Side pipes

[Bradley D.]

How can you tell if the car was 'born with' side pipes?
Without POP, or tank sticker or any other docs.

[Dick W.]

Re: Side pipes

Bradley there are volumes written on this in the archives. Do a search. Couple of quick things to check, No documented midyear cars with AO Smith bodies, should not see evidence of threads in the holes for the muffler mounting brackets, the rocker channels should show no evidence of every having the stands for rocker panels, the pinchweld on the body rocker panel should have a notch cut out. These are just a few things. The ECL in the trim code could preclude side pipes.

[Bradley D.]

Re: Side pipes

Bradley there are volumes written on this in the archives. Do a search. Couple of quick things to check, No documented midyear cars with AO Smith bodies, should not see evidence of threads in the holes for the muffler mounting brackets, the rocker channels should show no evidence of every having the stands for rocker panels, the pinchweld on the body rocker panel should have a notch cut out. These are just a few things. The ECL in the trim code could preclude side pipes.

Thanks for the info Dick, this was my first post since I acquired my 67 and was not certain what the archives was used for. I knew there was something to look for just didn't remember what, I appreciate your quick response.

[Michael J.]

Re: Side pipes

No documented midyear cars with AO Smith bodies, .

Be careful not to discourage checking, I mentioned in a side pipe thread once that I told the judges at a regional not to bother crawling under my '66 AO Smith bodied coupe with side pipes, since it was AO Smith. Roy got annoyed by that and said don't assume anything or tell the judges anything about it, it might be the first to be documented, so do check it all out.

[Dick W.]

Re: Side pipes

I have had a '65 AOS bodied car in my shop several times and it has a perfect side pipe installation, no threads in the muffler bracket holes, the rocker channels are perfect, no signs of rocker stands, but.........no supporting documentation that is was originally equipped. Will it fly for judging, less than a .00001% chance of that happening.

[Michael J.]

Re: Side pipes

I have had a '65 AOS bodied car in my shop several times and it has a perfect side pipe installation, no threads in the muffler bracket holes, the rocker channels are perfect, no signs of rocker stands, but.........no supporting documentation that is was originally equipped. Will it fly for judging, less than a .00001% chance of that happening.

This could be the one and only AO Smith side pipe car that Roy has been looking for..... Get it to a judging meet and make the judges work.

[Scott S.]

Re: Side pipes

I have had a '65 AOS bodied car in my shop several times and it has a perfect side pipe installation, no threads in the muffler bracket holes, the rocker channels are perfect, no signs of rocker stands, but.........no supporting documentation that is was originally equipped. Will it fly for judging, less than a .00001% chance of that happening.

Dick,

John Hinckley has said that only one set of the hydraulic tooling for notching the sills was made, and it went to St. Louis. On the other hand, I have read that AOS made a lot of their own tooling. Art Armstrong has a Dow-Smith body AIM, it may show whether they ever developed a tool for this purpose, or whether the Dow-Smith AIM makes any mention of N14 at all.

[Dick W.]

Re: Side pipes

This could be the one and only AO Smith side pipe car that Roy has been looking for..... Get it to a judging meet and make the judges work.

Roy and I have discussed the car. History gets lost in the late '80's. Car came out of CA

[John H.]

Re: Side pipes

Art Armstrong has a Dow-Smith body AIM, it may show whether they ever developed a tool for this purpose, or whether the Dow-Smith AIM makes any mention of N14 at all.

Scott -

The Dow-Smith process package shows N14, but all they did was to processit for the manual; as far as we know, they never built the required tooling or built one. That was Chevrolet-supplied assembly tooling, and only one set was built.