yes I am still killing rust....I ended up parking the Scout for a while while I did a restoration on my older brothers Jeep and painted my younger brothers motorcycle. But now I am back in it again. Thanks for that reply...what do you thing it was used for...just determining weather it was a full top or something of that nature?
I've delt with this kinda stuff in much later production vehicles for many oems. Only now it's all done with barcode labeling and scanning throughout the assembly process, you see that on your latemodel Ford peekup! I've worked in the assembly process for isuzu (u.s. And japan), fuji/subaru (u.s. Only), several GM platforms (u.s. And argentina), several Nissan platforms (u.s., mexico, and japan), freightliner stuff (portland only), kenworth/paccar, etc.
Variations of the "body code" number would have denoted things such as left hand or right hand drive specs, length (in the case of a sii vs. A traveler/terra), the ss option where various drillings/punchouts were eliminated and other stuff added, bulkhead for half cab vs. No top, travel top, etc. A specific sales engineering "fleet" order with special allowances/equipment for dealer/end user add-ons, transmission/power train specs/options, a "fleet" paint code, etc.
Always keep in mind that all IH-produced vehicle were built to a specific order from the factory branch or retail dealer. This was very different from the way the other "deetroit" oems did things. But it is the norm in the truck production/retail world. All the pertinent blocks had to be checked on a build/order sheet for each vehicle... If a dealer wanted no axles under any rig, then that was possible. "engine delete"???, no problem!
Yes, there were standard "packages" of stuff that had to go together, but overall the IH rigs could be assembled in most any fashion that the dealer/end user spec'd.
In the northwest, it was common for the timber companies to order in 4x4 pickups, travelalls, and cab/chassis combos with no axle spec'd, they would then install their own axles for whatever vocational application they might need. Sometimes axles were recycled amongst rigs over and over as they were crashed, rotted away, useage pattern changed, etc.
The sii platform was somewhat more "standard", but they could also be spec'd for whatever vocational use needed. There is a Scout 800 rolling chassis floating around locally that several club members have tried to deal on, it was originally produced only for "glastique" (I think I got that right!, there were alotta those kinda deals going on back in the late 60's>70's), those were used with a repop fiberglas model a Ford body, one of the early forms of "kit cars". It's supposed to be a near new virgin chassis with an appropriate asking price.
Here's a pic of the body tag on my beater, the numbers stamped on it have no relation to the vin.
