Body serial number location

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Belliott3
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Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2019 7:44 pm
First Name: Bill
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* REQUIRED* Type and Year of Model Ts owned: 1916 Model T Touring
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Body serial number location

Post by Belliott3 » Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:13 am

I was wondering when the stamped body numbers first appeared on the front floor risers and how long they continued. Also, can you please post some photos of actual stampings? The one I’ve included is from a 1917 touring, but it appears to be stamped onto metal, when I always thought the riser area was typically wood?
12FBA6FC-5A62-4CD5-95B3-C84F496A832E.jpeg


Wayne Sheldon
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* REQUIRED* Type and Year of Model Ts owned: 1915 Runabout 1913 Speedster
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Re: Body serial number location

Post by Wayne Sheldon » Sat Mar 25, 2023 5:44 pm

What I do know, is that both wooden and steel front floorboard risers were used on runabouts and touring cars from about 1915 through about 1922, and maybe even later or earlier? Ford themselves did not begin building bodies from scratch until about 1916 or 1917. part of the difference had to do with who built the body! It also seems to have varied within specific body suppliers, probably to do with the rush to complete bodies and whatever was most readily available. And even when Ford was building bodies inhouse, they continued to acquire many of them from outside suppliers.

I don't think anybody has done a serious statistical analysis of how many wooden versus steel floorboard risers were used, by whom, or when? I would sure be interested in seeing something like that. I know there is a lot of confusion over what is or isn't right when. The simple fact is that both methods were used for quite a number of years!

My 1915 runabout, for whatever it is worth, has the steel risers under the forward floorboards. It, however, is not a good sample to use as a data point. The body is a real early 1915 style, however it was separated from its original chassis and went through numerous hands with varying attempts to restore or hot rod it! While it is a real 1915, a few things did get changed on it, and there was good evidence that the forward floorboard risers were not original to the car. The right front riser does have numbers stamped into it, and looks like yours. However, the body also had the original date coded serial number on a steel plate held with original very rusty nails on the original dry-rotted wooden sills (I still have the remains of the sill with the rusty nail holes in it!). The original steel plate is mounted in the same spot as on the original sill.

Model T open car bodies that era of the model T can be interesting, or infuriating! I think someone could easily gather up twenty touring cars from about five years of production, all looking alike. And yet between the floorboard and seat riser differences, not have any two actually the same!


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* REQUIRED* Type and Year of Model Ts owned: 1922 Coupe
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Re: Body serial number location

Post by Been Here Before » Sat Mar 25, 2023 7:40 pm

------"Auto Industries" of 12 October 1922 (p 748) carried the following story, ' Rouge Plant Builds Most of Ford Bodies (Detroit 9 October).' The article states Ford is now building all bodies for its models (cars?) at the River Rouge Plant. The reason was the termination/sale of the Beaudette Company, Pontiac, Michigan to Fisher Bodies. The Beaudette Company, according to the 1922 article, built roadster bodies for Ford.

The Rouge plant now (1922) build 800 bodies daily in house. The Phaeton and all two-door sedans are built at Rouge River. The phaeton bodies are built in numbers of 3015 daily, with an average of 2650 daily. Sedans (bodies) are manufactured at 900 daily.

Bodies for Coupes and the new four door sedan bodies are manufactured by the Briggs Company and not by Ford. These two styles are low production (1922) cars averaging 5000 daily. The Ford Company is manufacturing 400 to 500 light trucks daily. --------

My question is, as information from the Henry Ford for the 1920's is spotty, if the attached 1922 coupe is a Brigg's body as the "Auto Industries" of 12 October 1922 would indicate, would B 21 indicate a body built in 1921 be the 1922 model year? Of course McCalley (p464) indicated that for 1922 197,988 coupes were build in the United States. With (?) 16,404 converted from chassis (?).

Certainly to keep up with production demands these bodies would have to have been pre-constructed.

My question is an attempt to understand if a stamping B 21 (space) **** means that the body was from a 1921 production run. For this discussion the coupe has an engine number indicating June 1922.

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