Question: 1962 Build Sheets

[Car Crazy Don]

I just bought a 1962 Barn Find Corvette, Roman Red w/hardtop. VIN# 208675112225. I would like to get the build Sheet information for this car. How do I do that?

 

[Vettehead Mikey]

Corvettes prior to 1967 did not have build sheets.

 

[kpic]

The sheets were not included with the car until 1967 or later; however, the assembly line had to have something to insure the correct options were installed on the right car. GM claims the production build sheets, landscape manifests from the St Louis plant were destroyed.
It would be educational to find a retired assembly line worker and interview him.

Kinda of hard to believe a big corporation destroys anything. During WWII, one of my priors disassembled and measured every component of a Nazi half track. Someone found it and looking at it occupied Engineering for hours.

 

[Tuna]

The National Corvette Museum site, under Build Sheets, says that there was a fire after the Corvette assembly moved to Bowling Green and that all build sheet records for the St. Louis cars were lost. If that the case, they will never be found again.

 

[Vettehead Mikey]

The National Corvette Museum site, under Build Sheets, says that there was a fire in St. Louis after the Corvette assembly moved to Bowling Green and that all build sheet records for the St. Louis cars were lost. If that the case, they will never be found again.

The museum has been spreading the story of a fire for years but no one seems to be able to substantiate it, including GM employees.

 

[JohnZ]

I worked at St. Louis-Corvette in 1967-68, and there was no fire - the records simply weren't kept - GM was in the business of building cars, not storing records. Assembly plants have very little office space - certainly not enough to store months or years of thick paper build records; there was no business reason to keep individual build records, so they didn't.

 

[kpic]

Maybe there was a fire when they carried the records outside and burnt them? :L

I've worked for an OEM and a few Tier one suppliers. Usually old stuff was microfilmed. Although I cannot post scans, I can look up an old part number from the mid to late 1950s, then search for the BOM for that part number. Some BOMs are a single sheet of paper stating part number 1234 is same as 1100 with the following exceptions. It is a cross between archaic and humorous as compared to the build sheet for my C5. OTOH although labor intensive, it worked.

Even if the OEM has them, do they wish to invest the resources and time to get them is the question.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/168049...=vintage_mid&gclid=CP7h_fuQu78CFeIWMgod12IAoA
Imagine sitting in front of this machine viewing a year's production

GAF Micro Design 7511 Microfiche Reader Works Great | eBay
Or worse, this one is for microfiche and reads one card at a time. Imagine finding one car.. LOL

Due to modern data retention requirements, I spent $4500 (company's $$) to buy a viewer to upload old microfilm and microfiche drawings and BOMs into the database. This could be why GM says there was a fire.

 

[Vettehead Mikey]

. This could be why GM says there was a fire.

GM never said there was a fire, only the museum which is not part of GM.

Even if the OEM has them, do they wish to invest the resources and time to get them is the question.

GM invested the time and resources by commissioning a company executive to turn every nook and cranny of the company upside down in an attempt to find the records. They were long gone as suspected.

 

[Tuna]

Here is what the NCM has under their FAQ heading:

Q. How can I obtain a build sheet for a Corvette built in St. Louis?
A. We do not know. We have been told by General Motors that all records from the St. Louis Plant were destroyed in a fire after the Assembly Plant was re-located to Bowling Green in mid-1981.
The NCM answer doesn't specify where the fire was, only that there was a fire that destroyed whatever records they had for the St. Louis plant.
When the St. Louis plant closed, GM probably moved all the records from there to some place in Michigan.

The NCM has a special relationship with the Bowling Green plant and has been able to obtain build sheet records from them for a long time. Remember, however, that the NCM did not open until 1994 and the BG plant was building Corvettes since 1981. GM and the BG plant hung onto all they build sheet stuff for the BG Vettes for a long time before making them available to the NCM. Stands to reason that the St. Louis plant would have held onto similar records. Once the St. Louis plant closed, the records were likely moved to a storage facility. Find that storage facility.