"That sure helps narrow down the date between late Feb or Early March on when the change over was for Indent on RH fender!"

Agreed Scott...what amazes me more is the indent so early in production for an assembly (air cleaner intake) that didn't show up until the 75 model year.

I think I am going to pass, my heart just isn't in it. And whose idea was it at GM to make you put it in reverse to get the dang key out? Was kind of embarrassing at the gas station lol.

Dang, I'd be all over that car at 18k. I did a regional CL search last night on '70 Camaros and a total POS non Z28 has an ask in the high teens.

edit: I don't have any room in the garage, but does you buddy like Jeeps?

Pm sent

Sometimes they do these things based around tooling rebuild cycles. The inner part of the inner fender may have been needing maintenance and this change may have been planned for quite awhile. The tool went down and that was the best time to do it. Maybe the air cleaner part wasn't ready in 74 so that delayed the final install.

Whats kind of weird is the requirement for the indent. It probably would have been just as functional with just a blanked oval hole in the flat panel. The punch tooling for the die most likely did not locate from the indent. More likely it was in the prog die that locates from other features in the strip anyway.

Grabbing the air from the fender area was needed due to the catalytic converter.

Consistent warm up control was desired and attempted with THERMAC, stove pipes from the exhaust Manifolds and other smog junk during the tune for emissions era starting about 1971 during the corporate run up to the Catalyst era.

Converter technology was technically ready at GM in 1971 however Lead had to be phased out of fuel first since lead is a converter bed poison so the government set unleaded fuel as a phase in for 1974 which cleared the way for the converter in 1975.

With the converter actually installed in 1975 reliable warm up became the key to maintaining the efficiency gain that the converter provided so that is why we see the funny ducting from the fenders to the carbs in that era.

$18K seems like a deal for a nice driver.

Btw, the consistent warm-up was required for catalyst light-off. They were probably failing the cold start part of the emissions test and trying to limit variables - back before they really could analyze & understand the combustion process.

That's also why catalysts kept moving closer and closer to the engine - they are now within inches.

Perhaps one of the best road tests of the period before the term "Lemon's of 1972" were coined - was the Car and Driver road test of the 1971 Camaro Z-28 published in May of 1971. Tune for emissions was in full swing and Performance was affected so much on the subject test car that GM was asked to comment, where they admitted to C&D that the engines were leaned out for emissions when new.

Interesting, I need to look at the Firebirds and see if they had that indent also...

Thanks for all the help and info. Another buddy of his bought the car.