I'm sure a more experienced eye would have caught this right away...but I never noticed this until I started prepping the engine compartment...several months after I bought this car. My car obviously experienced some serious trauma to the shock tower. My first clue while I was removing dirt and paint was that the tower was yellow and everything in the engine compartment was green. It makes no sense that the tower would have been replaced because of rust...especially since the only rust on the car is (was) in the trunk. My guess is that it happened within a few years of the car being bought back around 71. The correct VIN is on the panel in front of the tower, and all of the other sheet metal has the factory type resistance/spot-welds. It's obviously not going to look very nice even after it gets painted, but I guess it adds character. Its a reminder of a time when someone who owned the car was actually willing to spend some money on it...before it was totally neglected for many years. It must have been an expensive repair when it was done, but my body guy checked it out and said they did a good job on it.
my 71 had a new rear clip put on it i didnt know this until i started stripping it ..my step grandfathers-father work at a ford dealer ship andbought the car and was rear end a week later so they the ford deal cut the rear clip off and weld a new one in and like i said only way to tell was to strip it
It looks like really good repair job judging from your pictures. At least whoever repaired it did it right. I think when the cars got damaged while they were still fairly new that the repair shops were more willing to do the repair work correctly. They also still had access to more replacement parts than we do now. Roush 16's story about his Maverick reminded me of my 69" Mach 1. I could never understand why my Mach 1 didn't have the fold down back seat in it like all the other Mach 1's I'd ever seen did. I understood why when I had the car stripped. At some time early in it's life it had it's entire rear clip replaced. Whoever did the job did it just like the factory, right down to leading the seams on the upper quarters. The only thing they didn't do was was replace the folding rear seat. But the actual bodywork was excellent. Things were done right back in the good old days.
