Chevrolet assembly plants

[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