SeanPwnery
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- Last seen
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2018
- Thunderbird Year
- 2003
No doubt this has been covered before, and as almost all of you already know, this is a discontinued part. I tried my luck and rolled the dice with Royal Oak Ford up in Michigan because they still had a "cartable" listing last night which was declined this morning - discontinued - shocker.
So, I got to thinking - I have friends who have fabricated me parts for my "Themed" rifle builds - and something like this should be a piece of cake for them. I took the hard top off about a month ago to investigate why the rear defroster wasn't working, and thankfully the grounding "link" on the passenger side was just laying off to the side with the wires connected to it - replaced it on top of the pin-hole, and we're good to go there. Checked all around inside for the driver's side piece - no bueno, not even a hint of bueno. She's lost, gone, not available on this existential plane. I suspect the previous owner pulled off the defroster-side to keep the top "level" to limit the rattle, which worked because I didn't have rattle until I put that piece back in place.
So here's the deal - some of you guys out there have your hard-tops on garage-ceiling mounted gantries - so you guys probably have easy access to that piece. I'd like some really high resolution pictures of this along with precise measurements, and in return, I will get 50 of these 3D printed for members here on the forum and will send them to folks here simply for the price of shipping it to you. Afterwards, I'll have my friend make a few runs of these here and there and maybe put them up on Ebay or something similar for the future - but at least for the first 50 pieces made, I'll pass them onto you guys as a thank you.
The most important part aside from getting detailed shots of what this thing looks like are the measurements where it'll mate with the mount for the hard-top pin to fit into - that and the "pad" thickness which I may have made a thousandth or two thicker to allow for "compression" from use and age.
As far as I'm aware, this part should work on all year-models 02-05 which is why I didn't put it in the title. Let me know if you're interested, or ... if someone else has already done this - in that case, I'd like to buy a few
So, I got to thinking - I have friends who have fabricated me parts for my "Themed" rifle builds - and something like this should be a piece of cake for them. I took the hard top off about a month ago to investigate why the rear defroster wasn't working, and thankfully the grounding "link" on the passenger side was just laying off to the side with the wires connected to it - replaced it on top of the pin-hole, and we're good to go there. Checked all around inside for the driver's side piece - no bueno, not even a hint of bueno. She's lost, gone, not available on this existential plane. I suspect the previous owner pulled off the defroster-side to keep the top "level" to limit the rattle, which worked because I didn't have rattle until I put that piece back in place.
So here's the deal - some of you guys out there have your hard-tops on garage-ceiling mounted gantries - so you guys probably have easy access to that piece. I'd like some really high resolution pictures of this along with precise measurements, and in return, I will get 50 of these 3D printed for members here on the forum and will send them to folks here simply for the price of shipping it to you. Afterwards, I'll have my friend make a few runs of these here and there and maybe put them up on Ebay or something similar for the future - but at least for the first 50 pieces made, I'll pass them onto you guys as a thank you.
The most important part aside from getting detailed shots of what this thing looks like are the measurements where it'll mate with the mount for the hard-top pin to fit into - that and the "pad" thickness which I may have made a thousandth or two thicker to allow for "compression" from use and age.
As far as I'm aware, this part should work on all year-models 02-05 which is why I didn't put it in the title. Let me know if you're interested, or ... if someone else has already done this - in that case, I'd like to buy a few