Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

[Greg L.]

This is from a car that I am thinking of buying and to me the rivets sure look sloppy...as though the tag has been replaced. I ran the VIN through the birthday calculator though and it came back as Oct 16, 1968 so if it has been borrowed they sure "nailed" the date! ...or is this just how early 68's were put together?

Thanks,

Greg Linton
#45455

[Terry M.]

Re: Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

Greg,
Agree the rivets are sloppy I too would be suspicious.
OTOH I'm sure you know that the tag should not be painted on a 1968, so the jambs have been sprayed.

[Greg L.]

Re: Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

Thanks Terry. Well I was quite suspicious until the VIN came back matching the tag's date so now I'm currious as to what's up with those rivets...could they have been installed that way back in 68?

The car actually has a very old repaint and ya, I do realize the tag should be bare and that white is not the original color.

[George W.]

Re: Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

Greg,
Is the car a '68, or a '69? Oct of '68 would be for an early '69.
I'm no expert on trim tag rivets, but I've never seen on so "loosely" riveted as this.
G.

[Terry B.]

Re: Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

Greg,

That's an interesting lower rivet. The same thing was brought up at our June Chapter meet on my 1968, assembled in December '67. The lower rivet is not flush to the tag. (Mine doesn't seem to be as much as the one in the picture but it is not flush) There was another 1968 being judged built in October that had the same characteristic, lower rivet is not flush to the tag. I think that is a characteristics of the '68. Maybe the tool didn't fit in the door jam at St. Louis. I would not be concerned with the tag but question why it has been painted. Maybe more '68 owners will check their tags and report in.

Terry

[Harmon C.]

Re: Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

Greg
Not a 68 but I bought a 73 from the original owner who said the trim tag got loose and he pulled it off and put it in the rear center compartment to keep from loosing it. I was checking the car to buy it and found the trim tag with the rivets still in it so they were not all perfect if the owners story was true. I don't think the UAW workers or GM would have fixed a rivet that looks like the one in your picture. Just a worker not getting the rivet set perfect. We tend to want prefection on our Corvettes but GM wanted production.
Lyle

[Chuck S.]

Re: Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

Of greater concern to me than the rivets not being pulled up completely is the apparent distress of the plate material in an area under the following words:

CONFORMS TO ALL FEDERAL
VEHICLE SAFETY STANDARDS
AT TIME OF MANUFACTURE

It appears the plate may have been pried up in an attempt to remove it, and then the perpetrator attempted to flatten it out again. Maybe all those hills and valleys are an optical illusion from Ricky Bobby's paint clots. This appearance, plus the fact the rivet heads are not fully seated, may indicate that Ricky Bobby tried to remove the trim plate for the repaint, found it wouldn't come off without finesse, and aborted the idea...few whacks with the hammer and it's jus' like factory. Stupid...but innocent enough.

As to the plate, I am fairly confident the VIN and the trim plate go together; trying to match a dated component TO THE DAY will be extremely difficult...I would go out on a limb and say impossible. However, I suppose it would be possible to move BOTH the trim plate AND the VIN plate from one car to another.

[Greg L.]

Re: Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

Hmmmm good eye...sorry George thanks for noticing...I should have said Oct 16, 1967, NOT 1968 as the car is an early 68 and not a 69.

[Greg L.]

Re: Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

I think what you are seeing Chuck is Ricky Bobby's paint job lifting over the years. If you notice, the perimeter of the tag looks nice and flat with no evidence of anyone trying to pry on it.

Just a thought though...how could you tell if the VIN tag has been swapped?

[Dick W.]

Re: Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

Greg removal of the paint, if possible, would make for a better evaluation of the tag. The trim tags on C-3's have there own little quirks like the C-2 tags. With the location of the tags it is harder to see them though.

[Chuck S.]

Re: Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

True...You would expect to see some, er, indelible tool marks on the edge where that first pry was done. I thought I saw a semi-circular hammer dimple on the edge, but as Dickie sez that plate needs to be cleaned before a good evaluation can be made. I hope Ricky Bobby's paint job looked better on the fenders.

See the thread on the VIN plate rivets below...as they say in that thread, the "real deal" VIN rivets are harder to find and more expensive. If Ricky Bobby was doing this project, I doubt he would go to the trouble to find real VIN rivets. It was just a thought to alert you to other options...consistency between the two plates (re born-on-date) increases the likelihood of them being original to the car, but the point is, IT'S NOT CONCLUSIVE. I doubt there has been any plate swapping in this case.

There is nothing necessarily fraudulent about swapping the trim and VIN plates together unless you are troubled by the legal consequences of mixing and matching parts and VIN numbers. It may only say that such a car needed a new body, the old body being beyond repair. The only way real way fraud could be perpetrated is if the restorer then did a restoration restamp on an engine, transmission, etc. to provide the VIN with options it never had when it left the factory.

There is nothing extraordinary about the pop rivet heads not being fully seated. As I'm sure you know, unless a pop rivet is held tight against the material being riveted, the rivet is not likely to "pull up" tight when you pull the mandrel. This would be paticularly true using powered rivet guns; when that mandrel gets ******ed, what you saw is what you got.

Having supervised people, it would not surprise me that GM had an employee at that station in 1968 that was not diligent in seating the rivet...call it lack of training, less-than-diligent attitude, whatever. After a bunch of 68's were shipped with ****y trim plate rivets, an inspector/supervisor finally noticed it and decided to address the individual's training deficiency...after that, no more ****y rivets. My 70's were perfect.

[Gregory M.]

Re: Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

Greg,

I would assume the car is a BB...I agree that a rag and some lacquer thinner would make it a lot easier to view the tag. It does not appear to have been bent or pried as the edges are pretty square and crisp.

If your only concern is the fact that the rivets are not fully seated, if all else checks out and is consistent I don't think that is a problem. It is entirely possible that a line worker just didnt seat them right and another post indicates that he has seen others like yours at chapter meets. Good luck!

GM

[Greg L.]

Re: Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

Thanks again guys. I'm getting the feeling that it is the original tag because if it was changed it would have been a looooong time ago. The body is so-so and the interior is very tough so I would think the car was last "done up" 15 or so years ago. I don't know if these tags were reproduced back then or not but I also tend to think that if it was done to "improve" the car that it would have been painted black instead of white but who knows...

We're e-mailing back and forth and I'm getting pictures of the usual trouble areas on these cars but so far it looks like it could be made into a nice driver. If I don't see any "deal breaker" pics as one final request I might ask that he strips the tag just to make sure because to be honest if it wasn't a factory black car I wouldn't be nearly as interested in it.

[Terry M.]

Re: Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

Reegardless of the original color of the car, in 1968 model year the trim tag would NOT have been painted. I thought I made tht clear in my earlier post, but I'll try again.

[Greg L.]

Re: Your thoughts on this trim tag please.

Oh yes Terry I realize that.

When I said "if it was done to "improve" the car that it would have been painted black instead of white" I meant the car, not the tag. I know that the tags were attached after body paint but thanks for making sure that I understand this correctly.