Hey, I am working on a 70 442. It has the letters from the factory on the firewall. They look like they were applied with square stamps dipped into paint. I have seen them before on Camaros and other Chevys. Never seen them on the older Buicks. The Buicks had crayon marks on the firewall. So, what would RR, P and N among others o No: mean? Where would I find an applicator similar to the ones the company used?
Assembly line markings To the best of my knowledge those were inspection marks ,either to do with a shift or station that the car had passed. My 71 convert had a "R" and my 70 W-30 had "TT". I had rubber stamps done at a local stamp shop,cost about $5.00 each and have used them several times. Types of stamps and markings are assembly line specific amd plant specific. Crayon marks are most common if they exist at all. I found 3.73 written upside down on my diff cover and it was only visible when the cover was pressure washed.
TT on the firewall? That's interesting as that's the W30/auto code. (I'm sure you know that.) Where was this located?
Did you get a surround made on the stamps or just letters? It appears they had an outline on dad's cars. The car I noticed double letters on was his W31. The Cutlass had single letters in each stamp.
I did a little research this morning. I only found info. on Chevy stamps (that's normal). Not all plants had them. Orange and green were the normal colors on Chevys with each color representing a night or day shift. P stands for Paint, B for Body and T for trim (no others found). They were 1 inch tall and in similar font to today's Times Roman. They also were in uppercase. Now, if I could find out what all the ones on an Olds stood for.
Firewall stampings I believe the TT was coincidental to the fact that that was the engine code as I also found TT on a 350 Cutlass that I parted out. I had the stamps made with just the letters,not the surround,although I know this can be done.
I just looked and dad's W31 has an FF and RR on the firewall. It has no paint code on the trim tag, just a --. It was special ordered with the Ralley Red color. Would it be possible that the RR on the firewall stood for the paint color? What do you think the FF might be for? None of this will end the world if I never learn why, but it would be good to know. Thanks guys.
Firewall markings John I doubt the RR has anthing to do with paint codes. I believe these to be inspection stamps only. perhaps Dave H can shed some insight as to theor meaning if any. I also suspect these to be Lansing only as I have not seen any markings on cars from other plants. I have had 20 Olds Cutlasses/442's and only seen these stamps on Lansing cars. For the record this is my humble opinion!
Do recall the markings, but not what they decode into. The stamped ones are definitely inspectors' "buyoff" marks, and the hand written ones are informative ones. Those varied all over the place as it was usually some informal thing set up between foremen or workers to help someone out down the line. Only exception to that would be the build sequence number which is also hand written. In Lansing we used 0001 to 2000, and started over again. We built 1600 cars per day at that time, so never had 2 with the same number on line at at a time. The hand written ones never were of high quality. I get a real kick out of the over restored cars at shows (like the OCA homecoming last month) where it looks like an artist wrote the letters on it with white paint. These things were barely legible and put on with white or yellow crayons. I think I washed all those off my Ramrod when it was new, so can't help there. The 4 digit sequence build number was usually hand written on the spare tires as they were routed to a different place on the line and sometimes got out of sequence. They also appeared on the core supports, hoods, bumpers, and sometimes the inner fenders. This was to help identify them from a distance. Mine also was written on the valve cover as the engine was delivered to the assy line on a dolly from engineering well before the chassis got there and not on the engine delivery conveyor like all the rest of the non W31 cars in that initial 500 car build in 1968. Hope this helps
