I purchased two fenders and a hood made with the original Ford tooling for my 66 FB. I feel fairly confident that they will fit better than the other fenders and hoods that can be bought. I checked the finish and found one fairly large outboard and several other ripples and flaws. I know I can fix the defects but was wondering what everybody else thought about the Ford tooling panels. I work at a place that stamps and assembles body parts for Ford, Mercedes, Chrysler and BMW. If we sent parts out that had the quality of these Ford tooling panels they would be sent back and the customer would be very upset. I saw a front end clip made of these parts at the 40th Anniversary show outside of Nashville. My parts would take quite a bit of work to look as good as those did. These parts aren't cheap and I just thought that they should be better than they are.
ORIGINAL FORD TOOLING SHEET METAL
- Thread starter danny clemens
- Start date
CraigMBA
New Member
You're not wrong. You have to rework the Ford restamps too.
They are WAY BETTER than the import options.
They are WAY BETTER than the import options.
If your company would produce sheet metal similar in quality of what Ford produced back in the sixties, customers would probably complain too. Since tooling tends to wear out, the quality of the new "Original Tooling" parts may be worse compared to what they made in the sixties.
I like quality as much as anybody else, but on the other hand, we're really quite spoiled with all the Mustang parts available for very reasonable prices, even if the quality may not always be perfect.
I like quality as much as anybody else, but on the other hand, we're really quite spoiled with all the Mustang parts available for very reasonable prices, even if the quality may not always be perfect.
65FBE2
Member
I can only speak for the front fenders, but I called Tony Branda Inc. and asked if it was worth the extra money for the Ford tooling fenders and they said only if you are doing a concourse resto. I bought the import fenders from them and was very happy! I do not know how many different import manufacturer there are so all the imports may not be the same. I spent 10's of thousands (code just to keep the wife at bay) on the body on my car and would not have gone cheap on the fenders with out a reliable reference. Even the restration shop that did the body work was amazed at the fit as they see alot of poor quaility panels in thier business
The dies do wear because you can sometimes tell the difference from one press run to another. The company that I work for has tooling people that work on the dies whenever necessary. They can fix a flaw and make a part better. The people that own the Mustang tooling could do the same. A low production process like the Mustang parts shouldn't wear a die very quickly. Maybe I expected too much. The reason that I ordered these panels is because about 10 or 12 years ago I bought some of the Tawain sheetmetal for my son's car and it wasn't very good. Especially the fenders. It sounds as though the other panels have improved in quality.
i just purchased a pair of the orig ford tooling fenders from laural mountain mustang and i am very pleased with them i do have to tweak the upper corner near the windshield post but other then that i am very pleased with them . i also have purchased the cheap aftermarkets and the fit and thickness was terrible.
