Yes, I'm always uneasy with the 7 digit codes too Deejay. It seems that when the Model-Type-Code system was first adopted, Briggs thought they could get away with 7 digits, which meant only 1 for the shift/plant numbers. In practice in something less than 10 years they found themselves with more than 9 plants, so they had to add the eighth digit. I'm not at all sure they ever did use the second-last digit for a shift number, but they claimed that was what it was for when they first added the extra digit.
