Chevrolet assembly plants

[60sStuff]

Originally Posted by Steve Shauger

This thread dedicated to the Freemont plant.

Hi Steve,

Sorry, but I need to correct you on the spelling of the General Motors plant in Northern California.
The town is ‘Fremont’ and I happen to live here in Fremont.
It was named after John C. Fremont.

I made a very informative thread in the Pontiac section on 06-04-2021 about the Fremont GM plant.
Lots of great photos and information on this New state of the art automotive plant.

Here are a few photos from my article.

Regards, Chris

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by 60sStuff

Hi Steve,

Sorry, but I need to correct you on the spelling of the General Motors plant in Northern California.
The town is ‘Fremont’ and I happen to live here in Fremont.
It was named after John C. Fremont.

I made a very informative thread in the Pontiac section on 06-04-2021 about the Fremont GM plant.
Lots of great photos and information on this New state of the art automotive plant.

Here are a few photos from my article.

Regards, Chris

I have been wanting to make a few comments about the vehicle audits and process:

As mentioned, some number of production vehicles were pulled and given a rigorous once over. These were done by local quality inspectors and included a drive on public roadways. The internal results were kept and tabulated and fed back to the offending production areas.

What was not mentioned is that at some regular interval (quarterly, maybe) a Central Office auditor would show up and perform a similar review. These results were fed back to headquarters and used to rank the various plants against each other. Results were posted in the audit area and were published in the local plant newpaper for visibility. The red carpet was rolled out for these visiting dignitaries in an attempt to sway the results a point or two.

The corporate audit rankings were also used as a data point when allocating additional production volume or the closing of low performing facilities.

Everybody in the plant (everybody that was halfway engaged) knew where their plant was in the rankings, whether it was towards the top (Detroit P truck chassis, Janesville, Oshawa), middle/middle bottom (Flint, Pontiac) or very bottom (Scarborough Van). Management used that as a dangling sword over the workers' heads.

K

[RPOLS3]

Great and interesting photos - the first with the two men installing the engine in the chassis appears that both the upper and lower control arms are not painted (neither is the brake drum?). The second with the chassis ready to be mated to the body appears the the control arms are painted black - maybe even with different cross shaft hardware on the upper (nut vs. bolt??) - hard to tell.

[60sStuff]

Originally Posted by RPOLS3

Great and interesting photos - the first with the two men installing the engine in the chassis appears that both the upper and lower control arms are not painted (neither is the brake drum?). The second with the chassis ready to be mated to the body appears the the control arms are painted black - maybe even with different cross shaft hardware on the upper (nut vs. bolt??) - hard to tell.

Yup, whole lotta things going on there in those two engine photos.
I’ve had several conversations with people about the a-arms, exhaust manifolds, etc.
The oil filter adapter and oil sending unit are also different.

[tom406]

Early Camaro Body by Fisher

[tom406]

1st Gen Monte Carlo production. What’s the apparatus over the engine bay?

[Mr70]

It's a specialized tool known as a squaring jig,used to help speed up production during front sheetmetal alignment.You can just spy a guy holding an impact wrench down in the pit in the lower left,getting ready to secure the fender once the guy above gives the word.

[Keith Seymore]

Agree with "squaring fixture".

The only adjustment I would make to the previous comment is the guy in the pit is getting ready to shoot the radiator support bolts. The fenders are tight at the door and the fender nose bolts have been shot, but leaving the rad support bolts loose allows you to scoot the front end left or right to square it up.

Hopefully then when it's time to set the hood it goes right in there.

I stood and watched my guys do about 900,000 of those while I leaned on the foreman's desk. One every minute of every working day for about six years.

We didn't (usually) use the fixture, though. Typically those big tools are cumbersome and clunky and slow you down. They get used a little bit when new, and when management (or photographers) are looking, but quickly fall into disuse otherwise.

K

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]