C-1 TIPS
Mike Niner of the Northwest Chapter found an oddity when he pulled his door panels on his '62. He found the number 411 written upside down with a green crayon. He wondered if anyone could answer what this number meant at the factory. SACC VP and CGRC member Max Brockhouse sent the following explanatory letter to Mike:
Mike,
I enjoyed your question in the Northwest Chapters’ January newsletter. I think I have an answer for you.
The green numbers you have found are a form of “control numbers” used on various body panels. You will also find this number on firewall, kick panel, inter-fender and doors.
The panel parts are number one through five hundred per group, then the numbering starts over at one through five hundred again during the production of the bare fiberglass body parts.
The factory used these green numbers as a form of identifying the bare body(s) prior to the actual serial number assigned to the Corvette.
In the event one of our early Corvettes bare fiberglass bodies was flawed or damaged and needed to be removed from the line, this green number was used to identify the bare body among all the others. In your case, the line worker would be given a work order to repair #411, he would look among the bare bodies, find that number, repair the damage, and send it on its way again.
It has also been suggested it was also a quality control number. Perhaps if a batch of fiberglass was not up to standards a whole batch of five hundred body panels could be rejected. Much like a casting clock and dates are used in the casting of engine blocks for quality control.
Mike in no way do I consider myself an expert on the
subject. This was told to me years
ago when I first started working on my 1958 in 1988 or so.
I have long forgotten who told me. Probably