Re: [T3] Please explain the Vin #

["Jim Adney" <jadney@vwtype3.org>]

On 21 Oct 2000, at 23:11, Dave Hall wrote:

> Jim said:
> > Now I'm betting that all the serializing was done at a particular
> > point on the assembly line and that VW had some kind of machine that
> > could be carried into the car and set on the tunnel to WHAP the
> > numbers in.
> 
> Interesting detail:  3 1971 squares, made successive days (according
> to painted plates on front panel) did not have chassis numbers in that
> same order!  The one with the repainted door (see previous post) had
> the middle chassis number, though according to the painted plate it
> should have been the first one made.

Yes, interesting. I think it is natural that bodies might get out of 
order any number of places after the body tags were attached. This 
could have been in the move to the pan attachment line, or even in 
the painting process, since the painting was obviously done after the 
body tag was attached.

As for the repainted door, do we know when the doors were attached? I 
doubt if they were in place when the body was sprayed. I would expect 
them to be done completely separately and only be attached after the 
body was attached to the pan and the interior was installed. I would 
expect the same to be true of the hood and rear door.

> This supports Jim's suggestion that the chassis was stamped when the
> chassis plate was attached on the line.

I only suggest this because it is the easiest way that I can think of 
to make sure that VINs don't get mixed up in production. Clearly, the 
last thing VW wanted was to have a mosaic car (one with mixed VINs) 
to come rolling off their line, new.

> One 411 brochure shows some lines with Type 3s and another with a
> mixture of Type 3s and 411s in one line; one Square but not clear what
> the other Type 3s are, but they have the hoods up so they are not
> 411s.  Further over are lines of Beetles.

Mixed type 3 and 4 in the same line sounds pretty bizarre. Perhaps we 
should keep in mind that such photos could be posed, and might not 
represent reality, but who knows?

> BTW, one brochure 8/67 shows the front mounted washer reservoir with
> both tyre valve and hose to spare wheel.  Is that normal, on cars with
> the optional pneumatic system?

Not sure what you mean here. I thought all type 3s got the spare 
pressurized washer reservoir for MY 68. The 68-9 reservoir had a 
short threaded stud of the Schraeder valve diameter in the place 
where the earlier Schraeder valve was installed. This looks like a 
short Schraeder valve. Could that be what you see in the picture?

I actually installed real Schraeder valve in my 68 reservoir, but 
that turned out to be a mistake. Just didn't work the way I had 
hoped. I had to pull out the OE stud, drill through the rest of the 
chamber wall and install a removable bicycle inner-tube Schraeder 
Valve, which I had to fish through from the inside.

-
*******************************
Jim Adney, jadney@vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
*******************************

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