Why do some 70 tail lights have the clear reverse area bubbled out and some are flush.My 70 ss 396 has the ones that are out and not flush.Does it depend on when your car was made.My build sheet says 43-11-19 on the build date area in the left hand top corner and my cowl tag says 11 C. Anyone out there know ?

This has been brought up before, and caused quite the debate. Remembering how to decode right, your vehicle was the 43rd vehicle to roll of the assembly line on 11/19/69. But where was your car built???

Regardless, I don't think the plant matters. I was complete shocked after seeing an SS with the "bubbled" back-up lens for the first time. My car, ordered by my father new, built on 11/14/69 at Van Nuys, CA has the flush lenses.

I think the overall thoughts were, (some here at this board had the flush, some had the bubbled) was it just depended on who was supplying the lenses to GM, the manufacturer either changed the design, or more than one supplier made them and...oops, one's a little different!

Maybe it did depend on the plant or build date, but don't sweat it, cause both should be considered correct.



[This message has been edited by Coppertop (edited 02-29-2000).]

My car was built at teh Lakewood Plant in Atlanta Georgia

My 70 was built in Atlanta also with a build date of 11A, It has the flush lenses.
Ron

Hey Brian...what's your vin?

My car was built at Lakewood around that time too. My build sheet says 43 11-19.

my serial is 112666. How could we both have car that was #43 on the same date at the same plant?



[This message has been edited by DAVID IN GA (edited 02-29-2000).]

2 different tail lenses were made for 70.
one was for the Malibu, and the other was for the plain old 300 deluxe. Here are the part #s They should be stamped somewhere on the lens.
5964361-5964362 300 deluxe left & right
5964287-5964288 Malibu left & right
The ones for a Malibu should be correct for an SS.

Jeff Litka
72 Chevelle SS
72 MonteCarlo

As for suppliers, I think that GM used a lot of outside suppliers. However, I went on a tour of the Guide Lamp plant in Indiana back in the late 60's and they were molding lots of their own lenses. So, I think that lenses were a part that they did not job out very often. There must be an explanation other than supplier. I suspect that JSL is on the right track.

Jeff there must have been differant part numbers on these lights ,my flush ones read
5964184 2a right
5964183 2a left.

Brian,
The 5964183& 184, that couldnt possibly be
a 5964163 and a 164 could it?
I double checked the part #s and there was a number change.
The 5964163 & 5964164 are the old numbers for the 300 deluxe lenses.
There is also an old number for the malibu lenses 5964166 5964165

JSL my car has 5962670 on the left and 5964098 on the right.Do you show these numbers for a 70 SS?

I think there a lot of numbers floating around out there for these lights.I have another set with 5964289 1 left
5964290 2 right
mine are sets i think because they have the same numbers except for the last one.Has anyone ever repainted the silver trim areas on the 70s ,I just did and used the same silver paint that the 69,70 ss wheels use,the argent silver looks very close.

Sometimes the numbers that are stamped on the lenses are just casting numbers, and sometimes they are the actual part number.
the numbers I found are right out of a GM parts catalog.
We went through this topic a few months ago on 71-72 tail lights and found basicly the same thing. On my 72 , one of the lenses has the actual part number on it, the other side doesn't.

This is a really good question! I usually glance pass odd questions because the response from other team members hits the answer right on the head, but not so this time. All the new lenses coming from GM now have the bubble. My '70 MALIBU was built in van nuys has flat b/u lens. All the lenses are mfg'd by Guide, so different vendors is out.Two different plants? East coast and West coast?I see where JSL found the #'s that are different between Chevelle (standard) and malibu, but what is interesting is the price! The malibu version is nearly twice the money! Give me a day or two, 'cause I've got a lot of books to go through from GM for just this kind of thing.

[This message has been edited by OPGI (edited 03-03-2000).]

Just to throw in another response, my '70 Malibu, which was delivered new to me on July 7th, 1970, has the bubble backup light "lens". These are the original tail light lenses, never been changed. The car was built in Arlington, the third week of June, 1970.

I found some other interesting information. On 2/19/70 the tail lamp housing was redesigned and redrawn, but the only change visible is the early design shows the taillamp housing mounting is studs attached to housing with a nut on top and the late design has a bolt going into a threaded portion of the housing. Thats all I can find.