Roadcuda said:
WOW! That is a lot of work, but the best way to keep cost down when you can do it yourself. After reading his comments about wheather the engine is the correct one or not. I thought I saw a thread on moparts about someone having a car with an engine date two years earlier then the year of his car. I've heard that at times the factory was known for using whatever parts they had on hand when building a car. So I wonder if that engine is the one that car was born with despite the build date of the engine. What do you guys think?
IMHO, I don't think any rules apply to build dates except they were some time before the car was driven onto the car carrier for the ride to the dealership.
Having been in a few car factories, I've seen they don't worry about a lot of things like correct date codes. Nothing gets wasted, everything gets used. As an example, I was at a Ford truck plant and happened to walk through their body repair shop. In that area, any paint or panel repair was done to any of the trucks that didn't quite come out right or was damaged on the line. There was one truck that had several different color panels on it and I asked what that was all about. They told me it was one that needed a little more work then most and they used panels that had been pulled off other trucks during their repairs. It was all set to go back into the paint booth.
Now imagine this... you buy a new Ford truck and the paint gets chipped and you see the red paint underneath the green on your tailgate.. and the white on the left door...
I also saw a earlier model truck cab that had fallen off their conveyor line. It was in a overhead tunnel between the paint shop and the e-coat building. It was smashed pretty good and had fallen in an area where it wasn't in the way, but couldn't be taken out in one piece. The guys there said it was there over ten years and it would get cut up and taken out when there was a major change or repair of that line... like the other one from the forties were when the line was replaced.
