It’s complicated, because I didn’t start with any big idea to create an information resource, I just started taking notes.

Mostly in a Word document, where I could keep track of parts needed, parts purchased (with store or source name, date, price paid, etc.), and all kinds of important notes copied from the NCRS technical discussion board, etc.

Along with all kinds of details about my Corvette and hundreds of parts with unique identifiers (e.g., supplier marks that may or may not appear on later OEM parts supplied by different manufacturers).

Then I started buying Corvette restoration books, and one of them in particular (now out of print and expensive) was one of the earliest and still recognized as the most comprehensive.

So I digitized that too, about 300 pages (about 60 pages per model year, 1963-1967, the ‘midyear’ body style), and then used the adobe text tool to insert notes and GM part numbers all over it, so when I searched for a part by name or GM part number, it would also bring up links to the Restoration book, in addition to links in the Judging Guides, and in the 1963 – 1967 AIMs (GM Assembly Instruction Manual –> AIM), along with the GM Dealer P&As (Parts & Accessories books used at the GM Parts Dealer counter).

I don’t have much in Excel besides some of the parts purchased along with price paid, but that’s all duplicated much more thoroughly in the huge Word document referenced above.

Basically, I have the following, all scanned and OCR’d, so it can all be searched using the search box in Adobe:

1) 1963-1969 and 1971, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1983 Chevy P&A books, the Dealership counter books, that a Chevy dealer would use to look up whatever part you needed to repair your car, has the GM part numbers for just about every part on any Chevrolet for the relevant model year. Basically the ‘hard copy’ way of doing things, before computers.

2) the original AIMs (Assembly Instruction Manuals) used on the factory floor for the Corvette, five Assembly Instruction Manuals (1963 – 1967, all the same body style, but lots of parts changes and options changes from year to year).

I added well over a thousand part numbers to the AIMs that would be very helpful to restorers, because many of the parts listed in the AIMs are ‘assemblies’, groups of parts already pre-assembled for assembly-line installation, which were never available ‘over the counter’ as complete assemblies, so if you needed to repair it, you need to know the individual GM part numbers of the component parts of the factory line ‘assemblies’ listed in the Assembly Manuals.

I broke down all of the various ‘assemblies’ to their component parts, and then added those parts (part names and GM part numbers) to the scanned Assembly Instruction Manuals for each model year (1963 – 1967).

By the way, the Assembly Manuals were never meant to get out of the factory and into the hands of the public, those were internal documents only.

But people who worked on the assembly lines realized how valuable they were to Corvette enthusiasts, and by the early 1960s Corvettes were already “America’s Sports car”, so when they were thrown away at the end of each model year, a few of them were saved and taken home by assembly line workers.

They were then copied on old Xerox commercial copiers, and sold out of people’s car trunks at Corvette shows and swap meets all over the country, for years and years.

If that hadn’t happened, all that information would have been lost to time. Corvette owners are very lucky in that regard, owners of many other classic cars would kill to have a copy of the original factory Assembly Instruction Manual for their classic cars.

The Assembly Instruction Manuals (AIMs) are all hand-written, up to 1968 if I remember correctly.

So if you go to any page in the AIM, you are reading some engineer’s handwriting, both the part name and the GM part number, hand drawn diagrams, hand-drawn illustrations, everything was done by hand, and the drawings are surprisingly good (and consistent in quality and style).

I think it was 1969 when they switched to all type-written text in the AIMs, going forward.

Since the Optical Character Recognition / OCR software (back when I did it) couldn’t read hand-written text or numbers, I went through every page of the AIM (about 450 pages each), and in small text (Arial 8 font, I think), typed the part name and part number, for every single part in the AIM. In the AIMs for all five model years, 1963 – 1967.

Along with adding over a thousand part numbers for individual parts of various ‘assemblies’ that were not broken down into component parts in the AIM. Like the headlight bulbs (high beam and standard). Those (and the associated part numbers) are not listed in the AIM, because the headlight bulbs were preinstalled into an ‘assembly’ that included the headlight ‘bucket’.

But my AIMs have the headlight bulb part numbers added to the page where that information would be expected to be found. Over a thousand parts like that, which are not found in the original AIMs.

In addition to the part names and part numbers, every AIM page also has an engineer’s drawing or sketch of the section of the car where the parts on that specific page are installed, with a drawing of the part, and a line extending out toward the edge of the page, with a square at the end of the line, and a number written inside the square (usually 1 – 15, or however many parts were listed on that page), and each number corresponded to a list at the top of the page, which had the part name and GM part number for the part in the sketch or diagram at the center or bottom of each page.

And then the NCRS Judging Guides. I scanned all of those, and then added part names and GM part numbers in small text (readable by OCR) on the pages that described those parts.

The Judging Guides don’t have ANY GM part numbers, they only contain visual descriptions of the parts, so a Judge at a car show knows what to look for.

I added in the correct GM part numbers, on the pages in the Judging Guides where you would expect them to be found (on the pages where the parts are described), so the Judging Guides could be cross-referenced with everything else.

Then I put all the pdf documents for the P&A parts books, the five AIMs, the NCRS Judging Guides for each model year, the GM/Chevy Illustrated Parts Books, individual Supercession parts books (more extensive than the section at the end of each year’s P&A), the most recognized and authoritative Restoration Book (currently out of print), and other doodads, into one folder.

Then when I am in Adobe Acrobat, I can do a search (File –> Search –> Advanced Search) to bring up a separate ‘global’ search box, and tell it where to search.

I point it to the folder with ALL of the documents referenced above in it. So it searches ALL of them, at once.

So if I need to know about a part, for a 1967 Corvette for example, I can open my 1967 AIM pdf, and search using the part name in English, like ‘Brake Pedal Cover’ (the rubber pad that goes over the brake pedal).

The search takes me to the AIM page and highlights where I previously typed “Brake Pedal” in small text below the hand-written ‘Brake Pedal’ in the AIM.

The GM part number is right next to the part name.

Now that I know the part number I’m looking for, I can put that part number in the Global Search box, and search that part number across ALL of the documents (P&A books to see which years used that part and when it was superceded to a new part number, all 5 years of the AIMs to see which years used that specific part, and Restoration Book to see photos and blown-up detailed engineering drawings of the part in question, and the Judging Guides for years 1963 – 1967), and other searchable stuff in that folder.

It creates a list of everywhere that part number is found, with an active link. Click the link, and it opens the pdf file to the exact page where the part number is listed.

Suppose that part number is found (for example) in the following files:

1) 1966 P&A, 1967 P&A, 1968 P&A
2) 1970 Supercession Book
3) the 1965, 1966 and 1967 AIMs
4) three places in the Corvette Restoration Book (the section for 1965, 1966 & 1967)
5) the 1965, 1966 and 1967 NCRS Judging Guide

Each of those is a clickable link that will open the relevant pdf to the page that has the part number on it.

And I can deduce a lot of info from the search results.

For instance, I know that the brake pedal rubber pad was the same part for 1965, 1966 and 1967.

I know that it changed to something else in 1968, because it didn’t show up in the 1968 P&A, but it did show up in the 1970 Supercession book, which lists all the changed part numbers for that year (e.g., 2847563 use 2893741).

If I have links to any of the AIM pages in the 1965 – 1967 Assembly Manuals to the exact page for brake pedals (and all associated parts under the dashboard), I also have links for where the same part is described (in English, i.e., a detailed written description) in any of the three relevant NCRS Judging Guides (in this case, 1965-1967).

This is helpful because I may not be looking for a brake pedal pad (the rubber cover that fits over the metal brake pedal), I may be looking for the vent pull handle under the dash, but I might not remember what that part is called.

I know it’s in the same part of the car as the brake pedal, so if I search ‘brake pedal’, I’ll find everything in the vicinity of the brake pedal too, including the circulating air vent pull handle.

And in the Judging Guide, I will have added the correct vent pull handle name and GM part number, so then, knowing that information, I can do a direct search for that part name or GM part number, in the AIM or anywhere else.

So I can find any part on the car by its part name (using English words), to discover the GM part number I’m looking for, and then search the GM part number to find where that part number is listed in ALL of the documents I have (P&As, AIMS, NCRS Judging Guides, Restoration books, etc.).

So in minutes, I can be looking at the 1967 P&A page for that part number, the 1967 factory assembly manual page (AIM), the page in the Restoration Book with the blown-up engineering drawing for that specific part, and the page in the NCRS Judging Guide showing a photo and written description of the part in question, and any visible details that might distinguish that part from later years or reproduction parts or OEM parts that are backwards compatible, made years later, but don’t look the same in some obvious way that Judges will notice.

This wouldn’t just take hours to do the old way (looking through books), it would be impossible.

Because even if you have all the books I have, without being able to search across all of them by English words and GM part numbers (thousands of which I added manually to the AIMs and Judging Guides and Restoration Book), you can’t compile and access all that information, without knowing where to look and how to find it 😁

I have all of that and more, and it’s an incredible resource, but it is only useful to me, because I can’t publish any of it.

Brave Ai says I could publish a ‘key’, a sort of Rosetta Stone list that cross-references all of the data, so anyone who HAS the books in question would be able to do a search of my database to find the corresponding page numbers in their OWN Assembly Instruction Manuals, P&A parts books, NCRS Judging Guides and Restoration Book.

And this would still be very valuable.

But the ease and speed of access, from just doing a global search of all those documents (over 50,000 pages in total) in just minutes if using an SSD drive as I do now (it took longer when I used an older mechanical hard drive, maybe 10 minutes per search), and clicking links to open on the exact page you need, for all the books where that part is found, is only available for me.

Unfortunately, I cannot put all of that information onto a website (for example), and make it available for a monthly subscription (for example), because it would violate copyright protections.

Facts (like GM part numbers and names) are not copyrightable, so a cross-referencing database would be fine, but the end user would have to own his own copies of all of the underlying documents, I could not provide digitized versions of those complete documents on a website, according to Brave.