Rich: Had I known about this website and board before I bought the car it would have been a great help to me. I know you would have taken the pics of the car and I appreciate it. Perhaps you know the car as it was in Carson City for many years and was a daily driver. It was always parked at a Shell station there.
Kurt, yes 8 months before the build of the car is certainly unusual from what I have read, but I have also read that there were more unusual things too. I do wish we could be certain of things like this. We dropped the tranny to make it easier to clean up the undercarriage and replace the oil pan gasket and the stamping on the tranny is definitely the correct partial VIN. I am not well versed enough to tell if it is a restamp but the texture from the casting is there on the case so it looks right to me. One of the interesting things is that the tranny and rear end dates are within a day of each other but both about 7.5 months before the 06C cowl tag date.
Pics of the completed car will be coming shortly, maybe as early as next Wednesday or so. These things always take longer than anyone wants.