.
But the cars with black painted Cobra intakes from Ford didn’t required that swap at SA and therefore kept the engine tags that were on them when they rolled out of San Jose.
We may never know the full answer to this, but I think mine is a pretty good theory which is supported by the evidence that we have at this point in time.
If you think this is getting too deep for an open forum topic, you know my email address. I'd be happy to continue this offline if you wish.
Respectfully,
Steve Sloan