Serial number ranges for '63 fuel unit

[Norris W.]

A friend is looking at a '63 fuelie coupe with the wrong motor. Is there a list somewhere of the ranges that the fuel units run in, in comparison with the Vin number or build date on the car?

I found a discussion on it AFTER posting the question. It didn't show in my initial search, but showed in "similar threads" afterwards.

[Troy P.]

Re: Serial number ranges for '63 fuel unit

If you are asking what VIN cars came with fuel injection I'm pretty darn confident there are not records to that effect. I think they were rather randomly built over the year but there is some thinking that quite a few were built in a row early in the model year...like August/September 1962?

[Norris W.]

Re: Serial number ranges for '63 fuel unit

No, actually I've got a double reason for the sudden interest. I've got a 4066 mile fuel convertible that I've owned since the 80's. The previous owner disassembled it sometime in the 70's so his mother couldn't sell it after he got in trouble street racing it. I've known the car since about 1964 and have no doubt of it's origin and authenticity BUT the guy street raced it with no hood and a crossram and the fuel unit and air cleaner was stolen from his garage in the mid 60's. The number 2 guy in this who was actually the third owner bought a unit and air cleaner and I sent it to Jack Podell probably 20 years ago, but it's all early stuff and this car is late 17K serial number. A friend is looking at a 63 coupe that may or may not have been an original fuel car. It's an early car with a later fuel unit and Podell has it now doing it for the present owner. I'm wondering if a trade would be in order to put us both in closer proximity. I've always been optimistic of finding the original unit from my car, but after searching for almost 30 years and a lot of the old hotrodders who were the street racing scene around here in the 60's have been dropping steadily in the last 5 yrs, it gets more doubtful. There was also a '65 fuel car here that the owner pulled the unit off of and replaced it with 2 4's from an early 60's car and I've heard rumors of the unit still being around here, but so far it's been illusive also.

[Patrick H.]

Re: Serial number ranges for '63 fuel unit

There is a reasonable list in Noland Adams' restoration book that may help you.

[Michael G.]

Re: Serial number ranges for '63 fuel unit

Norris, multiply the last five digits in the cars vin by .179 and then add 976. The result is based on a lot of data and will be very close to the serial number that your car probably originally had when it left the plant.

You should also note that any fuel unit that entered the plant before the car was built could also be on it, so there are a lot of other possible serial numbers.

I'd stay away from units you find labeled #1-1000 though, as they never existed.

[John D.]

Re: Serial number ranges for '63 fuel unit

Norris, A 63 FI car in the 17K range might have a serial number tag in the 3500 range plus or minus. It's early in the morning and your post is rather complicated for me.
So your personal car is in the 17K range. And your friend is looking at an early car with a later units on it. Then you have a later car with an early unit.

Need serial number of both FI units and the engine build date of both cars to give you an educated answer as to whether a trade will fly. I see you are after a unit with an original tag. That's good. John

[Troy P.]

Re: Serial number ranges for '63 fuel unit

I would think the cut off date/VIN between the early and late 63 fuel unit would be addressed in the 63-64 Technical Information and Judging Guide, to the extent it is known.

[Monte M.]

Re: Serial number ranges for '63 fuel unit

A slight correction on the units numbered 1 to 1000. There were units numbered 1 to 32, but they would not be appropriate for your car.

[Norris W.]

Re: Serial number ranges for '63 fuel unit

I dug out my copy of Noland's book. Mine is Volume 2. I don't see a publish date and I've had it a long time, so it may be old, but it seems like the listed units there are all over the place date wise. I don't know if that means that some of these cars have non original units or if they just skipped around, but it's safe to say the formula wouldn't work for quite a few of 'em if they're original.

I'll get the number off my unit today and see how it compares. As far as the friend, he abandonded this particular car. It's just too far gone in relation to the owner's asking price to be feasible to bring back to the condition he'd like.

[Michael G.]

Re: Serial number ranges for '63 fuel unit

Norris, as explained in an earlier post, the formula is just a guide, no claim is made that it covers all original cars.

A lot of the data in Noland's Book, plus a bit more, was used to create that formula. Without delving too deep into statistics, if you take the time to plot all the data in the book, you will find that an inordinate number of points line up very, very close to the best fit line projected by that formula.

There are a lot of points that are not close to that line, but realize that the data comes from a sample of cars that were polled during the time Noland's book was written. By the time that book was written, many units had been changed in service, the vast majority of 63 FI cars had lost their original unit, many 63's FI's had been scrapped, and many counterfeits FI cars existed. So the Noland data will have some really good points from original cars and some not so good points, for a variety of reasons.

Additionally, the plant was hardly concerned with making sure that units were installed in the order they arrived. They had better things to do.

The formula was just looking to identify the most likely unit to have been put on your car. At any given time, there were probably 30, to as many as 200, units in the plant (my estimate, not a known fact). Any one of those could have been put on your car. That means there was some normal variation.

What surely did not happen is that a unit with a serial number 100 or so above the number predicted by the formula ended up on your car when it was produced. Such a unit would not have been at St Louis yet, so it could not have been put on your car during its build.

So use the formula as a guide, not an absolute.

Good luck.

[Michael H.]

Re: Serial number ranges for '63 fuel unit

Norris, as explained in an earlier post, the formula is just a guide, no claim is made that it covers all original cars.


Good luck.

One more item that further mixes the numbers is the fact that the FI unit was installed at Flint engine, not the St Louis Corvette assembly plant.

That means that the order of engine assembly date to FI unit number was likely already somewhat mixed when the complete FI engine arrived at the St Louis plant.

[Michael G.]

Re: Serial number ranges for '63 fuel unit

Here's a graph of the Noland data. Note that for some of cars listed in Noland's book, the originality of the unit is highly suspect, so I dropped some outlier data points to get a line that best fit the most data. I'm not saying that some of the points I dropped were not original, just that they were outside what was "expected" for that day. This was done just for purposes of trying to estimate a "typical" installation, so it shows what was probably installed on a given day, not all of the possible variations.

SO, if you're searching for a unit, or trying to get a rough idea if your unit is correct, this gives you a fairly accurate ball park of what unit might be "ideally" correct for your car. That's all.

The equation below is an equation of the line shown on the graph.