FE front end

[Shane Gundry]

Recently purchased a 57 fe station sedan for restoration, has FE ID tag, but has FC grille and blinkers just wonderin if anyone knows did the last of the FE's come out with that grille/blinker assembly or was it an option? the car has been off the road and in storage since 1968, i dont believe the car has been tampered with, wanted to restore as original show car but not sure bout the grille etc, any help would be much appreciated.

[Ed]

Hi Shane,

Picked up a qulaity model!

This would be the FE229 from Berowra?

This isn't my field of expertise at all.. but I dare say FE's dont usually have FC fronts?

Can u post a pic, I'm keen to see it..

Cheers

Ed

[RET]

Absolutely not.  All FEs look like FEs, and all FCs look like FCs.  Whilst some very late FEs show some FC characteristics (like rubber mats, spray-on sound deadening rather than lined boot and so on), no FE had an FC grille.  I'd hazard a guess that your car had a prang at some point and the grille was replaced with whatever was handy, or the previous owner just thought he'd make the car look less attractive by whacking an FC grille on it.

Has the front bumper got a number plate over-rider?  If you can post some pix we'd all love to see this car.

cheers
RET

[Jonno]

Hi Shane,

You are not alone.  FE ute I recently bought looks like an FE and has FE body number...but FC chassis number (and black FC dash top which I think is again FC??).  Again looks like some bits were replaced with FC stuff after a smash.  I assume this was a fairly common practice.

Jon

[RET]

Jonno,

Black dash-top was introduced late in FE's life-time.  This seems to be quite normal for '58 FEs.  If your FE has an FC chassis number (I'm presuming that you mean the number is FC-xxxxx-X) then it's definitely a replacement job, because the "FC" chassis number wasn't introduced until 1959.  1958 FCs have a chassis number like the FE type: "8-xxxxx-X".

Hope that helps,
RET

[customFC]

Hello Shane.
Welcome to the site.
I guess by now after reading the above posts you would have read that your FE has probably had a front end swap. To determine if the guards have been swapped or just the grill, take a look on the inside of the guard behind the indicators. If you see signs of bolt holes welded up, you could safely say the guards had FE indicators at some stage. The bolts for FC indicators are in a different place to FE.
If it has had an accident, that would provide a great opportunity to update the plain styling of the FE into a more stylish and flashy FC front.  
Regards
Alex

[2brite]

Touche
Good come back Alex

[JB]

As flash as a rat with a gold tooth even.....  

[FEHOLDEN]

gidday all

my 58 fe has an fe front and doesnt even look like an fc[except it is a lovely shade of corsair tan ] it also has the black  dash board top and an fe chasis number.

love those joke alert tags. could save alot of misunderstanding in the future. so how do i insert them?


denis

[RET]

Denis,

I saw the joke-alert used on The Register's website, and grabbed it from there.  (The Reg is a UK based IT website, and the English humour is sometimes lost on the international audience, so they've taken to whacking that big graphic on anything that might get misconstrued.)  Anyway, as a general rule, to find the address of an image, right-click on it, choose "Open this image in a new window", and you'll see the address of the pic in the address bar of that new window.

All you have to do to link to the Joke Alert image is paste the following into a post at the appropriate spot:

(img)http://www.theregister.co.uk/media/352.gif(/img)

Just change the round braces to square brackets to make it work properly.  Obviously if I had used square brackets you'd be seeing the image again, not the code that makes it appear!

cheers
RET

[Jonno]

Hi RET,

thanks for the info on my ute (Shane: sorry for diverting attention away from your original question). The car does have an FC-XXXXXS type chassis number but I wasn't aware of the black dash on later FE's.  I haven't been able to work out the date of production since the engine has been replaced with a red motor (I only have the body no: FE 2106 6161 S), but the car is registered as a 57. guess this may be incorrect?

jon

[Ed]

Jon,

My '57 has a black dash top as well..

.. but im going to colour it in!  


Ed

[Jonno]

woooah...now I'm REALLY confused!
Jon

[RET]

Jonno,

Ken is your man to give you the answer on when your car was built, but FWIW:

Utes were released in Feb '57, so there was approximately 11 months worth of manufacture.  Your ute is the 6,161st to come out of the Sydney factory, so for it to be a '57 they would have to have been making:
6161/11 = 560 per month
= roughly 19 utes per day at Pagewood (assuming 7 days/week)
= roughly 21 utes per day (assuming 6 day week).

That's a lot of utes.  Looking at it another way, there were 88,000 engines consumed in that time, so assuming 33% went to Sydney (and a very rash assumption that is too):

88,000/3 = 29,333 engines used in Sydney, which could be used as a very rough guide to the number of FEs produced.

6,161/29,333 = 0.21

For your ute to be a '57 would mean that more than 1 in every 5 (21%) of all vehicles produced in Sydney in Feb-Dec 1957 were utes.  To me, that seems unlikely.

There might be an obvious mistake in my maths here, but gut feeling is that your ute is a '58 model, which would also explain the black dash.

cheers
RET

PS (and O/T): Seen in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald:

US forces have swooped on an Iraqi primary school and detained a teacher. He was in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare and a calculator - clear evidence that Iraq has weapons of maths instruction.

[Jonno]

thanks RET....I can't argue with that!

Jon

[mcl1959]

The highest number I have is FE-2106-7258-S. Lets assume that this is pretty close to the end of production.
Feb '57 to May '58  is 15 months production RET, so if we divide 7258 by 15 and lay out in months we would find Jonno's ute in about mid Feb 1958.
I could get this more accurate with more work and even more so if a chassis number or engine number was known

Ken

[FE_UTE]

Ken
I was given two compliance plates this week but have not got the engine or chassis details yet

What is the differance with Adelaide built and Perth bodied  as we have higher numbers???

One of the plates FE-2106-10099-A

[Jonno]

hi Ken,

re. my 57/58 ute, unfortunately, it has an FC chassis number (presumably damage repair), and a red motor so I can't give you much more info, apart from colour and trim numbers etc....  thanks to both of you, however, for your efforts......looks like its probably a '58

Jon

[mcl1959]

FE Ute, you will find that assembly plant has nothing to do with body number sequence.  The Adelaidde factory produced bodies for SA and WA consumption.  Cars were shipped out as required and no particular state has the higher numbered vehicles.

Ken