So Jeff, where are these secret part numbers found if they are not in the parts book?
I was afraid someone was eventually going to ask this question. You're going to make me reveal my trade secrets here.
The big secret is that I use collision estimating guides that were printed by either Mitchell or Motor. It's so much easier to look up parts in these books than in the factory parts manuals. They don't list every part on the car though, just the stuff that's likely to be damaged in a collision. When you get into cars that had different colored parts, such as body side mouldings with color-keyed vinyl inserts, they will only show the part number for black. If you decide to look into buying one of these books, be careful of the older Motor books, because they only list the part prices, and not the part numbers. I've had a stack of these books since I was in automotive trade school back in 1986. The school had too many of them and the teacher said we could take some home if we would like. I was able to find books to cover Mopar from 1970 through the early eighties, and have been using them ever since. They are great to bring to Carlisle to look up parts that we find at the swap meet if we're not sure what they fit, especially outside mirrors, which the bases may only vary slightly from one model car to another. The part numbers are quite accurate, and usually if there is a mistake, you'll find the same mistake in the Chrysler parts manual. They also list prices at the time, which can make you sick if you forget to account for inflation. For example, the fancy trim panel that goes between your tail lights was $38.60 in 1973. The wheel opening moulding you are looking into was $5.82, with screws. There's not a lot of the old collision books out there, as they were updated often and the old ones thrown out. I took a look on ebay, and there is one that's almost exactly like the one I use the most. It's just two months newer than mine.
1976 Mitchell Collision Estimating Guide Chrysler Plymouth Dodge Part Numbers | eBay
I recently acquired some more collision books that go back a bit further. They are the loose leaf versions, which were also available at the time. If you find one that was used for a while, it may have some superseded part numbers written in.
Sometimes they will have helpful tips on listings that aren't clear.
As far as your superseded wheel opening moulding goes, that's a tougher challenge to solve. It appears that just about all Chrysler wheel opening moulding part numbers were eventually superseded. I suspect Chrysler had a high volume supplier for wheel opening mouldings when the cars were in production and switched to a low volume supplier for replacement mouldings sometime after production ceased for cars using that particular part number. I'm guessing that when they changed vendors for the part, the part number would change. The Mitchell book above was printed in 1973, so it's no surprise that it lists the new part number. I have a Chrysler parts manual printed in March of '69 and I was surprised to see the new number is in that book too. The original part number would have started off with 28, because Chrysler's part numbers loosely correlate to the year they were introduced: 28xxxx in 1968, 29xxxx in 1969, etc. The only way to check that number for sure is to find a Chrysler part supersession book or find a parts manual or collision book printed before the part number was changed. I tried Googling it and came up with zip.
Jeff
