VCCA Home Forums GENERAL DISCUSSION General Discussions Question related to 1949 Convertible

Hello,
I am about to complete the full restauration of my 1949 convertible, sticking to its Factory standards.
I have a question for those who have a 49 or 50 convertible,
about the crank handles that raise and lower the quarter windows in the back.
Are those crank handles smaller (shorter) than the ones that raise and lower the front door Windows?
In other words are they the same as the front door ones in the convertible or even the ones in a sedan ? Until today i thought they were slightly shorter but i have a doubt....
Mine were badly repaired and i need to replace them.
Thank You for your help
Best regards
JC

According to the parts book they are the long version.

Thank You very much for your answer.
Therefore i Can put a crank Handle coming from a 1949 sedan for example and be correct according to Factory standards ?

our 50 convert has the long handles as gene noted. the short handles are applicable to vent windows that have a crank feature, unlike the 49-52 chevys. mike

My '50 convertible has the short handles in the rear seat. I have no idea if it was restored correctly or not. The question I have is, what colour were the knobs at the end of the handles over the years? Since there was no vent window crank from '49-'52, then I guess my short handles shouldn't be 1950's coloured? Mine are black.

In 1949 all knobs for Deluxe series models was ivory and a short length handle was not available.
In 1950 the knob was gray
The 1953 had black and in 1953 the previous colored knobs were discontinued for parts replacement and all replacements were black and

Hello All,
Thank You for all your inputs. Based on the feedback i received on Chevytalk forum and here, it seems that some changes were implemented between the 49/50 on one hand and the 51/52 on the other hand.
I tend to believe that no real difference in size of the rear window handles and others existed in 49/50, but they were shortened in 51/52 and even beyond after that.
I may be totally wrong. This is not the first question i Ask myself to try to stick to the factory standards.
Thank You again.
JC

Hello Jean! Welcome to VCCA Chat!

I appreciate your efforts to keep your car according to factory standards. You should be aware that there are situations when the information in the parts book and engineering reference material will not match what is in a particular car.

One situation when you might see differences is when a factory is making what they call a “model year changeover”. For example, consider a factory that is building 1949 model year cars near the end of that model year. If they ran out of 1949 parts they would use 1950 parts if the part would fit and function on the 1949 vehicle. This could also happen in reverse. If there were extra 1949 parts that would fit a 1950 vehicle. The factory would use that inventory early in the production run of 1950 model year vehicles.

Another situation could happen because the same model year vehicles were built at multiple factories. Each factory ordered its parts from multiple suppliers. So there could be differences such as color among the same parts based on which factory produced that vehicle. Chevrolet would only supply one style part for service.

A third scenario is that most manufacturers work to consolidate their service parts inventory overtime. In your case as Gene noted the previous color knobs were discontinued in 1954. So if in 1956 someone ordered a knob for your car there was a good chance they would get a black one.

This variations often make it difficult to determine what is “factory standard”.

I don't think Chevrolet did overlap of year to year parts at the factory. Lines were shut down for model year change over, and previous years parts were sent out. The dealerships were well versed on what the model year changes were, and they were all published for both the dealer and the customer to see. There's no way GM was going to sell you a "new" car with last year's trim piece on it because it was "left over". As far as this topic goes, the colour of the handles in the interior were specific to the colour pallet of that year's styling. No way did they put last years knob's on after advertising the new interiors to both dealer and customer...

As mentioned above, all that was out the window at the dealership. There, they would sell you any replacement that would work to move stock they paid for.

I agree 100% with Brewater.