1969 03d clarification needed

[rsms]

I'm curious as to what would be believed to be the correct VIN sequence for a 1969 03D car.  Looking at the 1969 calendar, March had 6 weeks with the 1st week starting on a Saturday.  Would that be represented as O3A or would 03A be the week that started on 3/3/69.  I'm trying to buy an 03D pace car right now and it's VIN sequence looks to be in the roughly last 350 cars produced in March.  It's a Norwood car.  All of the stamps and component dates jive and look to be original but I would think there would be more cars produced in the remaining week or weeks.  Would there be 6 weeks as in A,B,C,D,E,F for March? or ?  This is the only thing I've questioned, everything else falls right into line with original casting and stamp dates.

[bcmiller]

Post the tag if you want.

[David K]

Field a - body build date code
This is composed of two digits (01 thru 12 corresponding to each month of the year) and a letter (A thru E corresponding to the week of the month) and indicates when the assembly of the body was started. For example, 11C means the body assembly was started during the third week of November of that model year. 05A would mean the body assembly was started during the first week of May.

[rsms]

What I'm trying to determine is, would a March 1 date that occured on a Saturday be considered 03A or did they wait until March 3rd which was the 1st Monday of the month to use the 03A.  If the car I'm trying to buy is a 03D would there be an additional 3 weeks of production in March or 2?  The last week of production for March was only 1 day (March 31 was a Monday).  The reason for my questions is, could or would a 03D car be within the last 350ish cars produced for March per the VIN sequences as noted in the CRG documents.  I'm questioning this because it seems like there should be a greater number of cars produced every week.  Hope that makes sense. Does any one have a 03D car that would care to share the last 4 of your VIN.  This would need to be a Norwood car.  I dont own the car in question yet and dont want to post the exact VIN till it's a finalized deal.

[bcmiller]

This wording is right above the VIN by month numbers listed. And it’s important!

The list below is Chevrolet's documentation of the end-of-month VIN for the GM assembly plants. * Due to several limitations the VINs in this list will not necessarily correlate exactly with either a specific calendar day or the build week on the cowl tag. The data for some months (especially May and June 68 at Norwood) deviate significantly from actual build dates, while other months correlate well.* We are unsure of the source of these deviations, but uncertainties include:

It isn't known what day of the month was used for logging the monthly production, or if the same system was used for all years.
Vehicles were NOT assembled in the exact order of VIN. For any given VIN selected as the nominal "last" for that month, it is likely that slightly lower or higher VINs might either still be in process, or might have already been assembled.
The build date on the cowl tag is when the body was started. It was attached 3-4 days before final assembly of the car was completed and build week dates did not always align with calendar weeks.
Despite these limitations, the list remains a useful guide for approximate confirmation of date as to when a given VIN was built.

[bcmiller]

Also…from a different section…

(Note that the Fisher production calendar is known to differ from the calendar month, and we also do not know exactly how the Fisher production calendar related to the Chevrolet monthly production reporting calendar.)

[rsms]

Thank you, this clarifies my concerns substantially!

[william]

The date on the body tag represents the release week for the build order at Fisher Body. At best, it is only a general indicator of a car’s final assembly date.

There were two separate assembly plants involved. Fisher built the complete painted/trimmed body assembly, transferred it to Chevrolet final assembly.

Assembled bodies from Fisher were assigned a serial number just after they entered the body bank. At that time a confidential serial number [ex. 9N501234] was stamped into the body at two locations. The VIN tag was not attached at this time. Bodies were then shuffled into six queue lanes based on labor content. They were not final assembled in serial number order; the last VIN of the month logged by Chevy may be higher than the car behind it. When the last VIN of the month was logged is not certain. For this discussion, I assume it was Friday March 28. Manufacturing production calendars did not always follow Julian calendar format.

John Z has stated the production rate at NOR was 57 units/hour; 912 per day. At that time, Firebird production had not started but preparations were in process, seems to have limited output. March consisted of four weeks, Monday March 3 – Friday March 28. During that period VINs 607165 – 622674 were final assembled; 15,509 units an average of 775 per day. I’m assuming no Saturdays. Order release at Fisher Body had to lead final assembly by about 3 days; assume they released 775 orders per day at Fisher. So 03D was likely March 17 – March 21. When the next week’s order release began, there were plenty of the previous weeks order releases in queue. There was no 03C so those were 03B. Production orders are routinely pulled in/pushed out so the earliest 03D final assembly was March 21, mixed with 03B units. Conversely, the earliest 03E final assemblies are March 31, mixed with 03D units. The latest 03D final assembly I know of is N6240xx, final assembled April 1st.

Not usually this wordy. -6° here, not going anywhere.

http://www.camaros.org/assemblyprocess.shtml

[rsms]

I believe that everything does make sense now.  The car is a 03D with a vin 6232XX and both the block and trans are dated 3/18 (maybe odd or maybe not not, but all stamps look legit in my opinion) and all bolt on components found in boxes such as distributor and alternator look legit and fall into a good date range.  Any concerns on block and trans dates I mentioned?  I feel pretty confident in its originality as of now and I will be traveling back out to the car soon and hope to get a deal finalized and will share details and pictures once I do.  thanks for the input William and Byron

[Jonesy]

Those dates on engine and trans are certainly possible for that VIN range you mentioned. Do you have pics of the engine pad, trans case and rear axle tube stampings?

[bcmiller]

Share pics when you can.

This is B R Y ON.  😁

[69CamaroAgain]

I have a 03D car as well.  The VIN is N6180XX and when I got the NCRS shipping report back in stated that the car was produced on Friday March, 21st, 1969.  Based on William's comment it sounds like my car got moved through the production line rather quickly.  I wondered if that was doable or if there was an issue with the dates.   

[william]

All 1,000 N618xxx VINs were final assembled Friday March 21 and Monday March 24. 03D order release probably began Monday March 17.

There is no way to determine when Fisher Body started building the body.