Vin stamp whoops?
 

Can of worms. I have a 69 Norwood built camaro. Engine vin stamp is xxxx9x....the vin is identical except xxxx3x. Is it a possibility that that occurred at the factory? Yes correct casting date and correct engine 2 letter code for application.

Thanks for your expertise!

Whoops
 

While entirely possible, I would upload a few close up detailed pictures. The sleuths here know their broaching.

Typically sequence errors occur in the last digit, not in the "tens" place.

Knowing the process, I'm a little at a loss as to how that would happen.

K

My '66 vette has the digit one off in the hundred position, a 0 instead of a 9. The odds of that happening vs. someone finding that block from another car??? This is just part of the saga imo. I can imagine if I ever sold it some would walk away, but others won't.

The worker at that element has to take a wizz and cannot hold it waiting for an ARO to come to replace him. The worker leaves the position on the line and multiple unit drivetrains pass by unstamped.

If the ARO then arrives the Foreman is notified of the discrepancy in totals and then a repair team is sent up to catch up with the car later either on the long lines or in the repair lot. Same deal if no ARO arrives at all.

The repair stamper is then used. That's how I was told it happened at Norwood.

Repair stamper is the long slim bar on the right side.

It all boils down to simple human error.

I've posted these pictures before. Here is the engine pad from my 1967 427 Corvette VIN 350, made the third day of production. Here is the transmission stamp from the same car, VIN 349. Neither component has ever been out of the car.

That's what I'm saying - off by one is easy to do.

Ok - I guess I could see that. Hate it when that happens.

It would be an amazing coincidence that they would be off by ten units - but - I've seen some amazing coincidences.

By the way - it's not just the one car that would need repair. It's all the ones between when the discovery was made back to the VIN stamp operation, too.

K

Keith,

Yes that's the way I understood the description. The entire vin range affected by the missing element was subject to repair. For repair purposes the vin gang was supposed to be arranged by hand taped, positioned by hand and then struck. Two man operation.

Hi seniority guys got the repair jobs... and those characters are small to begin with so an arrangement error like OP's question does not seem to be inconsistent with the guys that did this who said that they would take turns covering for each other so they could take "long lunches" at the corner BAR.

i have seen quite a few "mis" "incorrectly" "double" "none" stamped vins on pontiacs over the years and these are on cars that appear to have never been messed with, ones that were original owners that had never had it back for any warranty work etc...

When these stamps were set up were they done singly or would they have had multiple units in sequence ready to go? If in advance, I would think it would have been easy to grab wrong one and get off sequence once in a while?

The engines were not going down the engine dress line in VIN order, so they were often changing the last 2 digits.
I'd have to see a picture of the pad to comment further....

That’s interesting Kurt. I know that John Z must have explained the process sequence of vin stamp on the engine & Trans. - but I can’t find it at the moment. What was the sequence? One station stamping engine & Trans by a single employee on the dress line with a single stamp?

My experience in production (not at Norwood) is that employees would “double up” by one person covering 2 jobs while the other employee took a break. If an employee just walked off and left his work totally omitted, it would bring rain from the foreman. When I was a foreman, another employee in the area (usually a relief or utility man) would jump in & let me know right away. Letting people “double up” on line jobs was never officially authorized, but it was recognized that it happened. If a foreman really clamped down and didn’t allow any of it, the line workers wouldn't automatically fill in for each other at start of shift if several employees were absent. The relief men and utility men were there at startup to help also, but on Monday mornings, if I didn’t allow any doubling up during the shift - the line would be a mess. One hand washed the other within reason.

The 1967 Corvettes have a series of consecutive VIN errors in the thousands position (four digits in) for about 50 cars.
This is an embedded error that has ONLY that digit ground and corrected. It's a very unusual error as they typically grind the entire VIN and make the correction. This error may have been found well after the stamp was hit and they did a quick fix.

One to two character switch at a time.

1967-April 1969 one gang Stamper at station.

April 1969 -- one gang stamper for Camaros one for Firebirds.

Repair stamper arrangement consisted of gang stamper stamps completely hand arranged, taped then held in place while the other guy struck the bar with the hammer.

We never used a grinder to fix a stamp; only the "x" stamp. (For one thing, there was not a grinder present; my recollection is that it was a requirement to use the stamp, so the repairs would be distinct from VINs ground off in the field).

Here's how it worked when I was the foreman in the brake area of the truck plant, where the VINs were stamped on the frame:

The VIN stamper was a large hydraulic "press" hanging from a tool rail and with the weight offset by a "balancer" (imagine a Harley-Davidson hanging from the ceiling that you are supposed to maneuver into position and press a button). It is supposed to index to the next digit automatically -but - if you mis hit or get out of sequence for some reason then you have to make a repair. Chevy and GMC have different VIN sequence numbers, requiring different stampers hanging there, so if the operator stamps a Chevy VIN on a GMC, for example, then not only is that particular truck wrong but you are out of sequence on every truck after that.

The assembly line repair person and/or the "quality man" (the foreman's right hand man) follow the vehicles down the line with an "X" stamp and a 5 lb hammer and correct the VIN sequence number as required.

Usually it's not just one truck. It normally takes several trucks before somebody notices, so you'll have five or six trucks that have to be fixed - all without the line stopping - so it's quite a scramble for a few minutes while you figure out what went wrong and what has to happen to make it right. You pray nothing else goes to crap while you've got your two best guys otherwise unavailable.

I normally try to suppress any memories of that time.

K

This is absolutely correct.

I had 27 or so production operations with about 35 hourly employees. I could do every one of those jobs, and could do more than one for a short period of time, so if things were really (really!) desperate I could hop on and keep the line going.

I do not recall stopping the line myself in 40 years, even though it was pretty lonely at 5:55 am. Often it was me, my quality man and a couple of your "good" guys waiting around with me wringing my hands. When the line started at 6am it would chug about one job length and stop (somebody else would have pulled the cord because they were short staffed). Usually while everybody was getting situated I'd see the rest of my guys quick stepping down the aisle, tying their aprons on and catching up.

By the time the line started back up my guys had done the vehicle they missed, the one directly in front of them, plus one more, and were sitting on their stool reading the newspaper.

This was in the late 1970's/early 80's and I would have been about 19 or 20 years old at the time.

K

My '73 SD455 is double stamped. My recently purchased '70 trans Am does not have a vin stamp but appears original to the car.

Uh oh. You guys have opened the floodgates of memories now....

...but I don't want to hijack here.

So here's a link about breaks and relief men ("mass relief" vs "tag relief") , post #110:

https://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/...ef#post7317733

The other thing I just remembered is that we would "trade" operators in order to get the line going; so if I had a couple extra then I would loan them out to a guy that needed a couple.

If the operator was not trained for the temporary job he was about to do, then we would put two guys on that job. Since it would normally take them about ten minutes to learn the job then that was fertile ground for them to double up and work any deal they wanted for the rest of the day.

If it was a trained utility man or relief man placed on the job then he would have to do that job by himself.

I will say the foreman would normally reserve his best people for the toughest/most critical jobs, and then cover the lesser jobs with more expendable folk.

K

UAW 674 was the meanest union in the entire auto industry. "Doubling Up" as it was called would get you on the wrong side of the UNION real fast.

This was because of the adversarial relationship that existed on the lines in the late 1960's that intensified through to the longest strike in GM history at Norwood in 1972.

Every time it was tried by supervision the union said no-- DLA's were threatened by Management and the Union simply filed grievances against supervision and then organized work slow downs which created havoc in AGR and also in the exterior repair lots.

By 1970 for three shifting there were a massive number of ARO's in plant on the Chassis side alone and they gamed the system by "getting lost" on the job meaning foremen could not find them when needed and there was competition between supervisors for ARO's to support individual sections.

This is a little bit off the original topic since that was asking about a 69 (which would be a gang-stamped VIN). But it expands on some of the other comments above.

It is often commented on many different Chevrolet forums that the engine and trans in one car were always stamped using the same stamp, so they have to match. That might have been true at all the plants at some point AFTER 1967 production, and it might have been true at SOME plants in 67 and prior (maybe including Norwood, based on one of the comments above).

But that was NOT the case at any of the plants building Chevelles in 66 and prior. Original engine and trans stamps from the same Chevelle in 66 and prior typically don't look anything at all alike. Different sized characters, different fonts, and individually stamped characters (not in a gang holder) are the norm for 66 and prior.

As to 67 Chevelles the same held true all year long at some of the plants. At others the two stamp sizes and fonts do match up LATER in 67 production, but not at the beginning of 67 production. But that does not necessarily mean it was the same gang stamp being used on both engine and trans; it might just mean the dies being used in the two different stations were finally made uniform and gang holders were finally mandated in both stations.

Also, look at the 67 Corvette example above. Even ignoring the digit error, there is no S in the engine VIN, but there is an S in the trans vin. So the engine stamper and the trans stamper were obviously not using the same gang stamp on both parts at the Vette plant in 67 ...

Side note --
The Fremont plant did some very interesting things on the engine stamp in 67 and prior. During part of the year in 66 they used a gang for a partial stamp (6Z1), then added the remainder of the characters by individual stamps. And during part of the year there were very obviously two different sets of dies being used on two different lines, because some verified original 66 engines have larger characters than others.

Then as the 67 model year progressed Fremont changed the stamp format at least 3 or 4 times, and during one stretch they used a gang for 7Z1234, then added the last 2 characters by individual stamps (which are not the same size or font as the gang). And that resulted in MANY examples that have the last character of the gang stamp (4 in my example above) overstamped with the next higher number because they failed to change the last character in the gang soon enough before the next 100 VIN group commenced.

And other VIN stamp errors on Fremont engines are VERY common -- some minor like one character being off, and some very egregious ones, especially on some 66 engines (with 5 being used for the year instead of 6, omitting the 1 in the first slot of the sequence number, using an upside down 2 as a 5 and vice versa, and on and on). I am actually more skeptical of a 66 Fremont stamp without any errors than I am of the ones with mistakes!

Although a little off topic, this is all to point out that mistakes were not that rare at all in 67 and prior. So it's easy to believe a single digit mistake could be made at Norwood in 69 as well.

Here's an interesting one where they changed the 9 to a 6 on a 435 horse '67 Corvette.

The process is here - http://www.camaros.org/assemblyprocess.shtml#engine. But the engine dress line was resequenced during the 69 MY with the revised front end accessory drive (FEAD), i.e. the alternator over top of the engine pad. They were moving the alternator and then stamping. They changed the process and stamped the VIN by the oil filter. This somehow resulted in two stampers for some powertrains...

A slightly different size was used on the powertrains Kurt makes reference to.

Phil - did Norwood build "straight through" from body shop to final line?

Or did they have any kind of accumulator/body bank between body shop and paint, and/or between paint and trim?

K

Keith,

Actually there were two. Fisher had the Surge bank and Chevrolet had the body receipt bank. When the plant ran on a two division format for operations- both were used.

By 1972 when GMAD took over the old Chevrolet body receipt bank was bypassed and abandoned. That general area was converted to a decal instillation space for a period of time.

GMAD expanded the Surge bank on the body shop side added a plant wide computer interface and controlled all accumulation from that point.

You can see the old Fisher surge Bank/GMAD accumulator rails pictured behind the operator in this image.

All good info but if the OP would post a photo of the stamping we could probably put this to rest.

Phil's answer is more detailed, and Keith already knows this, but the accumulators / buffers take up space and are inefficient. The buffers that they had didn't hold a lot of cars.
If you want to hide process issues, install a big buffer. :)

Thanks for all the information folks. I am going to post photos of stamp once the engine lands at my shop. Bare with me old, ugly and slow.

Block stamp