Re: New Vehicle has body work?

1972, a friend ordered a Chevy Van on a 3/4 ton chassis, for his business. van was wayyyy late arriving after he ordered it. when it came in, I was looking it over,and mentioned seeing a really big piece of masking tape in the inner door jamb...... further research revealed the van fell off the railcar, landed in a ditch, and was "lost" for a week, before being diverted to a body shop for some major work. virtually the whole left side had to be repaired and repainted.... the dealership he bought it from got pictures of the van as it was found in the ditch, and after it was towed to a body shop. a quicker fix than building a new 3/4 ton van. needless to say,thats the last vehicle he purchased from Chevrolet.

Hi . The Ford plant I worked in would take about 3 days to fill the lines in the plant from start in the body shop to where the car gets it fist start up as a new car and is drove off the line . After the first car is drove off the line full production speed is set at about one car per minute , hard to believe that means 60 cars per hr. Repairs on cars are only done if it is cost effective , and if not the part or parts are replaced with a new part . Yes there are break downs on production lines but on some lines when possible there is an over production speed to cover down time . The main production lines are at a set speed and are not run faster then that set speed . I Just thought it may be interesting for some to know how fast cars etc can be made in a plant . I still had a problem when I retired on the changes in the plant over the last 30 + years I worked at Ford Canada . Fox . S. Ont. Can .

mark hoffman wrote:

My '75 F150 was wrecked somehow too. The front drivers side hood was repaired and the front bumper was repaired or replaced with a repaired one, it has the air hammer marks to prove it. The hood repair/bondo is just now starting to really show it's age but it always has had bubbles in the paint.

I know the truck was ordered with a front chrome bumper, got the papers. It wasn't ordered with undercaoting like I asked for and it wasn't ordered with a rear step bumper like I wanted either. They tried to pawn an ugly after market one off on me instead and the dealer/garage undercoating was a joke (on me) and is still flaking off in places. :) I didn't kick about it tho and later they put the stiffest front springs Ford makes for it on there, under warranty, even tho it was out of warranty. :)

An ex!:)brother-in-law here in AZ (she packed up and left yippee!:) got a new chevy pickup with what looked like sand dings in the paint along one side. No big deal but he went and got them to re-paint it after nearly gettin jailed for the way he acted at the dealership. I tried to talk him out of it the first few minutes after we first found it. What a friggin mess that new paint was! :( Dumb s*it. :/

Later when the -factory- paint was going belly up too, they tried to weasel out of that because there was a record of it having been repainted already. :)

And then there was the padded dash fit didn't suit him either, it was ok, really, but of course... his radio and crap like that never worked right after the new dealer-replaced dash was installed an it curled up and looked worse than the factory job but he wouldn't ever admit that out loud to me. ;) Heard him go on about to others tho! :)

If you want perfection you better figure doing it yourself and spending a lifetime getting it that way both or go on with your life enjoying your new vee-hick-el someone else built for you. :)

Alvin in AZ