Matt recently bought this XB GS and sent us these detailed photos of parts of it for our site. Many thanks, Matt.

Front

Lucas headlight

Engine Bay

This tag is interesting. These tags were mentioned before here, but they were for options on XC cars. This car is an XB, but a very late one - the second last month of XB production - so maybe Ford transitioned to these tags early. Interestingly, the car has a black vinyl roof, a saddle interior and a brown carpet, which implies that the tag is with regard to the carpet. Of even more interest is that it is on the ‘wrong’ side, in other words, the drivers side of the radiator support, whereas on XC’s it was on the passenger’s side.

The radiator has clips on both sides for the overflow pipe.

The washer bottle in its late XB location on the front of the driver’s side suspension tower. Note the plastic wiring clips.

The washer bottle mounting bracket. Note that later XB’s were fitted with an electric washer jet pump, attached to the bottle.

Here is an interesting thing. Matt has a suspicion that the front driver’s side wing on his car was replaced at some stage. The wing on this car has ribs along the flat face of the wing, in between the bolt holes. There is some suggestion to show that replacement wings had this ribbing. As we will see, the other wing does not have this. Was this some sort of strengthening of the flat ?

The car is fitted with a heated rear window, and here is the relay for it.

Having the electric washer pump in the washer bottle, the windscreen wiper motor does not have the mechanical pump built into it.

The scuttle mounted Compliance Plates.

The charcoal canister and heater blender.

The passenger side wing with no ribbing between the bolt holes.

The VIN stamping on the passenger side suspension turret.

The single horn.

This XB bodyshell has provision in the inner wing for the V8 style of overflow pipe which ran along the radiator support and then the tube passed through one of these holes and vented to the ground.

The V8 cars had their radiator cap on the passenger side expansion tank, whereas the six cylinder cars - and also, XW and XY V8’s - had their radiator cap in the centre. You can see here on this late 73 XA GT that the overflow hose passes through one of the two holes.

However, as we know with Australian Fords, it is never quite that simple as 1972 XA cars only had one hole for the overflow as seen on this car. Note that this car now has an overflow bottle fitted, but the original ‘dump it on the ground’ single hole can be seen.

Thanks to William in Australia for an interesting email regarding the ‘one hole, two hole’ thing. He says that the second hole is used for the vacumn reserve tank pipe that operates the hidden headlights on P5 LTD/Landaus. This would make sense as there was no P5 in 1972 for the early XA’s, but there was in 1973. Hence, later cars would have a common panel to suit Falcons, Fairlanes and P5’s. Thanks, William.

This is the tag on the headlight wiring.

More of the XB in detail:

Engine and bonnet

Exterior

Interior

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