My cowl tag looks slighly different than some of my books so I was hoping someone could help decode it.

ST 69 13667 BAL174828
TR 756 69
1 B L103613

With what looks like a hand stamped 3 in the upper right corner

The car is a silver convertible with black buckets

Can the build date be determined from the cowl? The vin is a high number and I think the first Chevelle would have been 100001 vin so I believe my car is a later production vehicle.

Thanks

Mike

Here's most of it Mike.

ST 69 13667 - 69 Malibu convertible V8.
BAL - Baltimore assembly plant.
TR 756 - Black buckets.
1B (could this be 01B?) - if so, build date January, 1969, second week.

I assume the '69' is your paint code which relates to Cortez Silver. There should be an alpha code beside that '69' - "A" is for white top and "B" is for Black top.

Hope this helps.

Yes you are right -- I missed it

TR 756 69 BPNT is the full line

The B is connected in one "word" with the PNT

The car did have a black top but I thought it was a replacement -- Black is what I thought a silver car with black interior would have but you can never be 100% sure it was not a special order white top.

Originally posted by mike69ss:
My cowl tag looks slighly different than some of my books so I was hoping someone could help decode it.

ST 69 13667 BAL174828
TR 756 69
1 B L103613

With what looks like a hand stamped 3 in the upper right corner


Can the build date be determined from the cowl? The vin is a high number and I think the first Chevelle would have been 100001 vin so I believe my car is a later production vehicle.

Thanks

Mike Most of the 69 Baltimore tags I have have some number stamped in the upper right corner. No known reason for these yet that I know of. You're referencing the "174828" from the body number plate to the VIN and they are different animals. The number on the body number plate is the Fisher Body unit number and do not always follow sequence. Example, I have a 2A (Feb, 1st week) body number plate with #107239. Also, apparently for Jan and Feb anyway, there was not a leading '0' on the month. I have two for Feb without the '0'.

The 1969 Chevelle model year was unique in that the VIN sequence numbers started at 300001 instead of 100001 for most other years. As the 69 was built at 6 U.S. assembly plants, there are 6 69 Chevelles (of some model) with identical last 6 digits of the VIN being the same up to some point in the model year. By that I mean that the first Chevelle from each of the six plants would have a VIN of model designation, year, plant, and 300001. How cool would it be to have 2 (or more) of your favorite model year built at different plants but having the same last 6 digits. :cool:

Thanks for everyone's help.

One more question -- I assume the build date is for the car not the body

Originally posted by mike69ss:
Thanks for everyone's help.

One more question -- I assume the build date is for the car not the body From what I understand, the trim tags were stamped when the car was projected to start being built.