I have an early 69 sn 708143 and a couple years ago was looking for a First edition Owner's Manual, located one on ebay and bought it. What intrigued me was the fact that it has a stamping with "Chevrolet Engineering Center Library" on the front cover. This is in really good shape, and yes it is an original, with the "News card page still there, but the stub gone. It is Part #3955548 So my question is What do I Have? Did this come out of the chevrolet library? Is it rare? Maby someone could shed some light on this for me. JOE LUCIA?
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Re: 1969 Owner Manual Oddity?
Neil, Yes there was a Chevrolet Engineering Library and they did use such a stamp on most of the documents in the library. The library was utilized by various Groups and Engineers within CEC as a reference source.
Are they rare ? Probably, as they normally only had a few of each model and MYs owners manuals archived.
Just before I retired from GM in 1999 that library had sat unused for a few years and basically had become an eyesore. They were cleaning it up and tossing that kind of "junk" into gondolas. I was able to "rescue" some of the "junk". I did not retrieve any owners manuals as there was lots more data that I felt was more unique and historically significant. However I do have some documents that do have that stamp on them.
I WANT TO MAKE IT VERY CLEAR THAT I WAS GIVEN CLEARANCE BY GM TO RESCUE THE DATA THAT I OBTAINED FROM THE GONDOLAS. And as Joe Lucia says....................NOT FOR SALE! -
Re: 1969 Owner Manual Oddity?
So then My next question would be , is it still correct for my car or is it now a conversation piece? How many of these owner manuals do you think they had for each model year in the library? This sort of fascinates me.Comment
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Re: 1969 Owner Manual Oddity?
Neil-----
With the stamping, as interesting and unusual as it might be, I would say it would not be considered original for the car. No original owners manuals supplied with the cars would have carried such a stamp. So, it's pretty much like the stamping documents the fact that it's not original to the car. Another original owners manual, even though it might not actually be the one supplied with the car, but without the stamping, could not be discerned as not having been supplied with the car.
Whether, or not, you would get "dinged" for the stamping, I have no idea.In Appreciation of John HinckleyComment
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Re: 1969 Owner Manual Oddity?
Well, I would guess it would be the right OM for your car, providing it is the right edition, but I can't comment on how a judge would judge the stamp on it. Conversation piece? Probably. Unique? Yes. Rare? Yes, very.
As I recall they had just a few, 1 to 4 for each vehicle line, for each MY. That may not sound like a lot, but they added up and their were MANY file cabinets full of them.
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Re: 1969 Owner Manual Oddity?
Wow! I would have liked to be in those cabinets... We usually are up to technical information, diagrams and the like, but understand they were "in house" documents to assist engineers, workers, etc at the assembly time, a few decades ago.
Some papers surface from time to time, like the information that J. Shea brings here on steering components but on other areas there is no much information available/discovered, so for now we live with the AIM, Service Manuals and NCRS publications (spec and Judging guides) and those slices of history some of you share.
Sorry for this thread deviation but one thing goes to other.
Best regardsComment
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