Door VIN Decal Inquiry

Hi Nick,
The font has the serif's on the "A' but you just can't see them in the picture. I can guarantee the font is exactly what was on your decal. Call me and you can have all three for the price of one.

Specifically for 70 Chargers I must respectfully disagree. Every single 70 Charger we have documented the door VIN decal on had the month spelt out throughout August and up to September 12th. Including mine.

I cannot explain why 70 Chargers may be different than what you have seen. However the alpha month format is the norm on 70 Chargers up to September 12th.

Hello Don,
Thank you for the input regarding these VIN labels. It always helps to have as much information as possible. I am not sure how many vehicles you researched before drawing a conclusion but one thing has to be factored into the equation. Unless a car was pulled from the line (which required a manually typed decal) they were all processed with the sequential, assembly line numbering system. Under the theory you have proposed, the person entering the data would have purposefully typed the numeric style date for certain models, while the Charger would have exclusively used the alpha-numeric dating setup. I have the original engineered drawings for this label and nowhere are there instructions referring to special nomenclature regarding the printed dates.
Tomorrow I will post an original VIN from the St. Louis plant, built in August of 1969. I find it highly peculiar that there would have been a mandate that flip flopped the process back and forth contingent on a specific model. Building processes and procedures were meant to be simplified and not complicated. If all of the cars built from August 69 through mid September used this alpha style of dating, where are the large majority of original VINs that display that particular setup? There would have been thousands of vehicles displaying that layout! While I cannot say I have seen every VIN made during that period, I can attest to reproducing/documenting approximately 230 from that time period and only four or five incorporated the style that you have concluded is the rule rather than of the exception. How many Chargers did you research and document to come up with this conclusion?

Thanks for posting this info guys!

Tav

Dave, So whats the deal with the part # on the sticker, early 71 started with # up until late 72?

Maybe it just depended on how busy the tech was that was creating the stenciled decal....... Adding fuel to the fire......

Troy

Get a load of this VIN made in August. I think it might be the first Hemi vehicle manufactured at the St. Louis assembly plant!

NOTE:
This was Dave Stuart's idea of some Chrysler humor....he made me do it. All kidding aside, I found one of the August VINs with the date printed in the numeric font. When I contact the owner I will see if he will allow me to post it.

Tom
My car was a Nov. 69 build had numerical door decal. Told the body shop that did my car to be careful and not damage it. Its gone.
Hey..I think these guys like you. Merry Christmas.

My 70 Bee also has the month spelled out.

I finally went to the 70 Charger Registry to look at the link (concerning these decals) that started in 2005. The problem with that particular research is that it was based on input from forum members who were trying to change reality with a predetermined hypothesis. I think they came up with 5 cars that had AUGUST printed and 4 cars with SEPTEMBER. Nine cars to base a "line in the sand" conclusion for ALL vehicles built prior to September 12th, 1969!?! I see this happen in many areas of the hobby concerning all automotive manufacturers. As car enthusiasts we (sometimes) attempt to sensationalize our prized possessions with stories that make the past seem a little more magical. The bottom line is that....there is no bottom line! Numeric and Alpha dates were printed for both months and the exact reasoning may never be determined. It was not a Charger only thing as proven by the Roadrunner vehicles that I posted. It was not necessarily a date thing because vehicles with lower VINs used the numeric date style while VINs with later sequence numbers used a spelled date style. The story told to me by St. Louis employee Bill Embree, makes sense with regards to employee "floaters" and how this might have occurred.
I will never state ANY exact reason for this VIN characteristic because there is not enough information to do so. The sad thing is that the other forums will convey incorrect information and (usually) never correct or update the scenario. I do not have an opinion either way because I never had anything to do with the engineering of these cars and/or their parts. I simply do the best I can to provide documented evidence and let the chips fall where they may. If any of my data is proven to be incorrect, I will be very appreciative towards the person or group that comes up with the revised information. The more WE all know the better and more interesting the Hobby becomes! History never changes.....just our perception and awareness of it!!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Dave Walden

Dave, that was primarily from 2005 and 2006 when there were much fewer members there. That said, we had 42 70 Charger owners respond (with no predisposed outcome agenda)and not a single owner of a 70 Charger at that time had a door decal with a numeric month format up until SPD of 915. Every respondant with an SPD of 915 or later had the numeric format. So I wouldn't call it a rarity when everyone with an early SPD had the same thing. As you saw, based on this thread I have resurrected the reseach to tap into the much larger membership base that exists today to get more info. I realize digging through your old records is likely a chore however if you have examples of original 70 Charger door VIN decals for cars with an SPD between 801 and 912 that used a numeric format I would love to see them...not being facetious...would really like to see them so we can better understand this topic.

Also, while I have used ECS myself and have the upmost respect for you and your company I don't appreciate being charactarized as creating our own reality. The reason we do research and gather information...be it fender tags, build sheets, window stickers, door stickers etc is to amass the data and let the facts dictate the results. We focus only on 70 Chargers and do not factor in any other model to keep it pure.

Specifically on this topic we knew there variances in the format of the door VIN decals and sought to understand if there was a pattern, format change dates etc so owners who needed new ones could know what format was correct for their car. When I ordered mine from ECS (908 build date with SEPTEMBER 1969 on original decal) I received the 9 - 1969 format back. After I contacted ECS again I got the correct format for my car. So I am one of those early 70 Chargers we are debating.

Merry Christmas.

Hi guys, I'll just add some info and let you interpret. (if any is required)My 70 Bee project.

Im not near the car till Mon so I dont know the SPD but it is a St Louis car.

One thing I have learned throughout this discussion is that the SPD has very little to do with when the car was actually built. The only way to determine the day a car was built is with the Factory Invoice. Dave Stuart is an executive with Chrysler and is an expert when it comes to the ordering and build schedules of vehicles. He used my business procedures to help me understand the way the ordering process works for Chrysler. Here is an actual situation that he used to illustrate the process.


I had a customer named Cliff who ordered a decal kit and some other items. His order was placed on Monday December 7, 2009. There were also about 15 other orders that were placed on the same day. On December 8, 2009 we received another 15-20 orders and this continued throughout the week. We couldn't ship Cliff's order placed on December 7th because we were out of 1970 B Body Jacking Instruction decals. (We won't ship incomplete orders.) I was not able to ship his order until December 22nd because the new Jacking decals were printed on Friday December 18th. During this time, we still shipped many orders that had been called in AFTER Cliff had placed his order on the 7th. Cliff's order sat (as well as anyone else who had ordered a 1970 B Body kit) while the others were shipped. If you reference our files, the dates will show Cliff's order being processed BEFORE all of the other orders, even though it went out AFTERWARD. The only way to determine the actual shipping date would be to go into the shipping records to see when the items were shipped. That is basically the same scenario that happened when these cars were built.

The Fender Tag date almost never represented the actual build date. Cars that had a specific assembly line date might not have been built for days or even WEEKS after their SPD. That is why it is difficult to determine PRECISE build information based strictly off the Fender Tag! For example, a car with a fender tag VIN BS23VOB110055 could have been built AFTER a car with a fender tag VIN BS23VOB110075. Unless the factory documented a reason for production glitches, you may NEVER find out why there were delays in production. That is what I have been trying to convey to Dodge Don with regards to VIN numbers. Attempting to determine alpha versus numeric fonts based on vehicle sequence numbers is a waste of time. A Broadcast sheet is also useless when trying to determine the actual build date of a vehicle. I hope all this jargon makes sense.

DW

Here is one that conflicts with the "St. Louis/Charger only" plant theory concerning a spelled out month for a VIN label. This is the second sample that I have recently found like this from the Hamtramck plant. I have been going through my documentation (off & on) for the past few weeks trying to find the other photos that prove there is no reason (other than speeding up the manufacturing process) for this "spelled out" feature. Using the same logic that some have used for the St. Louis plant, should we assume that the Hamtramck plant was doing this to identify Challengers that were manufactured in August of 1969? Just what should we conclude from this particular VIN example?

LA and DM.

Thanks to all for shedding some insight on this apparently much debated topic. My initial instinct was the Charger I saw with the August spelled out and I thought it may have been a tagged / stolen vehicle. Apparently I was way off base. Historically speaking, it's interesting information...

Two more.

Hi Chris!
I tried to call you to see if I could post this without a blur on the digits but didn't get an answer. Your decal looks exactly like the picture you sent me but looks new! If you like, I will post a side by side picture of the two.

A couple of people have asked for an update regarding the copycat bootlegger who was claiming that my VIN products were actually being made by him. This "Pretender" posted that I was selling blank labels to him and HE was putting in the production date and VIN information. He also claimed that I didn't even make the "blanks" that he was buying from me! We DO NOT have distributors or approved resellers for our Vintage decal line for model years 1969 through 1990. In essence, he was trying to cover his tracks and mislead the people he had resold my decals to! He did this because they realized that he had charged them $150 for something that they could have bought from us for $49. WOW.....a 300% markup for nothing more than being a middleman! Some folks will go to great lengths to cover their butt even if it means destroying their integrity. For the record, ECS manufactures each and every VIN decal (from start to finish) at our facility. Not one step or part of the process is performed by anyone other than our company.