What months during 1970 was GM on strike? A '71 I'm looking at has an assembly date of January 15th, but the matching number engine block's casting date is September 14th, 1970. Maybe the strike was in the last quarter of 1970?

The strike began in May of 1969. About four months of production on the 1970 Stingrays were lost because of it. Remember, model year production begins in the summer of the previous year.

Consequently, the lowest production of C3's is the 1970 model - fewer than 20,000 cars.

Check out www.idavette.net. Lots of production data and other fun trivia.

John

Another thought or two here.

The C3's were assembled in St. Louis. The engines were cast and assembled in New York and Michigan. From what I've read in "Corvette by the Numbers" the casting/assembly/shipping turnaround appears to have been less than two weeks for an engine. GM would had to have taken a lead time into account for the assembly production. Even using 1970-style information management systems, I think it unlikely that GM would have had a four month lead on engines.

Also, with the strike, orders for engines should have been halted - since there were no cars to put them in. By the time the '71 you are considering was assembled, the strike had been over for more than a year.

I agree that it is POSSIBLE the set up you are seeing is factory original (materials overflow, contractual obligations between GM divisions, etc.) This one would all come down to the money for me. If the seller is going for top dollar on it as an "original matching numbers" vette, my skepticism would force me to keep on walking unless he could back it up with firm documentation.

Hope this helps. Let us know what you find.

John

January of 1970 was the first production month of the '70 model year, July was the last.

I believe my build date is July 8, 1971 (L08) -- My engine cast is sometime in mid-May '71. 6 weeks made sense to me at the time I was verifying all of my "matching numbers."