I would like go back to the body nr.
Beside the nr on the left side there is even a another important nr on the right side (passenger).
This is the „B&L-Nr.“ and it was stamped at the B&L factory in France !after! the paint.
Because the raw shells for the „second“ production line in Bochum bypassed the B&L plant you don´t find that nr. on a „BB-GT“.
The following description is not related to this „BB“-GT´s which are a completely other story. They represent only 24 043 in total off the whole GT production and don't play a big roll in the first months of GT production.
This means that more than 80% of all produced GT passed thru three involved plants during a production pass and every plant marks every GT with one individual kinde of number. For the body manufacturer „Chausson“ we have the left side body nr. than followed by B&L with the right hand body nr. and final Bochum plant with the VIN. With all this three numbers it is possible to reconstruct roughly the production history of every individual GT time-wise.
Since the middle of 69 to the end off production in 73, we see a constant raise of this numbers. The average difference between the r. and l. nr. swinging usually in a small range from 300 to 500 units.
I don´t want to go to much in detail and bore you but the difference had to do with the work flow.
In comparison to this situation, the first month of GT-production went off completely different. The progress of this numbers is erratic and we see a lot of „mismatch“. This happened because only a very low amount of GT´s passed all production steps/stadiums in a time frame they should do. Most of them stuck in a production step somewhere. I didn´t think this was only quality related. The bottleneck to boot up the output as fast as expected was definitely the B&L plant. Keep in mind that they do not only paint and assembling, they also manufactured many GT specific parts. For example sewing interior parts.
The consequence of this circumstances result for some GT in an horrible never-ending build history. As John in his first post states correctly…
“early body's were held back for quality issues and then fed back into the production stream“
To make long story short, it is absolutely worth to look at those body numbers, especially on GT´s from this early period.
Stevs GT aka „chrispy“ seems to be a an extreme example. Tho PO posted in an older thread the right hand (B&L-Nr.)-2944. But because the body nr (1016) seems to be extreme low, i would like to investigate this more precisely.
Steve, it would be very helpful if you could post a picture of the area where the inner wheel house arch panel meets the fender. I see these two recessed strips under the wiring loom clamps only on very early GT body's.
