attachment of 63 vin tag

[Mike M.]

its well know that the 63's had their vin tags spot welded to the z-bar. perhaps john hinkley could chime in on the procedure used should the assembly line worker burn thru a vin tag. would the tag then be pop-riveted to the z bar or a new vin tag stamped and another attempt to weld it to the bar. i looked at a 63 tag, late production, that has obvious welding attempts with burn thru of the left side of the tag and a scar on the z-bar just below the burn-out. the vin tag is attached with a perfect spot weld on the right side of the tag, a pair of pop rivets thru tag into z-bar and the burn-thru on the left side of the tag. thanks guys, mike

[John H.]

Re: attachment of 63 vin tag

its well know that the 63's had their vin tags spot welded to the z-bar. perhaps john hinkley could chime in on the procedure used should the assembly line worker burn thru a vin tag. would the tag then be pop-riveted to the z bar or a new vin tag stamped and another attempt to weld it to the bar. i looked at a 63 tag, late production, that has obvious welding attempts with burn thru of the left side of the tag and a scar on the z-bar just below the burn-out. the vin tag is attached with a perfect spot weld on the right side of the tag, a pair of pop rivets thru tag into z-bar and the burn-thru on the left side of the tag. thanks guys, mike

Mike -

As an assembly process (including spotwelding) engineer, that was a totally hopeless design - trying to weld thin stainless steel to heavy plain steel with a flaky half-clean interface for joining them was a recipe for disaster from the beginning, which resulted in many cars with "double-shots" (sometimes triple) on the VIN plate. The plant just zapped them until they held, but I'm sure lots of them had weld separation later in the field and got fixed with whatever was handy. I wasn't involved with the car until 1967, and they had fixed the VIN plate in '65.