1967 Camaro assembly line

[Too Many Projects]

In October, 1972, I started working at the St. Paul Ford plant. As the low man on the seniority list, I got moved all over the plant. I, eventually, got settled starting on the F line in the morning and was lucky if I got to stay there all day. We were working Saturdays and on one, I was pulled from the truck line very soon after starting and sent to the car line, where I had to thread the trunk light in and a couple other jobs AND tear a build sheet off a printer and get it taped to the correct vehicle. It was a very fast paced I was having difficulty keeping up and told the line foreman I either needed more time with the trainer or he needed to get someone with more experience to do the job. I even told the relief man that when it was time for my break. Nope, you stay right here. Wasn't long after that, I heard a loud, angry discussion from the line foreman and someone from the office and they came back to me. I had missed a build sheet and they had 3 bodies on the floor at the marriage line with the chassis... both the guys were shouting at me and I reminded the foreman that I had told him I wasn't able to do the job and he insisted I stay on it. The guy from the office blew a gasket at that and off they went. I had a trainer next to me in a matter of minutes, but lunch break came and I was just so pissed and frustrated, I went out to my car and went home. Monday is a whole 'nuther story...

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Kurt S

I remember a purple short-bed truck coming down the line with a purple long-bed on it. Turns out the long bed truck with the short bed had come down the line about 20 minutes before. They blocked up the bed so it would go down the line and attached what they could, the rest went into the bed to be shorted out at the repair station.
Didn't happen often - there's not enough room to in the plant for that!

That's one of the good things about building pickup trucks (I guess) - you just throw all the loose parts in the bed and kick that can on down the road.

We had a truck one time that didn't get the hole cut out for the floor shifter. Didn't realize it until body drop, when the cab wouldn't sit down on the mounts.

The repair man rode that one down the final line, cutting the hole with a hammer and chisel, while the cab was teetering on the trans tower. The fenders, hood, batteries, etc all went in the pickup box to get installed in heavy repair.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Too Many Projects

In October, 1972, I started working at the St. Paul Ford plant. As the low man on the seniority list, I got moved all over the plant. I, eventually, got settled starting on the F line in the morning and was lucky if I got to stay there all day. We were working Saturdays and on one, I was pulled from the truck line very soon after starting and sent to the car line, where I had to thread the trunk light in and a couple other jobs AND tear a build sheet off a printer and get it taped to the correct vehicle. It was a very fast paced I was having difficulty keeping up and told the line foreman I either needed more time with the trainer or he needed to get someone with more experience to do the job. I even told the relief man that when it was time for my break. Nope, you stay right here. Wasn't long after that, I heard a loud, angry discussion from the line foreman and someone from the office and they came back to me. I had missed a build sheet and they had 3 bodies on the floor at the marriage line with the chassis... both the guys were shouting at me and I reminded the foreman that I had told him I wasn't able to do the job and he insisted I stay on it. The guy from the office blew a gasket at that and off they went. I had a trainer next to me in a matter of minutes, but lunch break came and I was just so pissed and frustrated, I went out to my car and went home. Monday is a whole 'nuther story...

I feel your pain; been on both sides of that equation.

Folks get mighty touchy when you start shutting the line down.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Pro Stock John

Keith thanks for the stories from the line.

So how messed up would the line get if you pulled a car early on, or are so many cars getting pulled it's a frequent occurrence?

See Mitch's post above

Pulling a whole build (either body or chassis) is pretty rare; like a body would have to get dropped out of the clamshell, or speared with a forklift. Sometimes build sheets get mis-installed, or blown away by a random man cooling fan. Maybe once or twice in forty years.

Pulling a whole build due to scheduling, like parts shortage, or during new model introduction, was a bit more frequent. Like a couple times during model launch.

Even then you try to "cheat it" to keep yourself on track, like maybe running an empty carrier where that car would have been, or taping a sign to the windshield to let everybody down stream know what was going on.

Most frequent would be fenders/hoods that get painted wrong (either wrong color or two tone wrong), or wrong emblems. It's not obvious when you are putting those parts on in the extreme boonies of the plant and you don't have any frame of reference other than the build sheet.

It becomes more obvious when those parts make it to the final line, when you are putting red fenders on a tan truck, but even then it can be pretty discreet. I know of trucks that were built Chevy on one side and GMC on the other, that made it past several on line inspectors, a couple post line inspectors, shipping and receiving, dealer prep and into customer hands. That's a whole lotta people not paying very good attention to what they were supposed to be doing.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Too Many Projects

In October, 1972, I started working at the St. Paul Ford plant. As the low man on the seniority list, I got moved all over the plant. I, eventually, got settled starting on the F line in the morning and was lucky if I got to stay there all day. We were working Saturdays and on one, I was pulled from the truck line very soon after starting and sent to the car line, where I had to thread the trunk light in and a couple other jobs AND tear a build sheet off a printer and get it taped to the correct vehicle. It was a very fast paced I was having difficulty keeping up and told the line foreman I either needed more time with the trainer or he needed to get someone with more experience to do the job. I even told the relief man that when it was time for my break. Nope, you stay right here. Wasn't long after that, I heard a loud, angry discussion from the line foreman and someone from the office and they came back to me. I had missed a build sheet and they had 3 bodies on the floor at the marriage line with the chassis... both the guys were shouting at me and I reminded the foreman that I had told him I wasn't able to do the job and he insisted I stay on it. The guy from the office blew a gasket at that and off they went. I had a trainer next to me in a matter of minutes, but lunch break came and I was just so pissed and frustrated, I went out to my car and went home. Monday is a whole 'nuther story...

I was just thinking the other day about an incident we had on the Volt program.

In the Hamtramck plant the first place the new content would hit would be the IP line, where the dash assembly was built up and the instrument cluster, radio, HVAC controls, etc, would be installed. We would hang out there in order to get an early look at how the options were broadcasting.

One time I was standing there with my plant host, the plant planner, and the line stopped. Having grown up on the assembly line I’m a bit sensitive to when it goes down so I cut into our conversation abruptly and asked “why are we down?”

“Uh – we’re on break” he said, looking around nervously.

“Good” I said. “I wanted to make sure it wasn’t my fault”.

HA HA, right?

In about two minutes one of the other engineers comes running over, all in a huff. “SEYMORE!” he says. “We’re not on break; we're down on the IP line and IT’S YOUR FAULT!”.

A bit surprised at this sudden change of status I sauntered over and there was a crowd of neckties around the radio install. The line superintendent (the foreman's boss) was there and took the opportunity to show boat a bit by ripping me a new one about engineering changes, and how stupid engineers are, and how disruptive temporary changes are, etc. It was in that supportive environment I had to figure out what was going on. It seemed that one of the inspection features had the line shut down, the symptom being that as the operator tried to scan one of the bar codes the reader didn’t recognize it as the right part and stopped the line. After a couple minutes I asked her to show me what she was doing.

“I’m scanning this” she said “but it won’t go.”

That’s when I noticed she was scanning the wrong bar code; Operator error. I showed her the uplevel part number and code and when she hit that with the laser reader “…whirrrrrr” everything spun back to life. The crowd quietly disbursed and everybody went back to whatever they were doing.

I just thought it was funny that it was "wasn’t my fault/was my fault/wasn’t my fault".

Do you suppose I ever got an apology from the superintendent for improperly, inappropriately and incorrectly dressing me down in front of a whole passel of plant and engineering personnel?

Of course not.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Kurt S

I'll add that much of this is discussed in JohnZ's article, including the difference between LOS and NOR front sheet metal. http://www.camaros.org/assemblyprocess.shtml

I always enjoy reading John Z's write up at CRG.

I went back just now to read about the front end sheet metal and noticed a couple things:

1 - about shimming:

What we used to do for fender shims is tape a packet together, like 3 shims, ahead of time and we would run those all day whether the truck we were currently building needed it or not.

Eventually the final repair supervisor would call back and say something encouraging, like "SEYMORE!! YOU IDIOT!! WTH ARE YOU THINKING?!?! ALL THESE FENDERS ARE RUNNING HIGH!! ARE YOU EVEN LOOKING AT THESE TRUCKS?!? TAKE A SHIM OUT BEFORE I COME BACK THERE AND SHOW YOU HOW TO DO THIS!!" I can just imagine the spittle flying into the phone mouthpiece.

So we would start running a new shim pack, like 2 shims, until he called again with his latest observation.

Basically it was to address "macro trends". You had about 45 seconds to complete the truck in front of you and move to the next one; that's not enough time to fit and re-fit each individual truck.

This technique would get you close on the majority of vehicles. There was a repair station at the end of my area. There was also a short moving repair line (two, actually) at the end of final line. If they could fix them there while on the move then they would; otherwise it would be out to a stationary repair stall in "heavy repair" for the really bad ones.

I should add that some of the repairs did not consist of removing the bolt or adding/deleting shims. Often the repair consisted of bending, twisting or hammering while the line was moving.

I had four guys hanging fenders, btw. One at the front and one at the rear of the LH fender; one at the front and one at the rear of the RH fender. They could do the job by themselves if properly motivated, like if their buddy wanted to punch out a couple jobs early, or to help move one or two jobs when the line first started and there weren't enough operators - but I would never ask them to do that.

2- squaring fixtures:

We never had much luck with fixtures of any kind. Usually what would happen is the guys would use them whenever there was management or any other spectators around, but when not being directly observed they wouldn't use them, especially if they were big/bulky/hanging overhead on balancers.

K

[L72copocamaro]

KS...love to read those stories!!

[Keith Seymore]

This photo is from Fremont but it reminded me of something.

Flint Assembly has an unusual arrangement, in that the two final lines come together in the middle of the plant to form a “main aisle”, with assembly action on either side.

As I student I used to host the factory tours, when Boy Scouts or Rotary Club or the DAR or whomever would come in for a plant visit. The tour was very high level and consisted of a run down the main aisle to the end of final and then back.

Flint’s second story is very high as you can see in the second photo. The body drop clamshell operators would show off a bit for the tours, letting the cab and box essentially free fall and then stop abruptly mere inches above the chassis.

It was, admittedly, pretty impressive and the groups were fascinated. They would stand and watch for as long as I would let them.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Kurt S

I remember a purple short-bed truck coming down the line with a purple long-bed on it. Turns out the long bed truck with the short bed had come down the line about 20 minutes before. They blocked up the bed so it would go down the line and attached what they could, the rest went into the bed to be shorted out at the repair station.
Didn't happen often - there's not enough room to in the plant for that!

Fortunately - you don't have to keep them all inside!

Here's a picture of Flint Assembly's back yard. These are all vehicles awaiting repair of some kind or to be driven over to the shipping yard.

Flint Assembly, Flint Metal Fab and the V8 Engine plant are all co-located on the same piece of property bounded by I-75, I-69, Van Slyke and Bristol Roads. I've seen them completely fill the back yard and flow over into the adjacent parking lots with repair jobs*.

In fact - some times we would lose vehicles back there. They would usually turn up during model changeover when the repair back log would get worked down. Often by then we had already built and shipped a replacement vehicle made to those same specifications.

K

*During the chip shortage vehicles were also stored at a defunct horse race track (Sports Creek) in nearby Swartz Creek Michigan. That is pretty typical, as Ford used to store vehicles at the Cedar Point amusement park, for example (they ended up losing quite a few from there as well - stolen).

[RPOLS3]

Love these stories - thanks