Thread: Strike
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Old 04-01-2015, 05:56 PM
John V. John V. is offline
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Actually, I would assume the order for your car would have been among the first initiated when the strike ended.

Although we don't know the precise meaning of the Time Built code on the Data Plate, my "preferred" explanation is that Fisher Body was charged with producing a certain number of Body Assemblies for the "target" week so that the Final Line would have enough planned work.

Say that they needed 2000 builds for week 11A. Fisher Body would schedule 2000 orders for which they would build bodies in advance of, or perhaps during, the designated week 11A.

The bodies that were on the line when the plant was struck would have had Time Built codes of 9C or 9D I believe. Dozens of bodies with Sept Time Built codes would have been caught (or however many were in production within Fisher and on the Final Line at any given moment)

Since the strike stopped Fisher production, they would not have filled their order basket for 10A and beyond until the strike ended. So I would expect few if any builds with Oct. Time Built codes on the Data Plate. Depends on how far in advance Fisher was building the Body Assemblies at a given plant.

Fisher would have then returned to production most likely producing 11A bodies initially (possibly 10E date codes if Baltimore immediately went back into production after the strike was settled).

The reason for the date codes on the various components is more likely the fact that these parts ordinarily would have been used up at the end of Sept and early Oct.

But when the strike hit, none of those cars were being built, so the components simply sat in inventory until the line started back up.

Bottom line, I think your car would have had a Sept Time Built code had the Body Assembly already been completed when the strike began.

I suspect that even if it had only just gotten started within Fisher Body at the time of the strike (which started at 10 AM EST, so early during the 1st shift in Baltimore), most likely the Data Plate coding would have already been "set in stone", since the coding was just a regurgitation of what the paperwork showed.

So IMO, your order was not yet initiated when the strike hit.

But the component date coding is understandable even though the Body Assembly build didn't start until somewhere close to Nov. 1 give or take a few days and Final Assembly begun upon completion of the Body Assembly.

Obviously I wasn't there, but this is my best logical stab at how the build of your GTO unfolded.