If it was put on your car at the factory and has a

[69LM1]

Today's riddle of the day:


If it was put on your car at the factory and has a GM part number, is it original even if it was not an RPO?



Rich

[earntaz]

As been stated for many, many years -- if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck ... it must be a duck!

If it was put on your car at the factory and has a GM part number, is it original even if it was not an RPO?

IMHO -- YES!

OK -- let the debate begin ... get ready, GO!!!

But more importantly -- have a very Happy and Safe Independence Day all ... TAZ

[Day2_69Z]

An RPO not supposed to be on . ...but the factory put a GM #'ed RPO on it any how ?

Then it's OK for that Car !
. :::::''Only As STATED::::
Not an REGULAR PRODUCTION OPTION

COPO's.... special paint are just a few.....right ?

[PeteLeathersac]

Not sure what exactly you're asking but I'll say yes as RPO implies optional equipment available yet lots of non-optional GM # parts were factory installed on every car built.
Like 67-69 Camaro rear window trim...regular equipment w/ GM part #'s originally/factory installed on every car built also nothing optional available so no RPO required.
<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/dunno.gif
~ Pete

[69LM1]

https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/582x374q90/633/vX9Bj0.jpg


So.... The story from the original owner, Ron Terrell, is that when he worked at the Norwood plant building motors, he found out about the upcoming COPO program.

He went to the local Chevrolet dealer, Queen City, and ordered a new Camaro COPO. Back then, you were able to work your car on every station on the assembly line, and Ron did. This is probably the only COPO in existence that the original owner actually built on the assembly line.

What was common back then was when the &quot;guys&quot; knew someones car was coming down the line, Ron said things would &quot;fall&quot; onto the car. Hence this discussion.

For detail, when Ron saw the Tin Soldier for the first time in decades, his first comment was that the GM Locomotive water temperature gauge that he said &quot;fell&quot; onto the Tin Soldier on the assembly line was still on the car. The intake is obviously different, but that is the gauge.

He snagged this very gauge from the GM Locomotive division and installed it on his 427 motor that he built, at the factory while he worked there.

Just a crazy story and one that got me thinking about the question if that made this &quot;original&quot; equipment from the factory!

<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/smile.gif

Obviously, not a COPO or RPO, but was installed on the car on the assembly line.

Just a thought on this Saturday.

Rich

[ss427copo]

YES, things happened on the line back in Norword. When I attended The Norwood Reunion two summers ago with Phil Borris's invite, the stories from the union and non-Union stories shattered many &quot;experts&quot; claims. Like the one where a worker, knowing his car was on the line, simply nodded or winked his eye and an option got installed, notwithstanding the RPO sheet. It was not the norm, but it happened!

http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r59/nhra1060sc/Jeffandworker_zpsca07fb62.jpg (http://s141.photobucket.com/user/nhra1060sc/media/Jeffandworker_zpsca07fb62.jpg.html)

[tom406]

This &quot;Build A Car Workshop&quot; approach was not without risks. A friend of mine who managed a Ford line in Dearborn recalled a workers car going down the line. A real basic car, didn't even have a radio. But it DID have a radio antennae for some reason. Inspectors flagged it and checked the car, finding a radio hidden inside a side panel. Owner-to-be was fired.

Of course, it did work out sometimes. Same friend of mine ordered a full size Ford in 1970 and had his friends in the engine plant tag a motor for him that had been earmarked for an exec. Instead of the basic 429 he must have ended up with a PI or CJ spec engine. He says it hauled. That's a car whose VIN would not have truly reflected its factory-installed configuration.

[69LM1]

Of course this is just an &quot;anomaly&quot; in the grand scheme of things, and more so since it was a locomotive division part that was put on an automobile.

It's really nothing more than a cool old story and just had the brain thinking about what &quot;original&quot; meant.

<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/smile.gif

Not that Tin Solider would be going back to &quot;restored&quot; condition. That would be a crime.

Rich

[jl8z28]

The Late 69 Z 28s 11A have a 2003 distributor and have been found in the one's that have their original distributor not a480 and it is a delco and there is no listing for it what about that

[DW31S]

That stuff happened at other plants, too. I know a guy here in Maryland (actually twin brothers) who assembled Chevelles at the (now defunct) GM plant in Baltimore. He tells me how he ordered a Monaco Orange/White/White SS396 Convertible for himself and his brother. Well, mysteriously that car somehow left the line with a 427 under the hood. It also had a few more creature comforts than the build sheet reflects. Another good one is this.....while my father managed &quot;City Olds&quot; in part of 1965 (he also managed &quot;Anderson Olds&quot; in part of 1965), a certain White/Black '65 Cutlass 2dr (NOT a 442) hardtop arrived off the car carrier with a 425 engine installed. One of the line mechanics bought it and surprised many a street racer around town with it. I try telling some newcomers in our hobby about stories like these and I am greeted with a raised eyebrow and a look like they think I've lost my mind. Only old graybeards like myself understand that while not common, this kind of stuff really did happen. The locomotive gauge discussed above is way cool and if I owned that car, would stay there for life.

[earntaz]

This story is kind of the same thing, but just as well a perk from the dealer. I ordered a 69 W-30 442, black w/gold stripes and white interior while in Vietnam. It was to be delivered to the local Olds dealership in Shawano, Wi. My wife and brother went to that dealership and they pretty much told them because it was considered a HotRod and not ordered thru them – NO way could it be dropped there. So they went to Bob White Olds in Green Bay and they said – no problem. Well the 442 was delivered on a Wednesday (don’t remember the date) and the wife received a call from them with that news. They also asked a favor if she would wait until the following Monday to pick it up – seems there was a new car show at the Green Bay arena and Bob White’s 442 did not show up in time. The wife gave them the OK. They took that 442 to their body shop and worked over the paint – it now had awesome mirror reflective black paint and put on display. They had to add a sign that indicated “SOLD” because so many people wanted to buy it. A salesman told my wife they sold many 442s as a result of that display.

I realize this is not exactly like this thread was reading but only wanted to show what a dealer did to “sweeten up” how a car looked.

Happy Independence Day ALL!! TAZ

[69LM1]

That is a cool story Taz!

Rich

[Mark_C]

Since Norwood was a GM plant with a separate Fisher body plant attached to it in 69, I would have to raise the BS flag. If the owner to be was a GM employee, he certainly wasn't allowed on the Fisher side of the plant, and vis versa, that was practically a firing offence back in the day. So if you beleive the stories you could either get extra body options installed if you worked for Fisher (did they get discounts?), or extra drive train options installed if you worked for GM, but not both. The 427 would not have benn &quot;assembled&quot; at Norwood, it came from Tonawanda, just like every other big block stuck in a Camaro since January of 67, so the owner would not have &quot;built&quot; the engine either, at best he bolted it up to the tranny and stuck some accesories on it before it went into the car. Maybe he stuck a temperature gauge into the intake manifold, but since the original manifold didn't have a spare place to &quot;stick&quot; it I would think that that is unlikely as well. You might have better luck at getting some extras if you worked at a GMAD plant. Once the car left the line, who knows what could have been done to these cars, I guess it just comes down to who you knew at the time.

If its not on the build sheets, window sticker or shipping paperwork it might have left the factory with it, but lets see someone prove it. I've heard the stories about plant that would put anything you wanted into the car if you paid for it (my local Framingham MA plant comes to mind), but I've never actually seen one or heard about one locally that ever had that done.

[69LM1]

I was not there when it was put on the car, but the original owner was and he retired from the plant.

Why would he lie about a water temp gauge? It sure does not add any value to the car, and when he saw the car after two decades or so, why mention the temp. gauge first off? I don't think anyone said that GM was &quot;ok&quot; with the guys doing this, just that it happened more often than you might think.

Just a cool old story to me......

Perhaps Phil can chime in if any of the retirees that he worked with have shared any info on this &quot;backdoor&quot; practice?

Rich

[novadude]

Mark C. said what I was thinking. Engines came to the assembly plants ready to drop in the car. Also, it's not like GM locomotive parts would have been floating around Norwood. Nothing is impossible, but it seems like a strange story.

Similarly, I am always skeptical of stories of 427s going into 396 cars. Any 427s shipped to the assembly plants would have already been allocated to certain jobs. It's not like the had extra engines laying around like bolts in a hardware bin.

Nothing is impossible, but a lot of these stories don't make sense based on the way manufacturing plants are run.

[Keith Seymore]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: novadude</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Mark C. said what I was thinking. Engines came to the assembly plants ready to drop in the car. Also, it's not like GM locomotive parts would have been floating around Norwood. Nothing is impossible, but it seems like a strange story.

Similarly, I am always skeptical of stories of 427s going into 396 cars. Any 427s shipped to the assembly plants would have already been allocated to certain jobs. It's not like the had extra engines laying around like bolts in a hardware bin.

Nothing is impossible, but a lot of these stories don't make sense based on the way manufacturing plants are run. </div></div>

Much easier to do in Pontiac, Michigan, since engines were designed, cast, machined and assembled adjacent to the vehicle assembly plant.

Dimitri Toth likes to tell of a friend who hand assembled his own engine, in the experimental engine room, for a '65 GTO that he had ordered.

When the big day came he watched helplessly in horror as blueprinted beauty landed in a non-descript wagon about 6 cars in front of his; he had miscounted (or read the manifest numbers wrong) and introduced the engine onto the motor line too soon.

Conversly, some grandma somewhere must have wondered why she had a station wagon that ran really well...

K

[Dicky]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWHniL8MyMM

<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/haha.gif This post reminds me of this song..... <<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/beers.gif

[Keith Seymore]

More relative to the topic at hand:

I have followed literally tens of thousands of GM vehicles down the line as part of my job responsibilities, and another dozen or so for my own purchase.

Any deviation from a production build is tricky, even with a full staff of attentive personnel who are being paid to manage it. Adding individual unrelated pieces of stand alone content (like a stray trailer hitch, or upgraded engine back in the day) is not too bad but as the interactions go up, like with added related electrical content or controls, the complexity skyrockets.

I can say with authority that assembly plants do not look kindly on engineers who shut the line down due to some unintended consequence of a change (whether real or imagined).

K

[novadude]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Keith Seymore</div><div class="ubbcode-body">More relative to the topic at hand:

I have followed literally tens of thousands of GM vehicles down the line as part of my job responsibilities, and another dozen or so for my own purchase.

Any deviation from a production build is tricky, even with a full staff of attentive personnel who are being paid to manage it. Adding individual unrelated pieces of stand alone content (like a stray trailer hitch, or upgraded engine back in the day) is not too bad but as the interactions go up, like with added related electrical content or controls, the complexity skyrockets.

I can say with authority that assembly plants do not look kindly on engineers who shut the line down due to some unintended consequence of a change (whether real or imagined).

K
</div></div>

Thanks. That's what I was thinking too. People say &quot;well, it was different back then&quot;. Maybe so, but a GM assembly line still wasn't run like a tiny job shop where things could easily be changed at will. An Auto Industry giant like GM likely was head-of-the-class for production scheduling, inventory management, etc back in the 1960s.

In my opinion (and it's only opinion, because I wasn't there), A Tonawanda built 427, isn't going to just accidentally wind up in a Baltimore-built 396 Chevelle simply because a line-worker bought a car and wanted one. Logistically it just doesn't seem possible, unless someone did some sneaky things that let a scheduled &quot;427 car&quot; leave with the 396 planned for that particular 396 Chevelle build sequence under the hood. Even if someone could screw with line sequencing, I'd think it would get caught.

How come you never head stories of people that bought and paid for 427s but the cars were actually built with 396s?

[69LM1]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: novadude</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Mark C. said what I was thinking. Engines came to the assembly plants ready to drop in the car. Also, it's not like GM locomotive parts would have been floating around Norwood. Nothing is impossible, but it seems like a strange story.

Similarly, I am always skeptical of stories of 427s going into 396 cars. Any 427s shipped to the assembly plants would have already been allocated to certain jobs. It's not like the had extra engines laying around like bolts in a hardware bin.

Nothing is impossible, but a lot of these stories don't make sense based on the way manufacturing plants are run. </div></div>

Tin Soldier was a COPO and as such was already slated to get a 427.

Rich