2 different assembly manuals for the '72 A bodies...are they the same thing just with different covers?

 

I think they are both reprints, so are probably different companies.

 

Bear in mind there are no official, original assembly manuals as they were plant documents for internal use only that someone compiled and released later. The CSM, FBM, and Parts/Illustration Catalogs are official GM publications.

 

Would the parts/illustration catalogs serve the same purpose as an assembly manual, and is this not official GM?

 

They are not the same, a parts/illustration is part #ID. Assembly manual is how you put it together and option content. The first is like "these parts apply to this car." The second is like "this car takes these parts in this manner." Different purpose, one is for a parts counter guy, the other is for the line worker.

That is not an official manual, that is a repro designed to LOOK official.

 

So which one has the "blueprint" drawings?

 

What's a "blueprint" drawing? If you mean the actual GM part drawings showing measurements, I don't think anyone has those, and they may not exist. That's a "blueprint" due to the color of the paper and ink combo. Now the marketing term "bueprinting", which meant sometimes select parts on a certain tolerance end and combination, and some extra machining, as in "the w-30 engines were factory blueprinted," that is not going to be in an assembly shop assembly manual. Final assembly picked up engines, I believe, from someplace sometimes called the meat locker because the completed engines hung there like beef on their hook points. There was a separate powertrain plant that machined the castings and assembled and painted and fired the engines. Paint may have been elsewhere. Regardless, an assembly manual would just say: "For MT W-30 use engine X. For AT W-30, use engine Y. For 442 MT use Engine Z" etc.

There is an aftermarket pamphlet that may help.

http://wildaboutcarsonline.com/membe...uide__1-16.pdf

 

He might be interested in the parts information manual.

I think one of our members might have one. https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...dy-pim-131239/

 

I'm talking about this type of drawing..

 

Oh, ok, yes that is the assembly manual. Most definitely.

Those are all going to be reprinted, at least once, due to the nature of them being collected lineside assembly manuals.

 

OK, so we're all clear. When these cars were being built, Olds Engineering created engineering drawings of every single part that goes into the car, including all possible options and combinations. They also created assembly drawings that showed how those parts were to be put together. The Manufacturing Engineers would take these assembly drawings and use them to design the assembly line and procedures that were used to build the cars. The Product Information Manual (aka, the Assembly Manual) is an unofficial collection of SOME of these assembly drawings. There are notable holes in the collections that are available from the repro vendors. For the most part, once the model year ended, these drawings were put into deep storage or discarded, as they were not going to be used again. The drawings are not servicing or repair information, they are how the car was to be assembled the first time. Since they are assembly drawings, they do not list all parts in the assembly, only those that were to be added at that particular stage of assembly. These can be very useful to a restorer to show how things like wire harnesses or fuel lines were to be routed and secured, but they have their limitations. There are no factory "assembly manuals" only the unofficial collections of drawings.

The Parts and Illustrations Book was intended to be used by the parts counter personnel to identify and select repair parts. They are NOT a complete set of drawings, in fact they are typically a very small subset of generalized drawings that may be used to represent several different model years. The purpose of the Illustrations Book was simply to direct the person searching for a part to the correct group number in the actual Parts Book. The Parts Book is a lengthy table of part number, general descriptions, and model and year applications. The thing you have to be careful about with the Parts Book is that it is NOT a listing of the parts used to build the car on the assembly line. It is a listing of those parts available in the parts network at the time that particular edition of the Parts Book was printed. Parts were superseded or dropped from the parts network routinely, and later printings of the Parts Book reflect these changes. For example, if you open the Jan 1972 edition of the Parts Book, the P/Ns shown for the fenders for a 1970 Cutlass are the ones with the dimples, because that P/N superseded the original P/N. Always check the printing date of a Parts Book you are using and try to get one with a printing date as close to the production date of the car you care about as possible. For example, the August 1983 printing of the Parts Book that claims to cover 1964-1975 cars is next to worthless, as nearly none of the parts from the 60s and early 70s were still in the parts network when that one was printed. If you look up BBO cylinder heads, the only heads listed are J and K heads. The K heads are shown as applicable for all performance applications (mainly as replacements for D, F, and H heads) and the J heads are shows as replacements for all the others. That doesn't mean that the are equivalent, only that they were the best replacements available at the time. This is why when people claim that K heads are replacements for F heads, don't think that means they are equivalent.