Date stamp on gas tanks

[Bob Johnson]

I just responded to a question about when the 68A (Cabriolet) switched to folding top irons. While researching that I found something interesting. The gas tank date stamps had overlap in dates. The dates for the early cars ranged from 4/18/29 to 7/18/29. Whereas the later cars had dates from 5/2/29 to 11/5/29. The 68A also had Briggs body tag numbers. There was no overlap with these numbers. The early car had numbers from 2667 to 4786 and the later car had numbers from 5567 to 20830.

This could suggest that the Briggs body tag numbers were put on as the cars were assembled. So they are in chronological order with respect to when the body was built. But the gas tank dates overlap suggesting that the dates were put on the cars at the assembly plants when the body was mated to a chassis.

Unfortunately the number of cars with body tags is limited, 5 early and 17 late. So this might be due to not enough data.

What do you think?

Bob

 

[Marco Tahtaras]

How many tanks are within each end of the overlap? One or two can easily be tank swaps during restoration. With that said, I'd expect SOME mix of tank dates. I'm confident the tanks were date stamped when Ford shipped them to Briggs. Now we have to consider "first in, last out" possibilities as well as cowls assembled ahead and a potential mix there. Briggs was also building other models so there is no telling how the tanks were distributed.

 

[Bob Johnson]

Here is the data. E=Early L=Late:

4-18 E
4-23 E
4-24 E
4-29 E
5-?? E
5-?? E
5-2 L
5-6 E
5-10 E
5-21 E
5-22 E
6-3 E
6-4 L
6-6 E
6-6 L
6-10 E
6-22 L
7-12 L
7-18 E
8-6 L
8-14 L
8-14 L
8-15 L
8-28 L
10-20 L
11-5 L

It looks like the changeover occurs some time in June based on tank dates.

Also note that there are 2 tanks with the same date 8-14-29. The Briggs body numbers for them are only 35 numbers apart. The engine and matching frame numbers correspond to 8-21-29 and 8-24-29 dates for the engines.

Bob

 

[Marco Tahtaras]

Obviously there is much we DON'T know, but if you remove the two extreme examples as possible tank swaps then we have a clean sequence where the body transition includes gas tanks made within one week.

 

[Steve Plucker]

Bob,

Can you confirm the dates of 10-20-29 and 11-5-29?

Thanks.

Pluck

 

[Steve Plucker]

Bob,

Can you associate the body tags with the dates on the tanks?

Also, I wonder if there would be any Part Releases relitive to Briggs in the Ford files pertaining to the "folding top irons"?

Sounds like a good research project to me.

Pluck

 

[Steve Ciccalone]

Bob, my 68A is body #10729, tank is stamped 10-16

 

[Bob Johnson]

There are only 10 pairs of Body tag numbers and firewall dates. Here is a graph of them.

 

[Rowdy]

With the long gap in July I am wondering if Ford batch shipped the tanks to Briggs and Murray. Rod

 

[Jeff P. / MN]

I recently bought a 68-a with the following dates: tank stamped 11/19/28 and frame #695844 (Nov. '28). unfortunatly there is no body # tag. The car does have a mix of early / late 1929 features, it does have the later style folding top irons. Seems like a 'put together' car but who knows when this was assembled.