Chassis numbers

[black57]

Hi all,
I know this has been discussed quite a few times in the past, but I'm at a loss.
After trolling through countless past threads, my understanding is that all the chassis numbers start with the year of manufacture. Is that correct?
Because mine starts with 1
It appears to be 19022-S
I could have sworn that last one was an 8, but its a Sydney car, and from what I have read it makes more sense that it is an S.
But why doesn't mine start with a 7, being its a 1957 FE sedan?
I believe my build date was the 14.05.1957

If anyone can shed some light on this I'd be grateful.

Pinky

[Jolls]

Hi all,
I know this has been discussed quite a few times in the past, but I'm at a loss.
After trolling through countless past threads, my understanding is that all the chassis numbers start with the year of manufacture. Is that correct?
Because mine starts with 1
It appears to be 19022-S
I could have sworn that last one was an 8, but its a Sydney car, and from what I have read it makes more sense that it is an S.
But why doesn't mine start with a 7, being its a 1957 FE sedan?
I believe my build date was the 14.05.1957

If anyone can shed some light on this I'd be grateful.

Pinky

If I have it right the first digit in the FE should be a 6, 7 or 8 (1956, 1957 or 1958) and they changed to FC with the new model. The 19022-S indicates that it is the 18022nd FE of any body type produced in Sydney. So possibly there has been a repair or heaps of paint covering the first digit. I'm not sure of what the production numbers were by year by location so I can't help narrow it down form there. IF the enginer is original it coudl help date the manufacture as the engine numbers were sequential and can be dated (https://www.fefcholden.org.au/techinfo/enginenos.html)

Hope this helps you some - although I expect that you had probably already deciphered it that far.

[black57]

Hi Jolls,

Thank you for your answer. You are right, it was there all along deeply covered in paint.
but it is about 20mm away from the hyphen just before the 19022 starts, and being so far away I hadn't look that far. I expected it to be spaced about the same of the other numbers.
It's a 7, so all numbers are present and accounted for.
Thanks for your help.

If anyone has any further info regarding the possible build date of 19022 I would be grateful.

Pinky

[RET]

If I have it right the first digit in the FE should be a 6, 7 or 8 (1956, 1957 or 1958) and they changed to FC with the new model.

Most 1958 built FCs also have an "8" prefix on their chassis number. This was changed in about December 1958, because it was recognised that the numbers were overlapping with 48 series cars, and a decadal system was clearly insufficient. Kind of a Y2K style problem in miniature.

Because only a small number of cars were manufactured between 19 November 1948 and 31 December, there were not a lot of FC models with chassis numbers that duplicated those of 48-215 cars from a decade earlier, but from 1949 onwards, the situation was clearly going to get messy, hence the move to model code and sequence and factory code.