Found a build sheet in my car
Last fall when I was getting ready to put my car away
for the winter I decided to fix a problem with my convertible top
frame. Early last summer, the large pin at the major hinge of the
frame popped out. It had happened several times before but that
time it fell inside the area that the top and frame fold into. I
almost was able to reach it but actually only succeeded in knocking
it deeper down. In the fall, I decided to pull the back seat bottom
in order to see if I could gain access to that area from below.
With the seat removed, I was able to get access to the cavity and
I retrieved the part. I also made a very interesting discovery.
Sticking out from the seat back was a sheet of paper.
It appeared to be a build sheet. I tried to free
it but it seemed to be stuck pretty well. At the time, I was preparing
to put the car away for the winter and decided I could not delay
that and that I would need top get to the sheet later.
Well, today “later” had arrived. I pulled
the seat back in order to get access to the sheet. I thought I would
be able to remove the sheet from the car once the seat back was
out but, it turns out, that was not possible. It is physically trapped
between the body of the car and a bracket that is riveted to the
body. The bracket is, among other things, where the seat back bolts
into. Part of the bracket is painted with a rust colored paint that
appears to have been applied after the build sheet was permanently
affixed. The bottom right corner of the sheet is also trapped under
the bolt that holds the frame that the seat bottom mounts onto (as
well as providing an anchor point for the seat belt)..
Even with the sheet firmly attached to the car, I
was able to get most of the information from it. I thought the sheet
would hold the untold secrets of my car but it is actually pretty
uninformative. I do not know how to decipher some of the codes on
it and I can make educated guesses at the others that are obvious
from what I already know about my car. I will be looking into how
to correctly decode this. Below is the layout of the sheet.
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| PRINTER: 06 |
REMARKS
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I have see other build sheets at sites like The
SSP Mustang Page which use a pre-printed form. From the time
I first discovered it I knew that back of mine had the same pre-printed
grid on it. But, when I flipped mine over, nothing was filled in.
Maybe there are other build sheets in my car that have the information
filled in. I may never know. I currently have no plans for further
disassembly.
For now, the build sheet will remain where it has
for the last 12 years since I cannot removed the riveted bracket.