sidepipe seeker

Hello Fellow Enthusiasts; Was viewing this 1964 Corvette on eBay & whilst scrolling through the posted pictures, came across "1" showing the Vin plate. The photo clearly shows the Vin plate being held in place by "4" spot welds ( 2 on each end), has anyone else seen a "4" spot weld Vin Plate???!!!....Thanks!!!...Mark

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Chevrolet-Corvette-Corvette-Coupe-RARE-BLACK-BLACK-4spd-365-HP-Side-Pipe-Stunner-/271382295803?forcerrptr=true&hash=item3f2fa534fb&item=271382295803&pt=US_Cars_Trucks

rich5962

I posted the link of the photo for you....
Answer? Not uncommon. Because if the area behind the weld wasn't ground off properly, the first weld may not get good adhesion, the operator would just hit it again.

Also possible that they had instructions to do so due to vin plates falling off from 1963 and earlier 1964 production, reported by customers/dealers.

JohnZ was there and hopefully he'll comment too.

Rich
p.s. I'd like their photo better if the Z-bar was more visible to see the grind marks and "patina", like the attached pic of my sold 63 coupe below.

Frankie the Fink

Here's my '63 coupe. The appearance will "throw you" at first until somebody clues you in to the process for attachment.

Rich Yanulis

What do you Guys think about the stamp pad on the subject car?
The last two digits (22) seem to be on an angle with the rest of the sequence.
Does this look correct?

rich5962

With a Dec 12 car build date, the Dec 04 Flint Plant engine assembly seems about right, 8 day spread, but I agree those two 2's look "different", and quite crooked. The entire vin derivative looks strange to me. In fact, the assy stamp looks a bit "off-line" too.

I see what appear to be broach marks on the right where the assy stamp is, but not so obvious on the left. The vin derivative usually is closer to the left of the pad. Like on a 64 I knew closely, shown below that had it's original 300hp. Which BTW car built May 12, so engine assy May 5 is 7 days.

The Trim tag has a "?"08 for a build. I wonder what the "?" is. Was it hammered out or ??? The 8th was 4 days before final, so that may be typical. Oddity of some type going on there with the missing/illegible build month though. The TT rivets look odd to me too, but an expert..... I am not.



I'd be curious what the block cast date is.

My gut feel is NOM. The ad "commonly" says "matching numbers", which it is, and doesn't state "original engine".

Rich

Easy Rhino

No C2 expert here, like many/most on this forum, but I have been looking at lots of C2s lately trying to find a numbers matching one, and that stamping seems questionable to me.

Not saying that it's wrong, but that I would look harder to see if it's legit.

For the experts, is there a broaching mark component here?

Other than that, take a free bump.

Edit: On VIN tags, I'm seeing lots of variations of welded-on legit tags, and what you posted seems to match many that I've seen. You can see where at the factory they ground off a clear spot of the z-bar where the VIN tag would get welded, which by itself has quite a bit of variation due to hand grinding, but shows bare metal, surrounded by a thin ring of zinc chromate (yellow-green) primer, surrounded by the black paint. This would match how these were actually done during building.

On the block, I don't think it is a resurface (decking) and here is why: Look at the block number on the left - the "22" on the right of the block number code show the raised metal where the 22 was stamped, which pushes up the metal around those numbers when it displaces the metal in the stamping - this is clear because where it is cleaned off, the metal 'ridge' immediately surrounding the 22 if bright, yet a 'valley' exists between the 22. If this had been decked, this would be gone.

However, this would not apply if the entire block was decked and restamped.

I think I had better wait for the experts, though. LOL

JohnZ

That trim tag is bogus - it's for a car built about 7-8 months later; whoever made it obviously doesn't understand the relationships between body numbers and VIN numbers. I don't like the pad either, for several reasons.