Local St Charles find for p/n 375834

[Geoff C.]

[Chuck S.]

Re: Local St Charles find for p/n 375834

Interesting find, Geoffrey.

How naive they were in retrospect. You will hear people wondering today why General Motors won't allow you to take cameras on a tour of Bowling Green plant. They might not know there are parts of that plant you deliberately aren't shownw on the tour. In my career, I worked for three companies in the Fortune 10...none would allow any cameras past the fence.

The last job I had before moving to happy retirement pasture was a plant that made the corrugated plastic tubing that covers electrical harnesses. Our plant and others were taking market share from AC Delco who could no longer compete, not even for GM's business.

We were contacted by an engineer at local Yazake(?) plant that wanted to talk about maybe buying some conduit. Yazake is a Japanese company that operates in the US to supply plastic parts for import, and American, cars. Technically, it's US content, so it meets legal scrutiny, but the money it brings in is headed straight to the land of the rising sun.

My plant manager suspected they wanted to get into the conduit business and didn't want to help them cut our throat. He told me to handle the visit as I saw fit, but of course, no cameras; and if I showed him around the floor, to not dwell long enough in one spot to allow him to do any cycle timing.

We had our meeting vaguely discussing plastic conduit, but professional courtesies didn't include a plant tour...he only got as close as the view from my second floor office window. If they ever got into the conduit business, I never heard about it.

[Joe L.]

Re: Local St Charles find for p/n 375834

Geoffrey-----

EXTREMELY interesting! It's the sort of "nitty-gritty" manufacturing information I always crave.

As far as GM #375834 goes, it was never a SERVICE-available part. However, I strongly suspect that it was the major component of GM #375833 which was the hood used in PRODUCTION and once available in SERVICE for 1977 Corvettes.

[Geoff C.]

[Geoff C.]

[Joe L.]

Re: Local St Charles find for p/n 375834

Geoffrey-----

Yes, the 6 digit part numbers first appeared about for the 1973 model year. The first ones were of the series 3XXXXX. Later, 6 digit part numbers of the series 4XXXXX were used. These were all "salvaged" part numbers from much earlier in GM history. Beginning about 1972, GM began running out of 7 digit part numbers. The system was not ready yet to deal with 8 digit numbers. So, large, unused blocks of part numbers were sought out. The major blocks found were the above-described and they were assigned to Chevrolet. The supply of part numbers thus obtained lasted Chevrolet through about 1978.

They finally got their parts information systems capable of handling 8 digit numbers and these were first used by Chevrolet about 1979. However, Rochester Products began using 8 digit numbers much earlier. The first Chevrolet 8 digit numbers were of the series 14XXXXXX. Chevrolet's 7 digit numbers had ended at 3999999. So, their new 8 digit number series started with 1 followed by 4000000 (they could not have been assigned 4000000 in the old 7 digit system because that series had already been assigned to another GM entity).

[Geoff C.]

LET THE TRUTH BE KNOWN

The fellow who showed me this die set name plate was a thief. He also lied about the current status of Applied Composites which is apparently alive and well. Their website mentions their Corvette SMC products.

Geoffrey Coenen

Good read on Applied Composites

http://appliedcompositescorp.birkey.com/history.asp

Good read on Applied Composites Corvette Parts

http://appliedcompositescorp.birkey.com/product.asp?prod_id=30

Good read on SMC

http://appliedcompositescorp.birkey.com/overview.asp

[Chuck S.]

Re: LET THE TRUTH BE KNOWN...

I'm reminded of what Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, said in light of the premature publishing of his obituary:

"Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

Good stuff on the SMC...it seems like nobody ever knows what it is, or how it's made. I bookmarked the site.

[Jeremy D.]

Re: LET THE TRUTH BE KNOWN...

It's embarrassing that I was born & raised in St. Charles, lived there for nearly 30 years and knew nothing of this plant. If I had only known, I'd be raiding their dumpsters back in the day like crazy.