Factory paint and body quality

[440SE]

This post is aimed at members who worked on the factory final assembly line in 1970 or those who worked in the body or prep shop at dealerships in 1970. What was the quality the bodywork when these cars came of the assembly line? I know someone who worked in the body shop at a Dodge dealer north of Detroit in the late 60s and early 70s. He was responsible for fixing body and trim issues that came from the factory or cars that might have been damaged in transport to the dealership. He told me Dodge had terrible issues with body work and paint back then and he would sometimes have to smooth out and repaint entire panels.

My car is mostly original paint, the hood being the only new paint panel. I've talked to every person who owned my car, or a close relative of a prior owner, and no one had the car painted. There are some rough body finishes on the car, particularly around the rocker panels where it meets other body panels. I sent pictures to the person who worked at the dealer and he said it looks like a lot of the cars that came from the factory that he had to fix. I've often heard Mopar restoration specialist say they want to make the paint and body of the cars they restore better than how they came from the factory. Is this an example of what they mean?

[1970 cuda Joe]

Lots of cars that have gone through "restoration" are way over restored. To do one as an "assembly line restoration" versus a "show car restoration" take alot of skill & knowledge of how that individual car left the line & how many of the factory goofs the person wants to leave in the car. Each original, un-restored car is different....Joe

[torredcuda]

Very few cars are restored to exactly the way they left the factory, most are done way better than how they left when it comes to body and paint. Base/clear paint, hours of blocking to straighten panels, welding edges for better body lines, fully painted undercarriages etc. are all much better than a vehicle done at the plant back in the `70`s. I worked at dealer body shops back in the late `80`s-early `90`s and although quality was much improved we still had brand new vehicles that needed to have body and paint fixed.

[R/T's 4 R/P]

If you're having a car restored and you pull it down to bare bones, you'd see how many areas have little to no paint or primer.
Even external surfaces (lower rockers, rear valance) have very thin paint.
Body panel gaps are uneven.
Seam sealer is used to cover fairly significant panel gaps.

So, now you're ready to drop $20k-$50k (or more) on body and paint...are you going to replicate the crappiness of the factory?

On the other hand, if you have a survivor and are trying to fix one area and have it match...there is a lot of effort and art to mimic the other areas of the car.

[cuda hunter]

Anyone have any pictures of the factory paint line?
I have seen a few. 
Cars role down the paint line and guys are spraying each car as it goes by. 
No machines were spraying then correct?   All man power  ? 

[JH27N0B]

I remember a few years back Tom Lembeck was listing some of the cars from his high end collection at Mecum.  One of his cars he was selling that I'd never seen in person before that intrigued me was a survivor low mile 1971 B5 hemi Challenger.  When I saw it in person at the auction, I was pretty aghast at how low quality the paint was on that car. So much orange peel, I've honestly seen cars painted by Earl Scheibs that the paint looked better!
Metallics were worse than solid colors as far as factory quality.
I know a retired dealership mechanic who started his career working at Mr Norms.  His stories led me to believe that Mr Norm and his brother Lenny made the bulk of their profits from the dealership doing warranty and new car prep claims against Chrysler, often replacing perfectly good parts and then making claims to get reimbursed! Up to and including doing body damage to new cars, claiming damaged in shipping, then having their body shop bang out the dent and repaint a quarter panel.
He said he made a ton of money working there and didn't feel any remorse about the shenanigans because as far as he knows "all the dealers did that stuff". But this suggests it was not rare for cars sold new to already have a repainted panel.
Grand Spaulding did get shut down by Chrysler in the late 70s for warranty fraud, so I don't doubt his stories were true.
The dealership profit model has certainly evolved since then, I doubt any of them do much in the way of warranty fraud to pad their profits these days, now they make most of their money on kickbacks for arranging financing, marked up extended warranties, gap insurance and often dealer add ons like security packages and ceramic paint protection packages.

[RUNCHARGER]

My brother was a dealership mechanic in the glory days of our cars 1966-1971. One has to remember that people were used to assembly line quality of the 1960's, so buyer expectations were much lower than today.
If a car had really big paint problems or body damage it was repaired but minor issues like orange peel, runs, crooked masking or thin paint were not always corrected unless the customer put up a big stink. Pre delivery in those days could sometimes take a day and partly involved correcting door fit and ensuring the windows were adjusted correctly and didn't leak. I also seen cars come in with tape stripes not properly stuck on and correcting that was not unusual.
The factory shop manuals for these cars goes into wet sanding, polishing and paint touchup procedures so that shows that corrections were part of the pre delivery regime.
My buddy has a 1976 Trans Am he bought new and you can see through the black paint and see primer in a few spots on that car and it is untouched. Yes they were man painted back then and the respirators back then weren't that great so one can only imagine after spraying all day how it was easy to put a bad job out the door. I think I've seen some photos of line spraying and the guys weren't even wearing a respirator.

[pschlosser]

What was the quality the bodywork when these cars came of the assembly line?

The assembly line focused on speed and efficiency.  This was the norm, back then, and this was considered a boon.   Perfection wasn't attainable, and few union workers and upper management thought it was warranted.  The quality of cars produced by the assembly lines of the 1970's was much improved over those of the 1960s, and so too, the 1960s over those of the 1950s and so on.   Most working the industry seemed to feel they were  producing a pretty darn good product for the effort invested.

The assembly work was nearly all done by human, little (if any) automated or robotic processes were employed in those days.  The worker pulled panels, hoods, fenders and doors from a rack by hand and affixed them to the car.  If, during handling, a given panel incurred a small defect, or wasn't perfectly aligned, it wasn't corrected because the line had to continue moving to meet their quotas.  Even when a hood (for example) had an obvious defect, it was generally not pulled, but used on car to keep things flowing.

Variation resulting from human error, or simply, human labor, was common.   We can all improve and learn through repetition.   So, too, the assembly line workers improved their craft up to  some threshold afforded (allowed) by union rules, time allotted and upper management. 

A lack of perfection was common, and appropriate for 1970s-era standards.  Present-day, the improved quality  we see is not from correcting defects, but from improved handling of materials, robotic precision and repeatability, and process control.

[torredcuda]

Assembly line pics - https://www.motales.com/chrysler-corp/places/windsor-cars.php

[pschlosser]

Assembly line pics - https://www.motales.com/chrysler-corp/places/windsor-cars.php

Note the guys spraying paint aren't even wearing masks !

[mccannix]

I like the one sign by the "Open Pit" sign that says "No Smoking, Eating, or Sleeping in cars ".

An acquaintance of mine who worked in the Windsor plant from 68 to late 77, and was a union steward,
told me the story of a popular Local Union President who in the late 70's
was shot and killed in the plant offices by by a recently fired employee.
He said the late 60's into the early 70's were good times but late 70's saw a lot of turmoil,
so he left and came home to work on the farm....had some pretty good stories though

[cuda hunter]

Assembly line pics - https://www.motales.com/chrysler-corp/places/windsor-cars.php

Thanks a bunch. Those are fun pictures to go through. 

Each car being sprayed from different sides by different men. 
That alone explains a lot about the defects found on some of the original cars. 

No masks but lots of chops, stashes and beards.

[tparker]

If these guys were 20 in 1970, they would be roughly 74 today. I'd be surprised if any were on forums like this, but it would be cool to hear some stories.

I feel the cars I see today are better than they were of the show room floor. Lots of overspray, less than perfect paint, etc. Todays paint shine is amazing. Though I don't know about durability. I hear a lot of people say clear coat is tough, but I haven't seen anyone with a 30K paint job through a set of wrenches on the fenders as they do engine work.  Today we have options such as overdrives, better tires for handling if you got something like a T/A or AAR, larger and lighter rims, and many other upgrades  not available in the 70's.

Obviously many things are inferior such as some of the parts like sheet metal, cam and lifters, etc. And the worst is impossible to get parts.

[jimynick]

my 74 Challenger had a gap under the drivers door that I could stick my fingers under and the rt trunk extension was a measured and photographed 3/4" lower than the main trunk floor it was (barely) welded to, to the extent that many of the joining spot welds were semi circles as that's all the welder could catch. The resulting step was filled with sealer schmutz. The 1/4s above the wheelhouse were bare steel, no primer nor paint. Just shitty build quality no doubt. I was working in a Chevy shop at that time and while not stellar, the build quality of their cars was much better than Mother Mopar. Just my