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Posted by Clint Dixon on Friday, December 05, 2008 at 12:53:33 :
In Reply to: Re: 1950's Factory turn signals FFPW posted by Tim Holloway on Friday, December 05, 2008 at 12:21:23 :
Yes, many of these accessories are shown in the parts manuals as being MoPar kits. But that does not necessarily mean that they were all to be installed only after the truck arrived at the dealership, and that none of them were installed at the factory.
For some of these things, it kind of depends upon the year of the truck. Take cab heaters for instance. During the early years of the FFPW (Farm Friendly Power-Wagon), cab heaters were not listed in the sales literature as optional equipment, but they were found in the parts manuals as MoPar kits. During the first few years, there was not even a heater designed specific to a truck, let alone a Power-Wagon. The available MoPar Model 36 heater was a generic carryover from the pre 1939 slanted truck firewall and those slanted firewalls found on cars. There were no existing factory firewall holes to mount the heater in a Power-Wagon. So it is probably safe to say that most of these were dealer or owner installed.
In the later years of the Farm Friendly Power-Wagon, cab heaters are listed as options in the factory sales literature. By now, a specific heater had been designed for the Power-Wagon. Again, depending upon year, some of these were also shown available as MoPar kits in the parts manuals. By this time, I would suspect that a heater could be had both ways - either installed at the factory, or bought and owner or dealer installed as a MoPar kit later on when the owner found out that having a cab heater really would be a good idea in the new truck.
One really needs to have the build card for any given truck. Some of these cards show optional equipment that could be factory installed, the same equipment that could be bought through the parts department at your local dealer as a MoPar kit.
The same is true to some extent today. When I bought my 1998 Jeep Cherokee, I chose one on the lot that happen to not have factory installed fog lights. I later went to the parts department and bought an entire complete MoPar fog light kit for the vehicle. It contained all factory parts, lights, brackets, wiring harness, etc. right down to the exact same part numbers as those available individually to replace broken or worn out factory installed parts.
Junior