Tyler's Car

[ccargo]

Its First.

[Mark]

99.9% of the people here won't know what that is in reference to.

There is a discussion on another site as it relates to the build order of the 67 pace car, was it by VIN number, or by Body number.  Tylers has the lowest VIN number but not the lowest body number.  Some people feel that the cars were ordered and built in body number sequence, which of course would result in both the body numbers and VIN numbers increasing together.  Others feel the cars (and this applies to the pacecars, or any of the normal everyday Camaros built at Norwood) scheduled to be built on any given day were assembled in a sequence that would group like colors together, prevent multiple convertible or vinyl top cars from running together, etc to prevent overloading the various stations along the way and repeated purging of the recirculating paint lines in the paint shop.  The only thing we can know is that at the instant a tub came over from the fisher side of the plant it was assigned a sequential VIn number, and then it went into the 6 lane Chevy Body bank to be released out into the GM side based on chevys rules, like don't run 2 RS cars in sequence, or 2 A/C cars, etc.  At the point the tub hit the Chevy side the VIN sequence was purely in order.  Most cars rolled right thru the body bank in the order they came in, however some highly optioned cars (RS, AC, Consoles AM/FM multiplex stereo, etc.) may have been held up for a short time if there were other high option cars being built at the same time.  This would result in lower VIN number cars running down the line between higher VIN'ned cars because they were held up.  But there was no way one highly optioned car could pass another already in the Que, it was a first in first out situation.

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

[william]

Body number has never had any bearing on production scheduilng.

124379N569358 has been correctly recognized for years as ZL-1/COPO Camaro #1 by virtue of having the lowest VIN. It does NOT have the lowest [222002] body number. Of all ZL-1s the #3 car has the lowest body number by a wide margin: 211785. Next in body number order is the #14 ZL-1 222001. #1 & #2 were built December 30, 1968. #3 was likely built the 1st week of March 1969. The remainder of Gibbs' ZL-1s were not built in body number order either even though they were ordered at the same time and grouped by color. 

The same holds true for Yenko Camaros. The lowest VIN 124379N578693 isn't even close to the lowest body number in the first group of cars Yenko ordered. In fact, of all the known cars it has one of the highest numbers in the first group.

In any group the lowest VIN is the earliest produced.

[KurtS]

When the discussion is about all cars (L6, V8, RS, etc), there's some noise in the VIN sequencing. It's pretty minor, up to maybe 10-12 units. But generally, it's by VIN.
When you're talking a group of cars, all ordered the same, it's purely by VIN. There's no way for one RS car to jump in front of another RS car in the process.

Body #'s were for Fisher's usage. They had to have something to refer to the body to schedule it. Body #'s - be it 67, 68, or 69 - were not run consecutively.

[L78 steve]

I'm having trouble getting this right in my mind. The body number is basicly a Trim Tag number. Are the TT's stamped in sequence, then wait for the most convient placement to build it? Be it grouped by color or options?

[william]

Chevy HAD to run the schedule. There is no way Fisher body would know of an engineering problem or material shortage with a particular car. That's why L-72 COPO orders were delayed-no rear axles. Fisher built bodies as scheduled by Chevrolet, NOT in body number order.

[L78 steve]

Chevy HAD to run the schedule. There is no way Fisher body would know of an engineering problem or material shortage with a particular car. That's why L-72 COPO orders were delayed-no rear axles. Fisher built bodies as scheduled by Chevrolet, NOT in body number order.

So this being the case, These COPO TT's had a early date code in respect to the VIN? The TT's sat around until the axels arrived?

[Mark]

Trim tags in 67 and 68 were stamped in sequence.  All they were was an identifier for a particular body.  GM dropped a box of 912 orders onto the Fisher Bodys Data clerks desk each and every day for production sometime in the future.  They were not in any sequence by color, options, drivetrain they were just a days worth of production.  in 67 that related to about 104 Convertibles and 808 Coupes (if you average total production over the 243 or so production days in the model year.)  The clerk(s) entered them into Fishers system as they came in, incrementing the body number up by one for each car.  The tags (including paper sheets and other documents) were then arranged into production order by a Fisher Scheduler based on whatever their production contstraints were (paint color, number of convertibles, number of vinyl tops, etc) and that became the build order for any particular day.

The only thing different about the 67 PC production was that an order for 50 or so identically equipped cars (from Fishers point of view, some were BBs some were SBs but GM had to worry about that) dropped onto the clerks desk all at once.  Thats why the cars have sequential body numbers.  After that they were treated like any other car to be scheduled.

Convertibles tops were a big deal for Fisher, how long do you think it took to add the extra stiffeners to the chassis, build up the tops from parts, install the pump for electric top cars, and affix the top to a car. Each of these jobs happen at different points on the line, but the longest activity would drive the spacing between convertibles on the line to prevent overloading the line.  I had a buddy at work years ago, who told me he worked on Pontiacs back in the same time period and they could attach a roof to a car in 11 minutes and i thought he was pulling my leg.  But if 11 minutes was the longest time then you could space convertibles no closer than 10 bodys on the line, if you took the average number of convertibles built on any given day (104) and divide it by 16 hours you get a convertible production rate of 6.5 an hour, which equates to just under a 10 minute spacing between convertibles on the line.  They built 2X as many vinyl top cars as convertibles in 67, so that comes down to just under 5minutes spacing between vinyl roof cars, and thats how long someone got to install a top onto a car.  Lot of stuff goes into scheduling a build beyond some silly number.

[L78 steve]

Thank you for the explainations.

[william]

So this being the case, These COPO TT's had a early date code in respect to the VIN? The TT's sat around until the axels arrived?
[/quote]

Nope, they did not release the orders until axles had been received. Many COPO body numbers greatly lag other cars being built at the same time.

[Mark]

Orders were held by GM since it was their issue that was holding up the build.  When the axles became available the orders went over to Fisher once again proving that GM drove production, Fisher was sort of a subcontractor building what GM asked them to build, when GM released the orders to them.