Topic: C8ZF-18080-G1 Shock Application Question?

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Thanks for taking a look through your info Jeff the parts I saw were a T8GB date, 68 July 2nd week if I got that right and they have  what looks like a orange paint daub. I would think its possible to be a very late July part but I agree the suffix letter progression seems to make the G1 or G look like a service part.

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Attached is the info from the Aug 1968 MPC.  If you went to a dealer on or after this date and wanted a replacement for a C8ZF-18080-G (or G1 I suppose) they would have sold you a C5ZZ-18125-B.   What we don't know is how the actual shock barrel pulled out of the box labelled as C5ZZ-18125-B would be stamped, nor if each shock pulled out of C5ZZ-18125-B labelled boxes would be stamped identically, especially as time marched on.

Generally speaking it seems that Ford spent a lot of time and effort engineering systems comprised of dozens of variations of shocks and springs, only to turn it around and service them all with a handful of parts.  Granted, if you went to a third party shop, there might be even more of a one size fits all scenario.  It is absolutely a matter of inventory cost.

I think we have found that only by observing original parts associated with a known vehicle can we figure out the correct applications.  Since shocks are a wear item it can be difficult to figure these out.  We would need to hear from owners of various 68 Mustangs to see if this part number was used, and then look for patterns.  It would be interesting to set up a survey and develop a spreadsheet to identify known original shocks, with the corresponding vehicle configuration and assembly dates.

I came accross a set of C5ZZ-18125-B labeled shocks and this is what was in them it appears that the labeling on the box side lists up to 66 model years for applications not including the supplied parts but maybe some time frame, there are not other dates execpt the part date codes which are the 2nd week of July 68. Looks like my effort to reduce the pic size didnt work.

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Maybe this is a Cougar thing. 

It appears to be.  I only have a handful of 1968 1/2 Mustang build sheets but the ones I have include cars from both San Jose and Dearborn. The front shock is listed as C8ZF-H on every one of them however the rear shock is only identified by color code.

The rear shocks are listed as "ORANGE" on standard transmission Mustangs with automatic transmission cars listed as "BROWN". This is true for both Coupes and Fastbacks. I don't have any build sheets for 1968 1/2 convertibles.