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Thought I'd start a new thread here. While I was under the car the other day, I checked out the trans to see if it had the right code...it did, KZF. Today, went a little farther, and tried to decode the tag. The shop manual gave an example of the way the code should look, but mine was a bit different:
048 - 872KZF1191
The first three digits are what the book says...the Julian date, which means the trans was built on February 17th, '87. Where the book differs is that it says the next number should be the shift, then a letter for the plant, the year number, then the code and serial number. What I'm seeing is that the year is first, followed by the shift, then the code and serial number. Not sure why it is different, but I found another site where someone had a similar tag, with the same sequence.
So, it looks like the trans was built on February 17, 1987, on 2nd shift, and was #1191. Is this correct? I also wonder if this serial only applied to that particular code transmission. I've done some reading lately about the Pontiac plant where it was built, and if the assembly line there operated the same way it did in the '60's, the transmission would have been built at the time the car was ordered. Makes sense, because the car was purchased March 17th, 1987, so it could be #1191 of the 442's, built sometime after the 17th of February. I have to account for the fact that the transmission would have been built in another plant, and delivered to Pontiac. Maybe I'm just guessing, but it is possible. Other factors that might have thrown the sequence off would be transmissions that were defective earlier in the production sequence, service parts, etc. The number of transmissions built could be greater than the number of cars built.
Sorry for the long post, but it's interesting to decode this stuff. Maybe that code might finally answer the questions people have about when their 442 was built, since they did not keep records of the build sequence like they did with the H/O's.
048 - 872KZF1191
The first three digits are what the book says...the Julian date, which means the trans was built on February 17th, '87. Where the book differs is that it says the next number should be the shift, then a letter for the plant, the year number, then the code and serial number. What I'm seeing is that the year is first, followed by the shift, then the code and serial number. Not sure why it is different, but I found another site where someone had a similar tag, with the same sequence.
So, it looks like the trans was built on February 17, 1987, on 2nd shift, and was #1191. Is this correct? I also wonder if this serial only applied to that particular code transmission. I've done some reading lately about the Pontiac plant where it was built, and if the assembly line there operated the same way it did in the '60's, the transmission would have been built at the time the car was ordered. Makes sense, because the car was purchased March 17th, 1987, so it could be #1191 of the 442's, built sometime after the 17th of February. I have to account for the fact that the transmission would have been built in another plant, and delivered to Pontiac. Maybe I'm just guessing, but it is possible. Other factors that might have thrown the sequence off would be transmissions that were defective earlier in the production sequence, service parts, etc. The number of transmissions built could be greater than the number of cars built.
Sorry for the long post, but it's interesting to decode this stuff. Maybe that code might finally answer the questions people have about when their 442 was built, since they did not keep records of the build sequence like they did with the H/O's.
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