hi mike

i had done some reaearch on this awhile ago, and from the untouched and or hardly touched survivors ive researched the petcocks werent painted

when i saw this thread i was getting ready to head out of town and didnt have time to post right away.

also, going by what dave w posted, that if they had the petcocks on the assembly line, the petcocks couldnt have been painted + why were they then on the assembly line.

i could try to apply logic to support my findings and state that the petcocks werent installed due to the possibility of them getting broken during shipping and handling, but i dont know that for sure as i wasnt there and its just a theory.

after reading bobs posts it made me think maybe i had not researched properly, so i called frank badalson, he has been smart enough to have been researching and documenting survivors for many years and has always been very helpful with detail issues.

frank has 2 survivors at his shop now, an T/A and a 70 coronet iirc, he checked both of those and some pictures he had of other survivors and all of the petcocks were natural and on manual trans cars the block off plugs were all natural.

i ran by him what bob had posted and he said that even though bob is trying to apply logic that you cant always do that and doing so will get you in trouble sometimes when applying that to methods that were done back then.

he also said that so many components from mfg's had plastic plugs in threaded holes. then the plastic plugs were removed and an end user put their own fitting or whatever in there.

he mentioned the dana rears for an example, he said all of the threaded holes had those plastic plugs, but the one at the nine oclock position never got used, the plug stayed and got painted black because it did not get used. thats not theory, its fact.

i asked frank if he would jump on the thread and post.
he said he wouldnt because of the BS that incurs if you disagree with certain board members and therefore get attacked because of it. so its not worth it.

thats a real shame, because frank does have an awful lot to offer.

anyway, ive attached some pics of a 3000 mile e-body survivor that i happen to have pics of that area of the car