Motor vin stamp vs. transmission vin stamp

[pjbizjak]

John Z, Shouldn't the VIN on the engine pad match the VIN on the cowl tag?

[jdv69z]

So a 2 door could be followed by a station wagon? I can see once the basic body is welded up on the Fisher end where the rest of the process is mainly a matter of the correct parts coming from the various feeder lines. It's the beginning part where the various sheet metal parts were being lined up and welded that I find amazing, especially when two basically different bodies were one right behind the other. I guess the tooling mainly involved holding the parts to be welded, and there were locating holes/pins in the parts themselves? Or maybe the fixtures were universal, and had locating pins to work with every body to be built?

[1968RSZ28]

Shouldn't the VIN on the engine pad match the VIN on the cowl tag?

Pete, this is no VIN on the cowl tag.

Paul

[KurtS]

I still think the wildest line I've seen was in the Ford Wixom plant. The same line built Town Cars (rwd frame), Continentals (fwd unibody), and then added the Lincoln LS (rwd unibody). They were all mixed coming down the line.
Nowadays, all the cars have common reference points and it's not so much of an issue, but that's just come about in the last decade+. They had to, to allow for more plant flexibility for volume slowdowns, popular models, etc.

[JohnZ]

John Z, Shouldn't the VIN on the engine pad match the VIN on the cowl tag?

There is no VIN on the cowl tag - only the body number; the VIN tag (visible through the windshield) is riveted to the upper instrument panel, and is unrelated to the body number.

[JohnZ]

So a 2 door could be followed by a station wagon? I can see once the basic body is welded up on the Fisher end where the rest of the process is mainly a matter of the correct parts coming from the various feeder lines. It's the beginning part where the various sheet metal parts were being lined up and welded that I find amazing, especially when two basically different bodies were one right behind the other. I guess the tooling mainly involved holding the parts to be welded, and there were locating holes/pins in the parts themselves? Or maybe the fixtures were universal, and had locating pins to work with every body to be built?

Most plants had a common underbody build truck in the Body Shop (except Lordstown, which had one for full-frame "B"-bodies and a different one for half-frame "F"-body Firebirds), and each different body style (2-door "F"-body coupe, convertible, 2-door "B"-body coupe, 2-door "B"-body 2-door hardtop, 4-door sedan, 4-door hardtop, and 4-door station wagon) had multiple left and right pairs of side frame gates to build up the body side and then assemble it to the underbody (which included the cowl). Assembly at 65 per hour was a VERY complex business, not for the faint of heart.