Interesting thing. I was polishing up some drip rail moldings and I found this. In one of the short sections that goes by the quarter window, it has a plastic sleeve in it. It was the only one with this sleeve out of 8 of them I was polishing. I don't ever remember seeing this before. It fit inside the trim and acts like a little spacer. My only thought is that this may be a fix the factory had when the trim sets were a bit oversized. Without the sleeve the trim does fit the car but it is not very snug. Anyone see this spacer sleeve on their trim before?
Well, the piece that has the sleeve is definitely a bit oversized. I tried to put the sleeve into one of the other moldings but it would not go in, too big. It fits the oversized perfectly. This must have been a way the factory dealt with oversized trim. Now a days bad parts would be rejected but I remember from my days in the 70's and 80's working in a factory, we did anything to get the finished product out the door. Lots of "fixes" like this were used to keep our assembly lines moving. Couple more pictures. You can even see in the pics the one with the sleeve is a bit wider.
I've never seen that plastic piece before. Yes, they have different part numbers. @rthomas771 posted the different part numbers for vinyl top drip rail trim versus the non-vinyl top in a page from the Ford Master Parts Catalogue a long time ago. Would it be possible that a car with the 3/4 vinyl top would have ALL larger molding, but would require the insert to account for not having vinyl past the corner of the quarter window??
It does, but I'm going with the factory using the sleeve to use the vinyl trim on a regular car when they ran out of stock - to keep the line moving. That would explain the Fairlane too.
