344870M166183 W-30 on ebay now.

This is one of the approx 367 built on the first month of W-30 production. It was also built during what is believed to be the first week of production.

So is this OW trans build #60?

 

What month did W30 production start? Both the VIN and the Body number seem to be pretty deep into 1970 production.

 

Hi Stefano,
I thought we concluded that there is no correlation between the production date and the OW sequence tag.

 

Here are some OW numbers for reference. I suspect that you are correct that it is the 60th transmission made. Not that it would be in the 60th car made but I would suspect within 50 cars. You also have to take out the 4 speed cars from the totals for the month. Nothing here is set in stone but it helps to get you a range.

30M169881 tag 1125
30M194923 tag 1317 Car build date week 2 November
30M283285 tag 2097

 

There's something fishy about this car's ad...they try to pass it off as a survivor, but maybe I'm old school in that to me, a survivor is a car that hasn't been restored or repaired. This one obviously has. Partial survivor, perhaps, but the writeup says it's "basically a survivor" and has had one repaint. Well it either is or it isn't. And the passenger fender has been replaced/repaired. The "2" looks like it's falling off a cliff and trying to take the second "4" with it. The factory stamped the holes in them and kept the numbers straight and true, where this looks like someone with a slightly unsteady hand drilled them out with a DeWalt. Also noted, the exhaust is clearly aftermarket. Might have been a GM fender, but the factory didn't do that.

It's a very nice car, not 85K nice IMHO, but I'm not going to believe the virtually all original except the paint claim. I wonder what else was "repaired"?

 

Just in case anyone cares, transmissions are not made in the same facility as the assembly line, so there will be variation in both how the container is loaded and unloaded (the bottom ones will be made first, and used last), and there are also variation as to which container gets used first (suppose I ship assembly 3 totes, they may not use them in the order I sent them).

All the car companies have done basic car assembly the same since the 50s. The guy at the "pick the transmission" station would have one container of each type that his hoist could reach. Sometimes two of the most common ones.

 

the RH fender is not a 1970 fender

 

OUCH, that's gotta hurt!!!

 

In all fairness on the fender if the car got hit at anytime after 70 it was going to get one of the crumple zone fenders. Not a big deal to me, still looks like a nice car!

 

I just made my assessment due to the number misalignment. I didn't look at every picture initially, but went back and saw the fenders are not a match for each other from the underhood shots. It's not the current condition of the car that I have an issue with. I agree, it looks great at 10 feet.

What I have an issue with is 1) The seller tries to come off like they know what makes a survivor a survivor in the ad heading, and then walks that back a bit in the writeup. 2) The seller again comes off like they know all the details in an attempt to lead the potential buyer to think they know the car's history, which obviously, they don't. 3) Although not specifically stated, the hype in the ad tries to make you think this thing sat in a garage forever and then someone decided to give it a single repaint and that was it. We know that's a bunch of crap. It's the over-zealous ads that make me instantly question the seller's goals. Are they simply uninformed 3rd party goons who has no idea of the car's real history, or just a paid mouthpiece without regard to telling facts about the car and only focusing on duping the first person they can that the car is something it isn't?

One other little point on it is the repainting of the engine. I didn't spend much time looking at the VIN stamp on the engine block, but it's seems to have been repainted. Which is no big deal to me personally, but survivor's don't get repainted. The stamping looks fishy. It may be correct, but something just looks amiss to me. Strangely, it looks like that particular VIN derivative pic is missing now. Maybe I overlooked it. Car's been shopped around, maybe I saw that pic somewhere else. Still, it looked odd. But I have no proof of it being incorrect.

Obviously, someone willing to fork over that kind of cash will need a full investigation/inspection of the car. While we know the fender was replaced, the question would be "why" was it needing replacement? If because it was hit, how hard? Was the frame tweaked? I'd guess it wasn't replaced from rust because the other fender and the rest of the car doesn't point in that direction. Just typical questions needing answered. While I doubt I would ever spend that kind of coin on that particular car, it seems to be in excellent shape, even if it's not a true "survivor". Although I'd have to fix that emblem situation. That just looks like hammered ****. I'm sort of amazed they didn't put a caption under that emblem picture noting correct spacing like they did for the driver side.

 

Thanks for the reply’s guys, but my question didn’t pertain to the OW transmission number as it correlates to a specific body number or VIN. The question rephrased is; Did the OW transmissions for Oldsmobile start at 1,000/1001 and proceed from there?

 

It does appear that way. I don't have a document to back that up but I believe that is correct. I feel like there is a document with this information but can't remember where it would be found.

 

I agree. 69 H/O transmissions (OH) did the same thing, for reference. They started with 1001 and worked their way up from there. Transmission 69-OH-1933 was the highest number known to date installed in a 69 H/O although there's a bit less total production. Car was somewhere in the state of Washington.

The transmission was just a serialized component of assembly. I don't see any reason that the 70 W-30s were built with any regard to transmission tag number sequence, either. I don't know when the VIN derivative stamping would occur, but that's when it got married to the car it was destined for.

 

Once a body came to assembly, the order would be known, and the data got sent on those cards we all like so much amongst other things. If body marriage was 15 pitches after engine set to frame, and that was 25 pitches after engine pick, then you back up at least those 40 pitches up the trim line, and you now have the data to pick the engines in order correctly. Once the powertrain started down the assembly line for the powertrain, VINs would be stamped then. Considering that's some force, if I were to put a vin on an engine or transmission today, in the same way they did, I would pick the transmission, lower it into a jig to hold it and let the machine stamp it, then hoist it to the engine. Incidentally, what we do today is stamp a metal tag and rivet it on, just like old windshield tags, and that's halfway down my engine lines.

 

There is no question that they will not be in perfect sequential order. With the line of work I am in I suspect they could even be drastically off at times. In my line of work. They will ship in 10 racks of dated parts for an order. They will put the 10 racks in the warehouse and use 9 of the racks and then 10 more racks of the same dated parts come in. They put the 10 in front of the other one. At the end of the order they finely use the first rack unloaded. I would think that GM was setup better and at least was rotating stock but still, I totally understand what you are saying.