My '72 Grabber has this safety decal on the top of the steering column. Everything I've read says it was a sun visor decal. Seems I've seen these on the column on a few other junkyard cars. Question: Were these moved by the owner or did Ford actually stick these on the column in '72? See attached: the repro I have on order and location of my existing original decal.
Ford never placed the stickers anywhere, didn't become a issue till after many lawsuits. When stickers were mandated, every US Maverick still in existence was a used car. Sometime in '80/'81 customers were mailed stickers with install instructions
Thanks! Your reply made me dig --- and look what I found! Now we know "the rest of the story!" Neutral Point-of-view Article: https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/b...g-label-saved-ford-23-million-vehicle-recall/ Anti-Ford Point-of-view Article: https://www.autosafety.org/ford-transmissions-failure-hold-park/ Pro-Ford Point-of-view Article: http://fordification.com/tech/auto-trans_recall.htm
I have found them all over the place on cars I have parted out. Never saw it on the column like that. Here is where mine is on my 1976 4-door.
So now the dilemma... i have the nice new repro decal.. do i just file it in the console with the other vintage literature for the car, or do i restore the column collar then stick the new decal back in the weird place the owner put it? Hmmmm... decisions, decisions...
Last place I'd install it is on quadrant. There's not one on my Comet. I stuck the one for my '75 Granada on dash panel. Pop did something similar on his '79 Cougar.
Were these only sent to owners with automatics? I had a 77 T-Bird with one on the dash but I don't recall having one in my other Fords of that time period and those were all standard Tranny.
Only on Automatics. Read the linked articles, (first and last articles are better, but there is some additional history in the Ford-hating second article)
Not necessary on std transmissions.. It was only to alert owners to be sure automatic transmission was securely in park & brake set. Once the shift linkage became worn and/or out of adjustment, was possible for transmission to "magically" jump from Park to Reverse. The magic was mostly combination of rough idle and shift linkage issues. Ford auto transmissions of era have a assist spring that reduces shift effort moving from park to reverse. Problem isn't nearly as severe with a floor shift, still sloppy bushings can allow it to happen. Try this test on a uninstalled C4. Once moved slightly from park, you'll find you'll find it'll literally jump into reverse. Yeah Ford got their ass burned & rightly so. I'm still of opinion there should have been a full recall.
I know it was only the automatic that was the issue. I was wondering because I find it interesting that in that time period, the owner records were good enough to only mail out stickers to owners with automatics. That is why I was wondering if it was just a mass mailing to registered FLM owners.
I'd suspect Ford had a way to sort through the image of build that Marti uses to generate his reports. That's the first line in report that has the codes of how car was built. Mostly looks like a bunch of gobbledygook. Of course by '73 all the fullsize were automatic, a few Torino still had manual. Have you read through this thread? Ford never installed the stickers anywhere...
safety sticker related... I bought a new 1969 car w/standard floor shift transmission. I got a recall notice for the idle being set too high. the transmission needed to be in reverse to remove the key, pretty much a standard thing. a little old lady put her car in reverse took the key out and when she let off the clutch the car jumped backwards into traffic, it was idled so high it was dieseling.
