Chevrolet assembly plants

[Thomas]

I always thought that the hubcaps and trim rings were kept in the car for the dealer install.

[Igosplut]

[Olecarmike]

Would love to been there to pick out a yenko.

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Olecarmike

Would love to been there to pick out a yenko.

Chevelles + Monte Carlos (and pickups, too) = Flint Assembly.

Still building GM full size trucks today.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Olecarmike

Would love to been there to pick out a yenko.

One of the hardest parts of working in the assembly plant is you want every one that goes by.

I started at Flint in June of 1979.

Here's my '80 pickup (built in September of '79).

I spent my whole summer in the Inspection office with the engineering Vehicle Description Summary, figuring how I wanted to option it out.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

One of the hardest parts of working in the assembly plant is you want every one that goes by.

Along those lines - when I saw they were building pickups with this factory Hurst shifter I knew I had to have one.

I ordered this one up and followed it down the line as it was built. I drove it off the end of the line myself and ran it over to the shipping building.

I left the plant at 1am Tuesday September 30 1986 and by 5pm it was sitting at Graff Chevrolet in Davison Michigan.

That's 9 miles from the plant to Davison but I still had to pay the $525 destination charge.

K

[Keith Seymore]

So - to bring it back around to Chevrolet Assembly plants - when I ran the Fender Set area my guy was the one that built these floor mounted shifters up.

He was given a build manifest (a copy of each build sheet for every vehicle to be built that day) ahead of the shift. He would sit at the picnic table, cigarette in one hand and red crayon in the other, and mark every vehicle that had either the M20 (creeper gear) or MY6 (overdrive) transmission and then build them up: take the shift lever and add the boot and retainer ring and appropriate knob and then stage them on a lineside rack. When the correct vehicle presented itself he would stab the shifter assembly into the trans and screw the boot/retaining ring to the floor.

He also did all the RPO U01 cab high running lights with a manual "Yankee screwdriver", which allowed him to work up the line all the way to body drop, and installed every SPID label and Camper Loading label in the glovebox.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Some comments about the assembly line coordination/processes:

I ordered it just like the other trucks that my family drove: manual windows and locks, no air, etc. Sometime between the time I ordered the truck and before it was built I got the word that I was going to the Desert Proving Ground. In a panic, I tracked the order down and was able to get air conditioning added to the truck before it was built.

That was only the first hold up. I ordered the truck with the MM7 (aka MY6) manual overdrive trans (It's a MOPAR A833 trans where 3rd gear is 1:1 and 4th gear is an overdrive, with the aforementioned floor mounted Hurst shifter). This was about the time when Mr Gasket was buying out Hurst and, because GM was not sure they could get the shifters, they placed this transmission combination on "Stop Order". I received word that my truck would not be built and so I started fretting about what I might be able to do for "Plan B" (...order the three on the tree Saginaw trans and then replace it with my own Saginaw four speed with a floor shift, etc - which is what I did on the blue truck above).

During this time I was walking through the plant, past the motor line, and I noticed a bunch of these transmissions on pallets: stacked up, dozens and dozens of them. I called the Material Control supervisor over and asked him "...how many of those transmissions do you think you have?".

"Probably a hunnert" he said.

"Don't you think we oughta' build 'em, rather than leaving them sit there?" I suggested.

He thought that was a pretty good idea, so when I got back to the office I mentioned it to my boss (who happened to be in charge of this kind of thing, in addition to his myriad other responsibilities).

We ended up building one hundred of those trucks under a temporary deviation - one of which, coincidentally, was mine.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

I left the plant at 1am Tuesday September 30 1986

By the way - if you look at the ship date on the invoice you will see it is wrong by one day.

I think this is because the "pay point" was at engine start up on the final line proper.

The time between the pay point and actually clearing the shipping building is unaccounted for. This allows the plant to get the vehicle off their books, even as the vehicle is shuttled around out back or in repair.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

So - to bring it back around to Chevrolet Assembly plants - when I ran the Fender Set area my guy was the one that built these floor mounted shifters up.

He was given a build manifest (a copy of each build sheet for every vehicle to be built that day) ahead of the shift. He would sit at the picnic table, cigarette in one hand and red crayon in the other, and mark every vehicle that had either the M20 (creeper gear) or MY6 (overdrive) transmission and then build them up: take the shifter and add the boot and retainer ring and appropriate knob and then hang them on a lineside rack. When the correct vehicle presented itself he would stab the shifter into the trans and screw the boot/retaining ring to the floor.

The jobs where material was built up ahead of time were highly desirable.

What the guys would do is work like fiends for the first few hours and then coast the rest of the day.

One of the guys that built up the transmission crossmember subassemblies would bust his hump for the morning, building up enough material to surround himself in an impenetrable fortress of black primered parts. Then, for the balance of the day, he could kick back and just hang the appropriate crossmember on the feeder conveyor when it got in front of him.

All of this additional "free" time was spent either (1) eating or (2) reading.

K