[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