Wheel well splash shields
 

Okay, a head scratcher for me. In all my years of putting these 68/69's together I've never had a reason to change one of these stapled on splash shields to the wheel wells because I just never really had one bad enough to bother changing. I've got a right side 69 well that I'm working on and decided it's ripped enough to change out, and the well's got rust enough that i needed to remove it. So as I'm taking it off I happened to look over at the left well that I 've got a good shield on and noticed the one on the right well was stapled on upside down. I thought that was pretty odd to make that big an error at the factory, then looked over at the spare 68 right side well I still have (side note, I never knew there were differences between 68 and 69 but they're formed different on top with only 2 holes instead of 4 with two plugs like 69 used). anyways, the shield on the 68 is ripped in half but what remained on the well clearly shows that one was stapled on upside down too. I then went out into the storage tent to check my 69 convertible and tough to see up in there but it sure doesn't hang down under the metal on the bottom edge and from what I can see, I think that's upside down too. I have never noticed this in all my years of messing with these cars. the wells are basically mirror images of each other so why would they install the shields on the right side upside down? it's clearly contoured to follow the metal and has a clearance slot to get around the lower bolt hole where it mounts to the cowl bracket.

thoughts here? I really don't want to put the new one on upside down but two possibly three examples of it in my life points to this not being a random factory error

I have seen them both ways as well. There was a thread awhile back that discussed this.
Personally, I believe the cutout faces down like in your second pic. Lines up with hole in frame.

http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...splash+shields
Another thread

I was deep into this topic years back in the first thread link above. I ended up aligning mine with the slot downward & it centered over the slot in the frame that I believe was used for transporting the cars from the assembly plant.
We sure did figure out they where slapped on just about any direction. The slot down made sense to me & I had an original set that way but if your going for what they did at the factory, it was for sure done both ways. :)

thanks for the links to those old threads. yeah, I guess I'll have to decide which way to go. I'll end up pulling the one good one off the left well for painting it, and I bought a pair of repops from Carlisle last week so I'll put them the same way after I think about it. they sure weren't consistent on qty of staples either. On the A frame shields, my left side's got at least 10 staples in it, the right side had 2. I'll have to drill some holes to add a few more in so it stays put. one last thing I noticed on that right side well - they skipped tapping the screws for the washer bottle into the dimples and mounted the bottle about 2 inches higher and off to the side. at first I was thinking someone had just used a wrong bottle or something in the past til I noticed the dimples were never drilled.

Most likely depends on the worker that day too. not uncommon at all to see different fasteners used from left & right side on the same car.
lots of variables & the guys on the assembly line had no idea we would be trying to figure out what they did 50+ years later. :D
I think Those staple guns were like wood framing nailers, easy to put "a few" extra in. just a squeeze of the trigger.

I used to wonder if just maybe some of the unknown grease pencil marks on the firewall and other places were actually meant for a guy down the assembly line & was code for "meet me for beers after this shift"
Now they are in restoration books & countless cars are getting restored with the "code"

Not very likely, but I wouldn't say something like that is impossible ;)