Factory paint and body quality

[Snowdog]

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.

Well, I worked at Dodge Main in Hamtramck, MI during the Volare / Aspen Era, 1976 / 1977 the that counts for anything.  It was during during the summer months to cover for people on vacation.  I have a couple of stories, what do you guys want to hear?  I don't have a ton of paint stories,  but the body weldments could be pretty rough.

[Snowdog]

Well,  here's the first story or more like explanation of the guys not wearing masks in the spray booth.  It was a downdraft booth,  it was loud in there to say the least.  Air was forced downward (obviously) into rushing water underneath grates to take the overspray away.  The air quality was pretty good in there, but I still kept my mask on when spraying.  Some guys would smoke in there, which seems insane.  Since I was filling in for people on vacation, they just let me spray the black paint behind the grill for the lighter color cars.  Of course the grills weren't in there at that time.  Also, all the time the cars were moving, can't stop the assembly line of course.

As far factory paint quality was back then, it was baked in the oven immediately after paint, so that made it tough when laying your wrenches on the fender. Not that I would ever do that.  Yes, it had more orange peel the most factory paint jobs today, but still wasn't that bad in most cases.  This is also based on the 1070 Cuda I had at the time and it was original paint at the time.  One thing I always did notice on most cars back then was the seam from the roof to the rear quarter panels, you could usually see a few waves there from when they leaded in the seam.

I'll save more stories for later, if you guys are still interested.

[torredcuda]

Would love to hear more stories. I worked in the body shop at a Subaru dealer for a couple years and then Chevrolet dealer in the late `80`s. Quality was pretty good then but we still had factory screw ups we had to repair - see thru paint, runs, bad orange peel etc.

[Snowdog]

Ok, here's a couple more.  I don't want to take over this thread, so if the original poster or the mods feel I'm doing this, please let me know.  I'll start a new thread, I don't want to offend anyone.  Anyways, an earlier post stated that there was a sign in the factory stating "No eating, drinking or sleeping in cars".  Well one of the reasons for that is that some people would sleep in the cars and if line started back up and the didn't wake up they could be be killed if they went into one of the ovens there.  There was another oven besides the one to bake the paint,  it was the oven to heat / bake the Bonderite undercoat that the cars were dipped in.  Also, they were repair lines that didn't move until they BIWs were repaired, people would sleep in those cars because it was next to oven.  Supposedly, someone was actually killed like that.
So, back to body alignment  I'll try to explain this the best I can.  I also worked on the line just before the cars got dipped the Bonderite undercoat, we'd have to hookup the body in white (BIW) cars to a couple of large hooks the would go under the rear wheel wells.  And another sliding hook / bar the would go inside dash structure and hook into the where the front Left and Right dash speaker would eventually go (I think).  The BIW would then be lifted up to an overhead conveyor to get dipped.  If the sliding bar didn't fit we were told bash the sheet metal back with the provided large brass hammer.  Sometime the sheetmetal was off by as much a a inch.  Sometimes we couldn't move it to fit and we would put the BIW into the repair line, or the foreman would come over bash the daylights out of the sheetmetal and get it to work.  He was a big dude, nobody messed with him.

   

[cuda hunter]

Awesome stories.  Not hijacking at all.
OP wanted these stories I believe. 

[Snowdog]

Ok, here's some stories about the people on the line.  So like I mentioned the foreman was a big guy (Stokes was he's name I think), he was built line a linebacker or running back.  Sort like Barry Sanders, so nobody messed with him.   I had other foremans on the line, but in different areas of course.

Sometimes a couple of line workers and I would go on one of the many roofs in Dodge Main Assembly though the windows to eat our lunch.  One thing I always noticed was quite a few needles laying around the roof.  Being a young naive kid I didn't think much about it, just thought "Wow there must be a lot of diabetics working here".  Thinking the needles were used for insulin,  yes I was pretty naive to the kind of stuff, being a kid from the suburbs.  Anyways,  several years later after getting out of the plant, light went off in my head;  "Hey, maybe those needles on the roof were used to shoot up drugs".  Well of course they were, duh!

So it was the 70's so drug of all kinds were around.  So that probably had an effect on the quality too.  Don't get me wrong, plenty of workers took the job seriously it was good money back then.  But if you've ever worked on the assembly line you know it does get mind numbing boring.

See this link for more Dodge Main where the Cudas and Challegers were made.  It had two lines, and usually ran 60 cars per line.

https://www.allpar.com/threads/inside-the-dodge-main-plant-1910-to-1981.229328/

Well, that's my Dodge Main story for today.