Hi All,

I have been doing some VIN research and the ford trucks department did not maintain historical data like the mustang or thunderbird departments did.
It is difficult to obtain production numbers on specifics. Most of it is rounded numbers.

At any rate, does anyone know how Ford numbered the serial part of the VIN?
Was it sequential? Was there any breaks or reservations in the serial?
Did they increment the production run number when the production line was reset?

I am asking because I am building an f100 with a serial number of AA00001

My other truck has serial number HH00000

 

My knowledge is:

A model year production run began with A00001

When A99999 had been reached, it rolled over to B and thus began B00001 thru the end.

And so on and so forth.... I'm not familiar with something like AAnnnnn nor HHnnnnn - basically, double alphabetic characters... but I guess maybe you could be referring to pre-1981 production, about which I know virtually nothing....

 

Thanks @ctubutis

I have an older family friend that worked for FoMoCo back in the late 70's and was responsible for setting up the production line for 79 and 80 model years.

Because this was a big transition for Ford, many things needed to be tested and retested to keep the assembly line moving. Any major downtime on the line cost them a lot. So reuse of the 79 assembly line and parts was done in order to save time and cost. Evidence of this can be seen in the 80 models. Just take a look at the king pins on 79 and 80 models for the TTB IFS. Many of the parts start with D8 or D9 indicating these were 78 and 79 truck parts.

The truck is a f100 custom. Had a dealer installed A/C under the dash. It's a step side short bed with the 9" rear end and came with the 3 on the tree manual.
It had a 300 inline 6 that I replaced with a efi 302. (still have the 6 banger just in case this is the first one.) I will post the door tag when I get back to the shop.

My friend claims that when the production line stopped due to a major issue (retooling etc..) The ford managers made the serial reset to 0 and would increment the letter at the beginning of the serial.
therefor if the last one made was B1234 before the problem occurred, the next one would become C0000. For recall purposes and whatnots.

This did not make much sense to me, being that ford part numbers are so incredibly ingenious.

I have seen other 80 models with no letters in the serial part of the vin (all 5 numbers no letters). So I am guessing it started with 00000 then to 99999 before flipping to A0000 and I have the next made from that series.

I wonder if anyone has two consecutive trucks off the line that crossed over into the next number series.

thanks for the help.

 

1978/80's have 11 digit VIN's. The serial number (last 6 digits of the VIN) begin with 2 letters followed by 4 numbers.

Serial numbers include ALL series' of Ford trucks, Bronco's and Econolines.

 

This is great info @NumberDummy

Can you clarify a little on the last statement?


Meaning: the serial part of the VIN was consecutive and inclusive across all three series?

Would you know how that was accomplished?

Also, do you know the total for the series production run or any data that breaks it down?

 

In other words, a Cseries may come off the line, followed by a Louisville, Bronco, F350, another C series, then an Econoline and etc.

I have yearly breakdowns on how many F100; F150; F250; F350's were made, Bronco's, Econolines, Ranchero's and etc.

Ranchero's are considered cars, so their last 6 digits of the VIN's don't pertain to trucks.