67 gt350 solenoid

The thinking a few years back was the early cars had the "C6" one. That has shifted and the judges expect to see the "C7" one.

 

They are dated on the bottom - helps confirm which ones were built and used when

 

Absolutely. The model year starts in August of the previous year so any new parts or revisions would be dated as such. There are even cases when part #'s have following model year numbers in a current year. Quite a few 68 Cj parts have C9 numbers

 

This was referred to as "pull ahead" by Ford. If the newer parts were ready and/or improved they were often incorporated into production rather than making another run of the current-numbered part. Seems to be more common later in the production cycles.

 

April 1969 built Boss 302 and Shelby's used spindles with DO engineering numbers.

 

If you consider the way that the shipments were handled in production it is logical. Since the parts were all of the same specification functionally and were not sensitive to freshness (for lack if a better term), first in-first out was not necessary. As a result, the may be times where the Autolite/FoMoCo transition was not a clean break, but may have been somewhat mixed as the stock worked through. In the case of a part revision that required functional modification rhat would not be compatible there was/is a hard break point in time that is indicated by before/from date listings in the MPC. This still applies today.

 

Though the change over might not be very clean IMHO you should be able to tie down the change over to a few weeks if there were enough original cars left to get the info from. This is made allot easier since we know the exact day cars were finished as a benefit of the Marti info.

Unlike common understanding San Jose did not have massive storage areas to have that much stock (parts) sitting around so the idea of someone grabbing a bin with parts that had been sitting there 4-6 months seems IMHO a but of a stretch according to what workers and the plant managers have suggested.

Most if not 99% of all the parts traveled from the rail to the plant rather than going through a warehouse from my understanding

 

Good point. I did not mean to imply that anything goes, just that the transitions were not always clear cut at one specific car on the line to the next in line.