1967 Camaro assembly line

[Keith Seymore]

Working in "the pit" was not great.

If you were very tall at all you had to be perennially hunched over, or you would bang your head on every sharp corner passing by (perhaps I should have said "...and you would bang your head..."). Stuff gets dripped or dropped on you all day and, truth be told, not all of it is accidental.

Since it is deer season I am reminded of a story:

I used to have a pit repairman by the name of Garfield Hardy. He was a small black man that had to have a step stool to reach the bottom of the truck.

For everybody else's benefit: When deer season rolls around in Michigan the high rate of absenteeism (both excused and unexcused) very nearly shuts the plant down. In order to combat that we would solicit volunteers from those of us who were left to work double shifts to keep the plant running. Garfield was one of those guys who would work every extra minute of overtime that he could get. I swear he would have killed a man on my behalf if I would have paid him through lunch.

After about a week of 16 or 20 hour days they would begin to take their toll. After one particularly long day (or so it seemed) I looked down in the pit to see Garfield, sitting on his stool, nodding off - barely able to shake himself awake.

Taking pity on the man, I shouted, mostly to wake him up without embarrassment: "Garfield, what does your wife think about you working all this overtime?".

He shot back, without hesitation and without opening his eyes: "She jus say: 'see ya lata, honey - Ahm goin' shoppin'!".



It's become sort of a standard chorus around my house, especially among my daughters...

K

[Xplantdad]

Love the stories and the info, Keith!

[67since67]

Originally Posted by Xplantdad

Love the stories and the info, Keith!

X2!!

[bergy]

Good stuff Keith - you're a wealth of information! I remember working in the pit at the St Louis assembly plant. Working each job down the line until you could keep up. The line workers were great. We (students) would give them a break from the routine. Seems like there were always some nuts and bolts flying around though :-)

[dykstra]

Love these stories and pics!!! Sounds like many of our wives agree with Garfield's wife!

[Thomas]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

Here's the build sequence number on this one: Number "62".

The full build sequence number would be much longer, like six digits, but the last two or three digits would be written in a form of shorthand. I would expect any other component built up remotely (front end sheet metal, rear axle, seats) to have a "62" scribbled on it somewhere.

This was intended to keep everything in sequence. It goes pretty easy as long as nothing gets disrupted, but get out of sequence and all hell breaks loose. You start seeing wrong color fenders (or bodies that don't match the frame) and you have to assess what went wrong and what has to be done to fix it, typically while the line continues to move.

At Flint, we had 1/2 ton 2wd (5 lug axles), 1/2 4wd (6 lug axles) and 3/4 and 1 ton axles (8 lugs). We used to keep a library of "wrong" tire/wheel assemblies at the tire install job so that if you had a wrong axle come down you could install the corresponding "wrong" tire/wheel assembly in order to keep the line moving. The vehicle would complete the process and then head out back to heavy repair to have the correct axle (and tire/wheels) installed.

Back to the sequence number - my red truck was apparently "number 87".

K

My '80 Blazer still has some of those crayon marks visible. I always thought that they had something to do with the model number.

[Keith Seymore]

Nope; nothing to do with the model number.

1980 Blazer model number would be K10516 btw.

And - would have been built in Flint. I might have seen it go by

K

https://www.gm.com/content/dam/compa...let-Blazer.pdf
CC10516 = Chevrolet, 2wd Blazer
CK10516 = Chevrolet, 4wd Blazer
TC10516 = GMC, 2wd Jimmy
TK10516 = GMC, 4wd Jimmy

[169indy]

Quote
"2 - see the flooring. It's those d@mn wood blocks. They were nasty.

They were hardwood, like 4x4 chunks set on end, and coated with something like creosote.

I'm not sure what the motivation for using them was; perhaps because they could be removed easily for assembly line rerouting at model change, or for repairs, or to provide some "cushion" if material (or a vehicle) got dropped.
But they were hard to walk or stand on all day, uneven, slippery, got the sealer all over everything, and made the area dark.
I used to take my shoes off and set them in the truck bed before getting in and wear clean shoes into the house. When I got to work the next day I'd remove my clean shoes, put on my steel toed Redwings and head back in.
K"

You are SO! correct. FWIW You Taxpayers continue to employ these floors continuously since 1930 at your Four Public Naval Shipyards. (*Talk about getting your monies worth.) The wood blocks allow for easy access to utilities and modifications to IPE industrial plant equipment "Floor plans". They are interlocked by a rabbet cut into the blocks making a stable surface for protection of precision parts unintended gravity drops and recoveries. They floors Stink forever! The Buckle when roof or inside gutter-downspouts leak.

[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?

[Kurt S]

Thanks Keith!

Our plant converted from block floor to cement. Some millwright decided they would be great firewood for his cabin up north. A few months later, the plant is in deep shit with the EPA. Turns out the blocks were leaching chromium and other nasties into one of Michigan's pristine rivers. Took a while to chase down the pile, and work it back to the plant. You can bet that they made sure those blocks were properly disposed of from then on!

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!

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