Here's a little food for thought on the coding witnessed on the shifter bodies.
First let me preface this by telling you that a very good friend of mine has taken dozens (if not hundreds) of shifters out of cars when rebuilding Muncie 4-speeds & Hurst shifter bodies at a specialty restoration shop over the past 30+ years. Two people there had often taken note of the codes on the cases and referred to different prefix numbers as being associated to GM, Pontiac, Olds, etc. (i.e. 1=Chevrolet, 2=Pontiac, 3=Olds and so on so forth). It was also said that the second character likely determined the year, and the third related the month. Apparently the coding was done differently in different years where alpha letters were used for the months of one year while numeric values were used in others.
In recent conversation with Peter Serio, the two of us discussed the coding and batch numbers witnessed on different cases and he is certain that different coding was batched for each motor division and that the prefix is likely the plant code ordering the shifter rather than the month which is what many people are thinking the first character was? For those of you who do not know Pete, he like my friend has been active in the restoration field for many decades. He is widely known for his Hurst Shifter restorations within GTO, Firebird, Camaro circles and has restored hundreds and hundreds of different Hurst shifters. Pete is touted as being one of the best and has restored hundreds of them.
Peter Serio
2719 Columbus Ave.
Columbus, OH 43209.
614-258-3500
He's also written books on shifters.
http://precisionpontiac.net/Book_Volume1.aspxPete understands many of the differences seen in a shifter body that many people truly don't? In a lengthy discussion, he informed me of many changes seen in the shifter bodies between one motor brand and another, and also educated me on the subtle changes made within a shifter body when GM would send change orders to Hurst facilitating things like reverse lockouts etc. When the new columns came out with locked steering in 69, there were problems where people inadvertently locked transmissions up by getting the shifter to engage reverse and forward gears at the same time. This created many issues and potential lawsuits for GM where changes orders resulted in multiple manufacturing changes within the 69 shifter bodies to correct these issues. He went on the tell me that one cannot always take two 69 Camaro shifter bodies apart and attempt to interchange parts because there were various part changes within most years especially in 69. I told him about the date sequence referred to in this page and he strongly suggested it may not be as many people think?
I know another person in the hobby that takes one look at a shifter body and you can ask him, hey what's that from? He'll quickly answer that's easy, 29D coupled with that particular offset is 69 Poncho out of a Firebird while he can look at another body and spit out out 1967 Big Fat Chev. I have spoken to many people heavily involved in this hobby that know Muncies and Shifters intimately and while most have different opinions on dating/coding, the one thing that has been commonly discussed is how most concur that the first character (at least in some years) is related to the motor division.
Just sharing some of what I have learned from a few who are way smarter than I
