HARRY - To be honest, sounds like your 169 was a basket case made up of whatever brand & style of parts that could be made to work. Your calling them "Pre or Post Production Parts" gives the parts a validity they probably don't deserve.
Actually, IH took service parts REALLY seriously. The initial system fill of the new part to the parts depots was done before production was even started. IH Broadview, IL Parts Depot had their own purchasing dept, they ordered parts from the same suppliers as the plants did, but they also ordered from the using IH plant if value-added machining was done.
Yes, old excess or obsolete parts could be sent to the repair part depots, but they would NOT accept them early, they would mail out a 13 month schedule updated every month just like we would, and only accept what was due. Been my experience that companies today do a TERRIBLE job using up old inventory. The last place I worked was comical just in their ability to totally screw up old inventory usage repeatedly by ANY number of ways. But for as large as IH was, they really did a good job of using up all old stock so not much was destined to be put through the repair part route. Some of the parts I was responsible for had a healthy monthly service usage, some had none.
In the case of these CC frt wheels, best case scenario would have been to use up all old stock in production, then switch to new wheels, then supply the new wheels to parts as needed. It's doubtful the part number actually changed.
Saturday's event for the three actually came about looking for a set of fenders for my Farmall 560 - he says he has farmall 560s - and fenders- but not for sale. but he had cubs!
