Hi all, I have had this weighing on my mind for some time now. Why are there holes in the top of my tail light panel? There are 8 holes spaced across the bottom of my deck lid. The body section of the FSM shows them to hold A piece of trim covering the bottom lip, to fill between the trim on the quarter extensions. I also have 4 holes in the T/L panel that match up to 4 of the holes in the lid. Why? I've searched trunk pics, service manuals, and trim charts without any answers. This seems like A really bad place to put some holes. Is this for some kind of trim that I don't know about? Or some precision vandalism? (I bought it from A body shop where it had been abandoned after some work was done, then subsequently vandalized by the employees.) I plan on filling them in if I can't find A reason to keep them. Surely someone has seen this before. I feel like I'm missing something. All knowledge, theories, or conjecture are welcome.
Fish bowl... hmmm... No, I'm gonna go ahead and fill them. Thanks guys. I'm going to stop letting this bug me starting now.
Something occurred to me today, which is strange since I'm not thinking about this anymore. Maybe A body repair specialist at the shop tried to install the trim for the deck lid onto the tail light panel. I don't have that trim piece to test my theory. Seems possible though. Right?
It looks to me like someone was trying to add trunk weatherstripping down there. Maybe trying to solve a wet trunk problem. Ironic that would cause a wet trunk problem. Maybe the original owner did this, and the body shop missed filling them. You could use bolts, washers, and nuts to "fill" these holes, and silicone to seal them. Maybe button-head bolts would look like they belong there. The trim that goes on the trunk lid does use eight fasteners. It is hard to tell scale in the picture, but the four holes look too big for the screws that would go in the trunk lid. BTW, your sig picture has always made me wonder what part that is. I should recognize it. Mid-90s Mustang 302 4 bbl intake manifold? Bottom side? I had one at one point.
I haven't settled on A method to fill the holes yet. But I'm pretty sure I will make it more difficult than it needs to be. Yes Captain that is A manifold. Mid eighties Mustang in fact. Here are A couple of dirty pictures of it. Or is that "pictures of it dirty?"
Ah, yes .... the intake with the "slot" in it. Ultimately, I think it was a Mr. Gasket carb spacer that covered that and allowed me to use it with a regular Holley carb on it. That woke up the stock 302 in my Comet way back when it was my daily driver.
I haven't used this one on an engine yet, but I understand that they are reasonably good street intakes. I read an article back when, about A test between the factory manifold and 4180 Holley, and an aftermarket intake and 600 cfm Holley 4160. The swap gained about 6 hp I think, but they didn't even tune the original carb before the dyno test. I know lots of those were replaced early in their service life, because that's what we do.
6 hp isn't much, but I think that it helped mostly in boosting the main range used in daily driving. Otherwise stock engine with dual exhaust. It made enough of a difference that it became apparent how crappy the 4 wheel drum brakes were. I almost rear-ended a couple of other cars in the week after the swap.
Yes, 4 wheel drum brakes can be scary. They are fine as long as speeds don't exceed 35 or 40 mph. And as long as they don't get wet.
