Lucas or Bosch... any hard and fast rules?

[RET]

480 posts and I don't think I've ever posed a question for the group before

At our Club meeting last night the topic of ID numbers and so on came up, and I was asked if there was any way to tell whether a car was originally fitted with Bosch or Lucas electricals?  Furthermore, is either right or wrong for any particular model?

I don't know.  My gut feeling is that whatever was lying on the pallet when it came time to fit the electricals up is what got used, so whether your car had Bosch or Lucas boils down to what inventory the assembling factory had on hand at the time.

Whilst paint numbers and trim numbers theoretically include a supplier code, I don't know if there's anything similar to identify the supplier of the electricals.  Can anyone shed any light on this?

cheers
RET

[4hammers]

Hi RET
I had a look at my cars & tried out the new feature you have added to the site. It gives both cars the same build month, same year, but the wagon was built in SA, the ute in Vic. The Ute runs Bosch electricals, even down to the headlights, but the wagon runs Lucas.  
I have asked this question of a fella who worked in the Dandenong plant & was told that whatever was at hand was used. Also, a customer could specify either. But, there is no way that I know of to identify it by the compliance plate.
Goodluck,
Rob

[RET]

Rob,

Very interesting, and pretty much as I expected.

One thing bugs me though.  If a customer could specify which they wanted, how was that requirement passed down the assembly line?  And why didn't anyone tell the customer "you should get out more"?

Perhaps related: I have seen some ID plates with the code "AO" after the trim number.  Anyone know to what that refers?

cheers
RET

[4hammers]

RET.
Apparently, the German made Bocsh was HEAPS more reliable. The lucas stuff was good, but not 100%. They had a bit of trouble with the Lucas stuff not coping with the Aussie conditions. I had a Morris 1100S for awhile (great little Granny car!!) & that was always needing the Lucas stuff looked at. Granted, it was 30 years old when I got it
Got me stuffed how they passed the order down the line though, I suppose it would be the same as when you ordered any of the accessories.
Keen to find out more.
Rob

[slim]

My car has this "AO" on the ID tag also and Im interested to know what it represents also, as the tech section is inconclusive when entering this data?

[RET]

That's because I don't know what it means!  Once someone enlightens me, I'll add the information to the Tech Info section.

cheers
RET

[mcl1959]

FE sedans were fitted with Lucas headlamps, wagons, vans & utes were fitted with Bosch.
Except for the first 200 utes built in Vic and the first 96 utes built in WA which had Lucas lights.
FC's were fitted indiscriminately with Lucas & Bosch headlights as supplies were ordered and delivered.
There are no markings or identification to indicate what car had what equipment. It simply was a matter of fitting what was there to be fitted. GMH had 2 suppliers of most parts and if you look hard enough at various pieces you will see differences.

Did you know that Bosch headlight rims are different to Lucas headlight rims?

FE up to eng # L 386732 were fitted with Lucas regulators - from then on all FE and FC were fitted with Bosch regulators.

The second question is one of lifes great mysteries to me as this only occurs in Sydney plant cars
FE 215 has AP on the plate
FE 217 has AQ on the plate
FE 225 has AO on the plate
FE 2106 has AS on the plate
There are no Sydney 219, 229 or 2104 bodies

The sequence begs the question what AR was on.
I dont know yet !!!!!!!!!!!!

I dont think FC's were stamped with this code at all

Ken

[RET]

There's a reason they call you the Guru!

Thanks for the information.  Just to clarify, no FE wagons or vans built in Sydney, or no FE or FC wagons or vans?  Could be another validation rule for the ID Plate Decoder page.

cheers
RET

[mcl1959]

Yes no FE or FC wagons or vans built in Sydney,  Wagons were built in Melbourne plant from about middle of the FC range.
I have a date but too lazy to find it right now.  I will put it in the book !!!!!!

Ken

[RET]

I was in a bookshop today and thumbed a copy of Don Loffler's new book, "The FJ Holden".  The depth of information, minutiae and esoterica in that book is just astounding.

Anyway, I was looking at the FJ Identification section, and discovered this little gem:

(Note, this is from memory, so certainly not verbatim from the book)

The second set of 3 numbers describes the trim codes, including the colour, material used and body-style for which it was intended.  Blah blah PVC, Elascofab, leather blah blah

If the trim number was followed by the letter A, B, C, or D, it means that a non-standard trim was used (ie from a different manufacturer).  When followed by AB, AC, AD, J, K or P, it describes the trim type.  These codes appear only on FJs built in Sydney from March 1954 (?) onwards

So it would seem that whatever 'type' Don is referring to, it continued to be applied to Sydney built FEs, but was discontinued prior to the release of the FC.

Tantalising, but not quite enough info, is it?

However, I also saw in the Acknowledgements our very own Ken McLean thanked, so maybe Ken you can ask Don to explain this "Life's Little Mystery" and put us all out of our misery

cheers
RET

[HARKO]

minutiae and esoterica
verbatim
now where the hell was that dictionary .
10 points RET

[4hammers]

Harko,
Verbatim= Some sort of vitamin supplement :-/
Esoterica= I think that means it is Rude  
Minutiae= Could be a new model Daewoo

We may not know what it means, but at least we know never to play Scrabble with RET.
4hammers

[RET]

Must have been a day for sesquipedalia yesterday, I described Gree's car as 'verdant' at one point as well!

Esoterica = Rude LOL!

Q: Do you know the difference between Erotic and Kinky?
A: One uses a feather, the other uses the entire chicken!

And including Scrabble for part of the Nationals inter-Club Sports Trophy is out, is it?

RET

[RET]

A while back I emailed Don Loffler asking if he was able to shed any more light on this topic:

Dear Don,

I saw your email address on the letter I received from the NSW All Holden Day Committee, and I hope you don't mind me writing to you with a technical question.  I have your first book, and believe you will receive an order for the next two from my wife shortly.  (Apparently I'm hard to buy gifts for!)

I was flicking through "The FJ Holden" recently, and came across the partial answer to a question about early FEs that's been nagging me for years.  FEs made in Sydney have trim codes that are suffixed "AO" or similar, ie 204-467-AO.  No Melbourne or Adelaide ID plates have these letters, and not all Sydney FEs have them either.  I came across the comment in your book that Sydney FJs were similarly suffixed, with a brief explanation that they are peculiar to Sydney and further describe the interior trim.

Even Ken McLean (the guru as far as FE and FC are concerned) has only been able to determine so much about these codes.  From his research he has identified that there is only one letter code per body-style, eg:

     AP only appears on FE-215
     AQ => FE-217
     AO => FE-225
     AS => FE-2106

This of course suggests that the code is probably quite redundant.  Can you shed any more light on these codes from your extensive research of FJs?  As you can see here...

     http://www.fefcholden.org.au/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=howto;action=display;num=1039570070

...this topic has been discussed at length on our FE-FC forum.  We would really appreciate a definitive answer if you have one.


Thanks in advance.


Holden Together,

Richard Thomas
Secretary

[RET]

Just before the Nats I received this from him, as he had previously promised:

Richard,
At last I am coming up for breath, now that the crisis with my mother is abating, and I can think about trim patterns again!

First of all, though, I must congratulate you on your very attractive, informative and entertaining web site.  It was interesting to go through all the correspondence about the trim codes.

I wish I could give you a definitive answer on these codes, but I?m afraid I can't, because I haven't come across any GMH Sydney (Pagewood) documentation that explains the rationale behind the codes on the plates.  I do have partial information from GMH Adelaide (Woodville), so I'll give you my present thinking for what it's worth.

The only Woodville body plates I have seen so far bearing letters after the trim number are those on FJ Specials with two-tone Elascofab trim.  The letters A and B were used, and I know definitely that these letters indicated that a different supplier from the one in the official specification was used for the trim fabric.  What I do not know is whether you could detect any difference in the appearance of the material.  I have never seen three FJs side by side to be able to make comparisons, e.g. cars with trim codes 418, 418A and 418B, and I think I've got Buckley's chance of ever having that happen, especially as the cars would still have to have their original trim.  The chance of getting even two of the three types together is pretty slim.

The Sydney plant was something of a law to itself in various ways.  From the few ID readings that I have, A, AB and AC seem to have been used for leather on FJ Specials, AD for Elascofab on Specials, J for vinyl on Standards, P for vinyl on Business Sedans and K for vinyl on utes.  I do know that J, P and K in Woodville terms are the codes for the basic trim patterns for the Standards, Business Sedans and utes, and not for variations in supplier.  If this was also true for Sydney, which I think it might have been, I can't imagine why Sydney bothered to put these codes on the plates, especially as it wasn't done all the time.  I wonder whether the dynamics of the Pagewood plant were more difficult than those at Woodville, so that it was found to be a help to the people on the production line to be able to look at a body plate and double check that the front seat they were going to install in a Standard sedan was really the correct one and not one for a Business Sedan, for example.  But why not do it all the time?  Was it perhaps only for a period of time after there were some stuff-ups on the line?

What Woodville and Pagewood seem to have had in common was that A referred to a variation in specification for the Specials, but where Woodville chose to differentiate between suppliers with A and B, Pagewood chose to use A, AB, AC and AD.  Again, I have no idea as to whether there were visible differences in the trims.

It's puzzles like these that require a researcher to have access to as many body plate readings as possible.  I know that some FJ owners regard the IDs of the vehicles as private, and I respect that, so it makes me all the more grateful for those people who are willing to let me know their IDs.  Incidentally, the privacy issue is an important one, and I have decided that I will not be putting any of the ID readings I have collected onto any data base or onto the Internet.

Well, Richard, I'm sorry not to have been able to be more definite, but if I should ever come across any additional information, I will certainly pass it on to you.

Cheers,
Don Loffler