subframe reinforcements: police vs. civilian

[sigmfsk]

cbodymopar has the experience that all special-order police cars had subframes with extra welded reinforcements, as shown in these pics:





And I'm slightly familiar with those reinforcements. Here's a pic of a k-code 77 Gran Fury with them:



You can see that my Marin County car did not have these reinforcements (those red arrows aren't for this post - they show the welds splitting on the subframe).



But I believe that my Marin County subframe is an original CHP-spec special order item, as it has the factory police option for the weld-on bracket for the siren mounted on the driver side (which necessitated the windshield washer reservoir be mounted on the passenger side).

That weld-on siren mount bracket option isn't listed in the 74 police brochure, but it's well known for CHP-spec cars, and is listed in the 75 police brochure:



From what I've been able to gather, 74 k-code CHP-spec cars NEVER had the reinforcements.
440RULEZ, does your CHP have the reinforcements?
Ford Jockey, does your CHP have the reinforcements?

So what's the skinny? Maybe all police cars had them, EXCEPT for CHP-spec? Weird.

your friend in trying to put together various puzzle pieces,
arthur

[sigmfsk]

My 74 police Fury doesn't have the reinforcements. Pics of passenger side:



Even though it came with tons of cop stuff (rubber flooring, 440 hp, cop dome light, throttle lock), it didn't come with this. That's not surprising since it wasn't K-code or A38. Maybe reinforcements were only on K-codes, or K-codes and A38. Excluding 74 CHP. Weird.

Maybe what's even weirder is that both Marin County and this Fury have F58, rear crossmember reinforcement (although we don't actually know what that entailed). So each of these cars paid extra for the police option for rear crossmember reinforcement, but they didn't get the "standard" cop front reinforcement.

Well, let's think about this. Maybe the option didn't exist in 1974. And then after Ma Mopar saw the subframes falling apart, they added reinforcements on cop cars on later models.

So maybe it's just a year thing (all cop cars starting in 1975 or 76 or 77 have them).

Ghostbluesman, does your 75 non-CHP k-code have reinforcements?

It would be interesting to see if this 75 CHP has them:
bluesmobiles.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=cops&thread=520

[Ghostbluesman (Ghostsoldier)]

My '75 K-code doesn't have them, either....(sorry for the blurry pics )





Rob

[sigmfsk]

Thanks, Ghostbluesman!

So my two 74's and your 75 doesn't have the reinforcements. Maybe they started adding them in 76, or mid/late 75. It seems reasonable to me that it would take that long for them to find out that the subframes were falling apart and needed extra cop reinforcement.

cbodymopar said that he's sure that his examples weren't of a 74 (but IIRC otherwise doesn't remember the year)

----------------------------
***DRIVER SIDE ***



above: cbodymopar's



above: k-code 77 Gran Fury



above: 74 marin county k-code



above: 75 ghostbluesman k-code



--------------------------------
***PASSENGER SIDE ***



above: cbodymopar's



above: 74 marin county k-code



above: 74 arthur's non-k-code, non-a38, yet cop fury (with F58 crossmember reinforcement)



above: 75 ghostbluesman's k-code

your friend in comparisons,
arthur