How much more $ with docs?

[TimG]

Chances of a tank sticker mix-up are slim, but here's an article I wrote for The Restorer a few years ago.


Tale of two tank stickers

The 1967 Corvette was the first to have tank stickers, or build sheets, affixed to the top of the fuel tank. This paperwork had been part of the assembly process for many years, but the St. Louis assembly plant began gluing build sheets to the fuel tank beginning with the 1967 model year. The phrase “tank sticker” has become synonymous with Corvettes and this paperwork is often used to help “document” our cars. Something strange was happening on the Corvette assembly line on or around 6-23-67. I’ve been able to determine that at least a small batch of Corvettes assembled late in the 1967 run had incorrect build sheets affixed to their fuel tanks. This discovery all began when a friend acquired a white 1967 350 horse roadster. This car was a Louisiana/Texas car that had a warranty plate and a tank sticker, trouble was the tank sticker described a green 1967 435 horse coupe with a smog pump. This wasn’t even close to the description of his car. The number 21 was hand written on his tank sticker, the ID number of the car ended with number 21, so that could be why it was incorrectly attached.
Fast-forward to September of 2004 and I was fortunate enough to purchase a really nice 427/400 horse, sidepipe roadster that had only been driven 18,000 miles in 38 years. The ID number of this car was 21526, only five cars later than my friends white roadster. The good news was that my low mile green car came with heavy paperwork including the window sticker. While looking at another friend’s low mile 1967 Corvette roadster in the winter of 2006, we peeled back the rubber grommet around the tank only to see evidence of a beautiful tank sticker. He was the prior owner of my green car and I asked him if he had ever looked to see if 21526 had a tank sticker. The answer was “no”. With all of the other paperwork on 21526, no prior owner had ever bothered to check for a tank sticker. When I returned home, the first thing I did was to peel back the rubber grommet on my ’67 and shine a flashlight in the crevice to see if a tank sticker was present. You can imagine my surprise when I could clearly see two tank stickers stacked on top of each other?
My light would not allow me to see much more than the right edge of two stacked documents, but there were definitely two present. Fortunately for me, my car was invited to the NCRS judging retreat that was held in Dallas last February. There couldn’t be a better venue on the planet to further examine this situation. I mentioned to a group of judges that I had seen two separate tank stickers on my car. Some thought that possibly one tank sticker was folded over and I was seeing two edges of the same piece of paper, others volunteered that they’ve seen cars with two documents glued on the tank. We were able to get one of those fancy probe type lights in the depths of the car to clearly see two tank stickers, the top one for 21526 and the one on the bottom for a Lynndale blue car apparently two vehicles before mine. The tank sticker for 21526 clearly had #28 written on it and the one for the blue car clearly had #26 written on it. I’m assuming that the car the second document belongs to is 21524, two before mine.

So here’s what I’ve been able to determine.

21521 has #21 written on the tank sticker and it belongs to car 21519.
21526 has two tank stickers, one with #26 written on it belonging to car 21524 and one with #28 written on it belonging to my car, 21526.

We don’t know why it appears that the tank stickers were off by two cars instead of one car. We don’t know if more than one car received two tank stickers to correct this problem. We also don’t know how many cars were affected by this error, but certainly cars between serial numbers 21519 and 21526 were.
If anyone knows of any 1967 Corvettes around this ID number range, I’d appreciate any information you may have pertaining to your tank stickers.

I haven’t pulled the tank on 21526 because the car is a Bow Tie candidate and I’m hesitant to disturb anything on the car until it’s judged. Until that time, I’ll have to live with two tank stickers.