What late Friday or liquid lunch mistakes or oddities did you find....

[Cuda416]

when restoring your car?

I recently ran into someone who had two such things.

First, the interior structure that should be welded to the lock pillar, was not. The entire edge had divots as if the spot welder clamped down, but didn't weld. Zero welds along the entire thing, top to bottom.

Second was the tail light panel. Almost all factory spot welds, but the top had wire feed 'tacks/globs'. We're 99 percent sure the tacks were factory as this is the only part on the panel that appears to have been done like that. Everything else (except the lock pillar seam) looked good.

What did you find?

And post pictures if you can!

[73chalngr]

A 1970 SE challenger that I used to own had one black coat hanger hook and one dark green coat hanger hook. And you couldn't tell it was dark green unless she got right on top of it.

[jimynick]

My Challenger's right trunk extension was put in a measured 3/4" lower than it's partnered floor. It was so much lower than the trunk floor that when they went to spot weld it, there was only enough material for a half circle welds. Then they filled the resulting trough with about 2lbs of sealant schmutz. I figure it was built on a Friday, likely after "lunch". 

[Filthy Filbert]

With the sloppy production tolerances, combined with low quality production line quality control; it's amazing these cars went down the road in a straight line

[dodj]

Personally, I don't think the 'lunch' thing was anything more than one in a million. Cars back then were built to a very sloppy standard as mandated by the factory.
Workers did what was asked of them for the most part.
The 'screw-ups' you find, were condoned by the corporation. Went through the QC of the day.
just my 

[Cuda416]

I think it's a combination of things. One of which not mentioned is a good/odd sense of humor or spite..  One response I got from another site was someone found a coke can inside a frame rail....  Honestly I hope it got put back since technically it's factory correct...

[Filthy Filbert]

Personally, I don't think the 'lunch' thing was anything more than one in a million. Cars back then were built to a very sloppy standard as mandated by the factory.
Workers did what was asked of them for the most part.
The 'screw-ups' you find, were condoned by the corporation. Went through the QC of the day.
just my 

Yup.  Which was what I was eluding to in my post.    The above story about an entire panel not being welded... I'm sure the line operator tried to weld it, but did not realize that he wasn't getting nuggets of sufficient diameter from the spot welder.   He probably needed to dress the electrode tips on the welder.   Post-weld inspection is very difficult with RSW, without performing a destructive pull test to measure the weld nugget size.   Even today performing such inspections is challenging.  An ultrasonic tester can measure thickness which can be used to determine the size of the nugget, but it's a bit tricky due to the surface dimple that is left behind.    What typically happens is every so many cars going down the line, one gets pulled off after weld, and gets completely ripped apart to measure nugget diameters of every spot weld on the chassis. 

[Cuda416]

Personally, I don't think the 'lunch' thing was anything more than one in a million. Cars back then were built to a very sloppy standard as mandated by the factory.
Workers did what was asked of them for the most part.
The 'screw-ups' you find, were condoned by the corporation. Went through the QC of the day.
just my 

Yup.  Which was what I was eluding to in my post.    The above story about an entire panel not being welded... I'm sure the line operator tried to weld it, but did not realize that he wasn't getting nuggets of sufficient diameter from the spot welder.   He probably needed to dress the electrode tips on the welder.   Post-weld inspection is very difficult with RSW, without performing a destructive pull test to measure the weld nugget size.   Even today performing such inspections is challenging.  An ultrasonic tester can measure thickness which can be used to determine the size of the nugget, but it's a bit tricky due to the surface dimple that is left behind.    What typically happens is every so many cars going down the line, one gets pulled off after weld, and gets completely ripped apart to measure nugget diameters of every spot weld on the chassis.

Just to clarify, I didn't say the entire panel, I said the entire edge, where it meets the lock pillar. No spot welds whatsoever, but the tool left the divots. So you could certainly be correct in that the tips were dirty which would explain the divots. Hadn't thought of that.

[dodj]

On my car the rear frame rails were barely welded to the floor/trunk pans. Like half a spot weld hit the frame rail and significant air gap between welds. The guy running the spot welder was probably trained for 10 minutes and put on the line.
After I stitch welded both sides of the car there were significantly less creaks, groans, and rattles coming from my car.