1970 vin and trim ?

[Don Barnes]

with a vin of 194370S412756 and trim tag F18 when is the date that this stands fo is it 6/18/1970 and is this considered a late or early build car?Wasn't there a strike in 1970 model year and they didn't get started until late?Thanks any help would be greatly appreciated i am still waiting on some books that i ordered.

[Harmon C.]

Re: 1970 vin and trim ?

Don Production started in January and ended in July. Your June build is in line with the VIN and would put it near the end of the model year. Final VIN 417316 Lyle

[Tony H.]

Re: 1970 vin and trim ?

Don,

Corvette model year 1970 production did not start until January 1970. Most of the time, the model year production started in August or so of the previous year. The F18 represents June 18. This date is actually the date that the body was completed and left the paint shop. In this case, it appears to have been on a Friday. Your car was likely completed around June 22 or so.

Regarding "late" or "early" build, it depends what you are talking about. Whenever a running change was made to a model year, prior to such a change would be considered "early" and after the change is considered "late". So, depending on what specific component you may be talking about, a car can be considered "early" while for another component it may be considered a "late" build.

[Pat Bush]

Re: 1970 vin and trim ?

Don -

My 1970 coupe is considered a late build for 70 with a trim tag of ~ G13 (July 13th). You are correct - there was a labor strike in late 1969 that stalled GM production. My VIN is in the mid 15,000 series. Yours was number 12,756. They only made around 17,000 cars for the 70 run. It didn't started in January for the 1970 model year. 1971 production started as usual in August of 1970. So I would be inclined to say yours is a "late" build as is mine.

Hope this helps -

Pat

[Michael W.]

There's a difference between

referring to a car as 'early' or 'late' and referring to an individual component of that same car as 'early' or 'late'.

My car was built on July 5 (1973), which makes it about as 'late' as 'late' can be, but being that my front grills are the first of two styles, they are referred to as the 'early' style. The 'late' style came out a few days later, from what I can tell. Conversely, my intake manifold is the 'late' style, being the second of two part numbers for that year.

I've always found the 'early' and 'late' designations were confusing and would have thought 1st and 2nd (or 3rd) design terminology would be more appropriate. My 2 cents.

[Pat Bush]

Re: There's a difference between

Mike -

I don't disagree at all. I always thought of the cars in "early" or "late" model year build -- not so much the parts although I can see where you are coming from. It's like so many things on these cars -- it just depends on who you talk to and who they learned from!

Regards -

Pat

[Larry Clain]

Re: 1970 vin and trim ?

According to my BOS. My '70 was delivered to the buyer on Jan 21, 1971 From Baldwin Chev in NY S/N 16301 They must have had it sitting in the body shop for 6 months. Sorry I don't have the trim tag date at this time. (Lost the key to the hood.) Can you guess about when it was delivered to the dealer?

[Terry M.]

Re: 1970 vin and trim ? *TL*

Larry,
1970 #16301 should have either G22 or G23 on the trim tag. Wednesday, July 22, or Thursday, July 23. If you get to the trim tag (in the drivers door jam, above the top front hinge) I would be interested in knowing which it is.

[Tony H.]

Correction: Date

Don,

F18 corresponds to a Thursday, not Friday. So your car would likely have been completed either on June 21 (Saturday) or June 23 (Monday)-depending on what the factory schedule was regarding weekend work. Sorry about the misinformation.

Terry, thanks for your post below using day of the week. I used it to check my formulas in a spreadsheet I wrote to figure out dates and days of weeks and I was off by one day. (good thing 'days' aren't 'jacks').:

[Terry M.]

Calendars *TL*

I use the calendar that is in the third edition 1970-72 TIM&JG. That came from an old DOS calendar program that is on an antique computer I keep around here for the old 5 1/4 inch disks. Yes, some of the NCRS archives are on those things. Yes, I know I will update that one of these days.... And yes I know there are calendar programs in most windows word processing programs, including the ones I use. Watch those leap years.

[Tony H.]

Re: Calendars

I made my formuli/tables from scratch. It wasn't the leap year that got me, it was just a math error. All the calcs were based on my birthday being Mother's day of 1967. I should have checked that day. When I did, it showed Monday. I fixed that and now I have the day of the week for any date that Corvettes were built. The same spreadsheet converts Julian dates to Gregorian dates and vise versa.