I am a retired service mgr. (GM) & I can tell you how it works. If you blew an engine in a car back then your car was towed in the car was taken apart. We weren't there to be detectives we were there to make money replacing parts. Most of the time the kids were out racing & we knew it, but it was always the father that was the one the was there saying this POS just blew up & we want it fixed. We had the authority to just fix it. MAYBE sometimes the dist. rep. would come in to see the engine but back then it was not worth the hassle to fight with the owner because if we did the dealer principal would just come in & say fix it I'll argue with the factory if needed. But it was not needed even when we knew the kid blew it up racing it. Now if it happened a 2nd time that sometimes got to be different, but not usually. I was looked at there going to buy another car later if we fix it so it got fixed, no questions. The engine was to be held for 2 weeks for the rep. if he didn't come in to look at then it got thrown out. Most of the time one of the techs would take it home or sometimes the service mrg. (me) would take it home. Other wise it got put out for the trash. Back then it was just another engine, nothing special. It would usually take about 3-4 days to get the new short block & then the parts that were left were transfered over & out the car would go. We would put an engine in 2 times before we would cut the owner off. If for some reason it came back for another engine the factory would get involved or we would trade them into another car & put a used engine in the car for the used car lot. A used engine back then was maybe $ 100.00 for a junk yard & the car would be on the used car lot or sent to the auction to get rid of it. We had 1 70 olds 442 come in 4 times for spun bearings, we knew he was racing it because I raced him once with it, but after the 4th bearing we did find it had a bad crank & it went away after that. But that was rare. During the late 60's early 70's engine were replaced like zippers on a bad coat. That why it's really hard to find a matching numbers car, even though you seem to see a lot of them now. But they are not that common in real life. There are more restamps then there are real numbers matching cars. I hope this gives you a little better insight into what really happened back then.
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