Pinto Car Club of America

Greetings,

While securing some tiedowns under my '74 Sedan the other day, I saw a three digit number handwritten in what looks to be grease pencil on the vertical panel that makes the rear of the trunk. If you were looking under the car and looked at the large metal bracket that the bumper mounts to, and look straight forward, there is about a 6 inch void, then you run into the rear vertical panel of the trunk.

This number is 284, like I said, handwritten. I was curious if this was written during manufacture and went and looked at my build sheet. Low and behold, the top left number on the build sheet is "Rotation number". Same number! 284.

Does anyone with Ford manufacturing experience know what "Rotation Number" means?

Thank you in advance,
Dave

It means that your car is in far better condition than mine: that part of my car has fallen off, and the only grease on it now was not applied with a pencil.

Kool find!

Bill

That's pretty funny Bill. I too thought it was a cool find, kinda took me back 33 years when this little lady rolled down the assembly line. I think I will take a photo and attach here, it really is pretty cool, a bit of connection to the assembly of my car.

Dave

as a ford worker...and a ford worker who works in a former pinto assembly plant i can tell you a rotation number is the order they come down the line in. Vin numbers are different. We start at 0001 and go to 9999 then start all over again. This is done so we can find the car in varoius parts of the plant without looking at the VIN number.  The vin AND rotation numbers are printed on a few papers taped to various parts of a car (front, back, sides and underbody/frame) that tell what options the vehicle takes to help the guys on the line, they are called teletypes. Its an inplant only number and means nothing when it leaves the yard, then they refer to the vin numbers.