Can someone show me or lead me to a photo of the "Front Valence Cutout" (or "notch") that should be present on my '66? My car should have it but doesn't due to replacement or repair.

 

Here you go - it's on the RH side, where the RH longitudinal bumper brace passes below the bottom edge of the front valance panel. Note that the phillips-head lower valance panel screw is painted - it was installed in the body shop, prior to paint.

 

Great. Thanks John! How wide is it?

 

Dunno - don't have that car any more to measure it.

 

What changed from '65 to '66 that necessitated the notch?

 

John probably will tell us, but I believe it was done before before body drop to facilitate clearance for A/C components in the chassis. Not having it cost me an NCRS judging point.

 

Interesting! Makes sense in that the A/C drier was moved to the forward face of the core support in '66. I can see where that cutout on the lower valence would make the body drop easier.

 

How wide is that dryer??

 

Seems likely that cutting this notch would be a part of the C60 section.
I don't own a '66, but I do have a '65 factory A/C car and the AIM provides dimensions on cutting the firewall heater box hole.

Maybe the valence notch was treated the same. Standard production part modified for A/C, as described in UPC C60.

To answer your question, the drier is about 3 inches in diameter. Maybe a little more...

 

THAT was a great idea.... but it wasn't there in C60. Which caused me to go through the entire book (again) page by page, and I didn't see any reference to the notch.

 

You know I really thought that was the answer.

OK so let me assume that only C60 cars got the notch in 66/67, and the AIM doesn't tell the production line to cut it out. So what does?

I'm sure the line would have demanded some type of engineering authority to be hacking out a hunk of fiberglass. Or would they?....

Wonder if GM had some sort of "production deviation" document which authorized departures from the AIM configuration??

 

This was discussed on the NCRS forums and cars without C60 have the notch also.

 

thanks for that Brian!

 

I saw that in NCRS as well. There wasn't any definitive info there, but I didn't pursue it because those forums are a PIA. I'll go see what I can dig up on there.
In any case, judging by John's picture, if you assume it's symmetrical it's fairly easy to replicate. Pretty hard to undo, though...

Those NCRS forums make me want to throw my computer.

 

I wrote that when I was researching why only 66 & 67 cars had that valence cutout. I always thought it was BB only but I was wrong.

The cutout was to add clearance to the lower radiator outlet lower bump-out. This was done on all cars, SB or BB, with or without A/C, etc.

Because of the newly designed radiator support for both SB or BB, the bottom horizontal of the support was tilted forward apx 2", which tilted the radiator itself too. The lower vertical support side mounts have extensions apx 2" on the sides. This also meant a new hole had to be drilled in the lower valence on each side for the screw that goes into the L-bracket at the bottom of the support on each side.

John probably knows why they actually decided to tilt the support/radiator. I have no idea why, just wanted to figure out the mystery of the notched valence. Some cars I researched had plenty of room to the radiator outlet, others didn't.

Rich
ps I'm unsure why you feel the NCRS forum is a pain. It uses the same vBulletin software shell as this, except some of the buttons are a little different. Actually, IMO, the features there are better than this one. There you can do Boolean Searches using AND, OR functions. The Search function on this forum doesn't. I requested that here many years ago. Answer was no. Probably because of their massive digital advertising tank. Boolean searches here would make it easier for members to find information, however it would interfere with their advertising bandwidth and NYSE profitability.

Over there this is the thread. It has many photos and examples of different cars.
http://www.ncrs.org/forums/showthrea...out#post788921

For the future searches there to find stuff like this using the Advanced Boolean Search...

( 1966 OR 1967 ) front AND valence AND cutout

....will take you right to that thread, and a few more...

 

Great something else incorrect on my car.

 

Knowing about this notch will help in evaluating 66/67's for front end repairs, since the panel suppliers sell the same piece (except for color) for 65 thru 67. Therefore, must come without the cutout.

 

That is all quite clear. Great thread. Knowing that the forums SHOULD be as usable as this, I figured out why it wasn't working for me. I was logging in to home and then going to the forums, it seems you need to go to forums and then log in. Or something. Anyway THANKS!

 

Just made a template from my 66 for a friend who has a replacement lower valance on his 66 which doesn't have the notch. Bill

 

That is SO nice.