[Transamric]

I've seen many of these, what I call secondary stampings, hand stamped as you say, Keith. Mainly on '71-73 tags. All the ones I've seen are in the 60 series,....61, 62, 63, 64 & 66, & obviously each character is stamped individually. I'm totally without a clue as to what these may stand for.

[giles]

Something else to keep in mind regarding production rates is that Norwood made only F-bodies while Van Nuys built F and Chevy A-bodies ( Chevelle, El Camino, Monte Carlo as well as GMC Sprint). The fraction of VN production devoted to Firebird was quite low, maybe 5-10 %, something like 50 cars / day.

[Todd Mullin]

This is why I love this web site, great info. My 71 TA was built 2nd week in Sep, at the Van Nuys plant, any guess on how many 71 TA's would of been built by that date?

[Transamric]

Originally Posted by Todd Mullin

This is why I love this web site, great info. My 71 TA was built 2nd week in Sep, at the Van Nuys plant, any guess on how many 71 TA's would of been built by that date?

We can probably do some estimates based simply on percentages. Since production for '71 started late 08B, early 08C at both plants, & because the GM Strike started 9/14/70 (a Monday), & knowing there were 53,149 '71 Firebirds built, 2112 TA's, roughly 2600 FB's were built prior to the strike, 4% of total production were TA's, that would mean about 100 TA's were built before the strikes start.
If anything, this rough estimate may be a bit high, because performance type cars were not produced in as high of volume heading in to the Winter months, as they were heading in to Spring/Summer.

[68bird400HO]

Originally Posted by Transamric

We can probably do some estimates based simply on percentages. Since production for '71 started late 08B, early 08C at both plants, & because the GM Strike started 9/14/70 (a Monday), & knowing there were 53,149 '71 Firebirds built, 2112 TA's, roughly 2600 FB's were built prior to the strike, 4% of total production were TA's, that would mean about 100 TA's were built before the strikes start.
If anything, this rough estimate may be a bit high, because performance type cars were not produced in as high of volume heading in to the Winter months, as they were heading in to Spring/Summer.

I thought I heard or read somewhere that the at the end of the strike (mid-November '70), the Van Nuys plant was up a running but the Norwood plant didn't get going again until almost January. Is this correct?

[giles]

Originally Posted by 68bird400HO

I thought I heard or read somewhere that the at the end of the strike (mid-November '70), the Van Nuys plant was up a running but the Norwood plant didn't get going again until almost January. Is this correct?

The GM-wide strike ran from 9/14/70 to 11/19/70. Nothing was produced by GM whatsoever between these dates so many partially finished cars and parts sat during this period. After a strike is officially "settled" there are sometimes local issues to be resolved and this was the case with the Norwood local as it continued to strike for another 6 or 7 weeks after the nationwide walkout ended.
It would have taken several days to get everything back up to speed, and it appears that Van Nuys started building cars in late November or early December. The earliest post-strike Van Nuys car that I have a record of was scheduled for 12/14,. The earliest post-strike Norwood car that I have a record of was built mid January (01C).

This is not to say that my records are complete, but I have no records of builds between 09C and 12B for Van Nuys and the gap is much longer, to 01C for Norwood. If anyone has a car with a data plate between these weeks please post the build week and body number.

[RicksGTO]

Originally Posted by Transamric

I've seen many of these, what I call secondary stampings, hand stamped as you say, Keith. Mainly on '71-73 tags. All the ones I've seen are in the 60 series,....61, 62, 63, 64 & 66, & obviously each character is stamped individually. I'm totally without a clue as to what these may stand for.

last month I came across an article written by John Hinckley. He was a long time GM assembly plant employee that was also involved with the Fisher body plants during his time at the Norwood and Van Nuys plants. I emailed him a pic of a data tag with the hand stamped "65" to ask him what they meant. Here is his reply:

"some body shops in those days stamped the numbers of the side frame gates used to subassemble the body side prior to body framing as an aid to tracking back dimensional variations to the specific gate that was used on that car, as there were multiple sets of side frame gates used"

[x-bird2]

Originally Posted by RicksGTO

last month I came across an article written by John Hinckley. He was a long time GM assembly plant employee that was also involved with the Fisher body plants during his time at the Norwood and Van Nuys plants. I emailed him a pic of a data tag with the hand stamped "65" to ask him what they meant. Here is his reply:

"some body shops in those days stamped the numbers of the side frame gates used to subassemble the body side prior to body framing as an aid to tracking back dimensional variations to the specific gate that was used on that car, as there were multiple sets of side frame gates used"

Awesome bit of information.