Classic/Antique Car Repair: 1955 t bird, seat cushions, ford cars

Question
Hello Dick
I would like to know how early my Tbird is in terms of production. My serial # is P5FH117784.
The trim #  40A R B 3MCA42
My radio has a Oct 54 sticker on it.
Thanks for your help
Rick in Moose Jaw.

Answer
I'm really not the best person to ask this question of. Someone in the T'bird club probably has much better records of which car was built when.

T'birds were numbered in the same sequence as the other cars built in the same plant, so there is no way to separate out the t-birds as to order of build.   There is an exception for the first 1500 T-birds; they were all built in sequence, so 100001 through 101501 are the first ones, and the last 500 were built in sequence also, so #260058 through 260557 are all t-birds, the rest of the numbers (like yours) are somewhere in the middle of production.  

There were somewhere around 1.8 million Ford cars built that year, and less than 1% (16,155) of those were T'birds.   T-birds were introduced on October 22nd of 1954, but of course the component parts may have been built much earlier in the year, so your radio date doesn't mean the car was built in October.  Full scale T-bird production began during the week of September 5th.  Of course most of the 1.8 million cars were built in other plants, t-bird were only built in one plant, so they were about 10% of production there.  Your number would be pretty much in the middle of the year, as a guess sometime in April or May.  The actual date will be on your build order, if you can find it.  It certainly is not one of the early ones, you can be sure of that.

There may be more info on the build ticket, if you can find it. Often this was glued to the top side of the glovebox, and they are also often found stuffed into the springs of the seat cushions.

A much better source of information, besides the t-bird club would be Cars and Parts Magazine - they have a service where they will decode your VIN and your body plate and give you a lot more information on the car.  

I'm really here to keep 'em running, not decode numbers - but I did my best anyway.

Dick