 |
||||||
| CAUTION: This info is unofficial and may be out of date, incomplete, inapplicable, or wrong. Use at your own risk. | Service & maintenance | Sorry... | ||||
| General | Body mechanical | Body electrical | Instrumentation (Future) | Engine (Future) | Routine maintenance | Parts |
Body parts: originals or replacements?
It's a fair question. If you're not your Scorpio's first owner, how can you tell if the car you're driving (or thinking of buying) is the same one that the Niehl Plant built? Has it seen an accident? Bad enough to require replacing a major part? Hmmm....
With good eyes, a flashlight, some crawling around and prying, you can determine whether the doors, fenders, hood, liftgate, bumpers, engine and transmission are or aren't original. The secret is in the labels. Every original major part has a label indicating that it's original, and every replacement major part has a label revealing that it's a replacement. Can the labels be faked? Yup, but if an honest shop did the work, all the hints you'll need are pasted here and there throughout the car.
You can find this same information in pictorial form on pages 10-01-2 through10-01-4 of the Scorpio service manual. If you don't have a manual (or if you did but discovered its last surviving tissue-thin pages hanging on a nail in your dealer's bathroom), the table below will be a reasonable stand-in.
As shown in the column headings, there are two very distinct labels. The original label bears your Scorpio's VIN (I've shown mine). The replacement's label is generic, bearing only Ford's logo and a Department of Transportation's (DOT) replacement (R) indicator.
| Body-part Label Locator Source: Scorpio service manual, dealers' edition, 1989 revision |
||
| Part |  |
 |
| Label's location on original part | Label's location on replacement | |
| Left & Right front doors |
Open the door. From inside look just above the top hinge. | Open the door. From inside look just below the rubber conduit. |
| Left & Right rear doors |
Open the door. From inside look just above the top hinge. | Open the door. From inside look near the limiting link. |
| Front fenders | Open the door. From inside look near the top hinge. | Open the door. From inside look near the bottom hinge. |
| Rear right fender |
Open the jack compartment's access door on the passenger's side of the trunk. Look behind the washer reservoir along the underside of the fender. | It's behind the fuzzy plastic inner trim panel forward of the jack compartment's access door. It's easier to assume that if there's no original label, you have a replacement fender. |
| Left rear fender |
Ford deserves an "F" on this one. Both locations are behind the fuzzy plastic inner trim panel, and it's a bear to remove. If you insist on going through the agony, the original's label is low near the taillight and the replacement's label is low near the fender well. Note: This seems to be Merkur-only problem. In other Scorpios there's a storage well at this location, and I expect we'd be able to see the label through it. | |
| Liftgate | Open the liftgate. Look near the left hinge. | Same as the original label. |
| Hood | Open the hood. Look inside a recess inboard of the hinging mechanism on the passenger's side. | Same as the original label |
| Front bumper |
From under the passenger's side look on the inside surface, just aft of the bumper's 90-degree curve from the front of the car. | None shown in the manual |
| Rear bumper |
From under the passenger's side look on the inside surface, just forward of the bumper's 90-degree curve from the rear of the car. | None shown in the manual |
| Engine | No label, but look for the last 8 digits of your VIN stamped on a metal boss beneath and in front of the front cylinder on the driver's side. See "A" in the figure below this table. | Look for the label on the rear surface of the engine just behind the rear cylinder on the driver's side. |
| Automatic transmission |
No label, but look for the last 8 digits of your VIN stamped on the upper surface of a projection just aft of the transmission shift lever on the driver's side of the housing. | Look for the label just above the pan and below the transmission shift lever on the driver's side of the housing. |
| Manual transmission |
No label, but look for the last 8 digits of your VIN stamped at the rear of the flywheel housing about halfway up on the driver's side. | Look for the label at the rear of the flywheel housing about halfway up on the passenger's side. |
Location of Original-part stamped ID on 2.9 V6
Go to the top of this page.