FYI on new Explorer

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A gas fill behind the license plate would probaby require a rear mounted fuel tank. After the GM side saddle gas tnak verdict, i doubt you will ever see a truck with a fuel tank anywhere near the rear or sides again.



Also, remember the Pinto? Fuel tanks tend to be too far inboard for a tag fill.



PS - I agree with you about hiding the filler. i always liked the 1956 Chevy with the filler hidden behind the tailight. Sweet!
 
Me Too! :)



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Sorry gents, that gas filler is exactly where the engineers told us to put it (on SVT - that is all I can comment on) - lol I never even questioned them about it - now that I think about it - it tics me off too - wife has a Land Rover and filler is on the right side - pain in the rear...



Could that photo be reversed? I can't even remember how it was on the Concept...



Tool box in it bed? Well, the ST is not released yet and I have to keep mouth shut on that... :)



NICE NOMAD!
 
FT_511, That was the only ST pic in a Popular Mechanics web article. I'm lovin' it except for the dark fender trim.
 
The gas doors are on the drivers side by tradition, since trucks were mostly work or farm vehicles and it carried over to today. Cars on the otherhand, the gas doors are on the passenger side for asthetics. nothing like having a gas door ruining the look of a vehicle. So they put it on the passenger side so the person that normally drives it(the buyer) doesn't see it that often. Sounds crazy, but that is how it is.



Have a good one



Bob


 
hmmm? maybe we'll see one of those here in AZ very soon ??? :)

have to test things "somewhere" :unsure:
 
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Darin,



I should have specified FORD vehicles, How the others do it, I don't know.



I read a book called *Cars* by Mary Walton, that talked about the design and build of the DN101 Taurus(1996-1999) Taurus and how it rolled out to my plant. Ford is in certain areas traditional or institutional memory bound. That subject was touched in that book.



Have a good one



Bob
 
Robert - I have looked at about 200 cars today at work and your theory holds water.



BTW, thanks for putting ONE MORE THING in my head that I will notice for the REST OF MY LIFE. It's like having a bad song stuck in my head,



"Gas cap on the pass,

Gas cap ont he right,

ooooh baby, ooooh baby

oooh baby, yeeaaaahhh, oooh baby!



Last two lines by Robert Plant, thank you!!
 
This has been carried over to Volvo now that they are owned by Ford. The fiancee's '93 has it on the drivers side (Pre-Ford), the '04 has it on the passenger side.
 
Robert,

I must admit that this gas filler thing is news to me... but what the heck, it may well be true. I have worked at the Design Center (PDC) for 18 years and I never even thought about it :0 - maybe my situational awareness is not what it should be! -Just another hazard of living life in the right hemisphere of the brain. The only time fuel fillers come to my attention is when they mess up a styling line or crease. But like you say it might be a mindset in the engineering community.

Speaking of PDC, in all the time I have worked there I still do not remember the address number (it is on Oakwood Blvd in Dearborn). When asked, I have to check my business card.

One other stupid designer trick... I once signed a full size airbrush rendering of a car (we don't do airbrush anymore) and miss-spelled my name - Jack Telnack (former VP) was looking at it and said, "nice design - but that isn't how you spell your name is it?" Dang.

My focus has been strictly aesthetics, but with JP companies bearing down on us I really should be more aware of non-styling issues - this forum helps :)



x
 
The concept SVT (same vehicle as white concept) did not have a hitch. That concept was just for show... Why is the hitch in the picture. Dang if I know. I was not involved with those photos. Perhaps someone is trying to tell us something about what the real vehicle will have?

BTW, the new 2006 Explorer has a very nice class 3 hitch and 7150 lbs tow...



I KNOW NOTHING! hehe
 
Dale,



No Problem;)



That book did explain the design and build process, designing and building a car is a lot of compromises between designers and engineers, really opened my eyes, for example, here is an exerpt from the back of the book: "A new crop of clay models cmmanded the studio floor. One in particular was a stunner.....The body engineers looked at it. Loved it. And saw trouble ahead.....

"Veteran engineers knew that three years from now, when the curvy, swervy,redesigned

Tuarus went into production...the designers would be in their air cinditioned studios giving interviews to awed car writers about the beauty of their creation, and the engineers from Detroit would be in Atlanta Assembly Plant hell in hundred-degree tempuratures with cars rolling off the line...while grizzled tobacco-chewing, profanity-spewing plant bosses hounded them with a kind of good-ole-boy joy, as if the guys from Dearborn had purposefully designed parts that the diemakers couldn't make dies for, the stamping plants couldn't stamp, and the assembly plant couldn't assemble.

"Was it any wonder that the body engineers regarded those lumpy, bumpy, complex sculptures on wheels with both admiration and dread.

"We wanted the cheap, easy ones" Body Engineer Schifter said. "We got the hard expensive ones."



Nothing like reading a book and recognizing a bunch of names from the people at the plant where I work at. I was hired right before the retooling for the new Taurus,back in 1995 and it was facinating to see. I bought the book a few years ago because I saw a few copies floating around when I first started at the plant.



Y'all have a good one



Bob
 

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