starter date codes and production runs at start of the year

[LT7A]

Originally Posted by wazzabie

Do you know this from first hand knowledge? When the year end change over occurs I would think that there would have been planning months in advance and the necessary new part numbers would have been ready for the change over from day one. If changes rolled over slowly into the following year then it would have been difficult to manage service at the dealership.

If you are talking about a March build date for the truck, maybe. But if you look at production pictures on the site here, you will see in some cases rows of engines waiting to go into vehicles. I would say that virtually every truck built on January 7th had engine components dated from the previous year. The starter was manufactured, probably by a wholly owned subsidiary at that time, but still most likely manufactured - and then trucked to where engines were assembled, which also may have then been trucked or gone by railroad to where the truck was being assembled.

If we can get Keith Seymour's attention, we can find out exactly what went on.

In with regards to the difficulty of servicing, etc with parts from the previous model year, there are many instances cited here where significant changes were made, but the old parts were used up out of inventory first. So a 78 could have a key component from 77, even though the 78 was a new model year.