Replicating Factory Spot Weld Appearance

[firez]

I restored a 68 camaro for a local fellow 2 years ago and after it was complete he gave me a binder with a pile of pics of the restoration along with a note written on the back cover saying the car turned out better than he thought was possible. One year later I was served with court papers saying he was suing me and yes his main concern was the spot welds were not perfectly spaced from one another.Nuts

[Keith Tedford]

Some of the sub assemblies were done in machines and the welds might have been more or less well spaced. The manual operators could be all over the place. Even spacing was only as good as the guy's judgement and his control of the weld gun. Some guns were pretty big and cumbersome and took a while for the operator to get used to them. I feel sorry for anyone dealing with the general public.

[Schonyenko2]

I would bet that if you checked the blue print, and counted the welds on the piece, you may come up short on the welds on the piece. When you ran piecework, sometimes short cuts left off a few here and there. Keith, we used to file spot points, but later on got air dressers. They looked kinda like air ratchets except there were circular cutters where the ratchet end would be. They worked fine unless you cut to deep and the point got to thin. Then it would blow out, and shoot water all over the place.

[Keith Tedford]

By the time I got to the truck plant, they had the weld gun tip dressers that Shonyenko describes. They also got tip dressers mounted on pedestals in the stations with the robots. The robots could take the gun to the dresser and have the tips dressed when required. The manual operators were famous for doing one or two less welds that they were supposed to. Got the job done quicker. The welders for putting the inner and outer wheel house halves together had to rollers that the current was passed through at intervals as they rolled around the arc. Guys would open up the flow control valves to speed up the operation. The weld checkers were always after us to slow the rollers down to get the required number of spot welds. Judges still have a lot to learn.

[Mr70]

Keith
Do you have any personal photos you can post of your plant during those years showing the assembly process?

[Keith Tedford]

GM still doesn't want cameras in the plant. Besides, by 1976 there wasn't much other than the Laguna to look at. From '65-'76, I worked in the old north plant in the big die room where we built new dies and did die repair on the dies in production. One dirty tedious job and I missed out on seeing all the neat cars being built.

[firstgenaddict]

The Black 69 RS/Z survivor also has grind marks on the a pillars where the roof was leaded in and runs in the door jambs as well as the lower rear valence...
My 68 GTO has runs in the door and trunk jambs... which I will dupplicate when I paint it...