In my quest for the Dec. 63 Car Life magazine with all the Stude articles, I ended up with several other issues (Thank you George Krem and eBay![^]).
In the Feb. 64 issue there's a really cool article called, "Build-It-Yourself Studebaker" by Pius Skarich (yes, that's the real name!). They had requested an R-4 Daytona for a road test; and Studebaker challenged them to send one of their editors to build it himself![] So editor Gene Booth was issued an employee ID and coveralls, and actually went through the process, start to finish. Then, in the next story, they got to test the car at the proving grounds... a fantastic pair of stories!
Mr. Booth started at 7am in the foundry with testing the hardness of the molten iron, then casting and pouring a block, then heads. (this car's actual engine was shipped ready to install from Paxton in Santa Monica, SOP for these). From there he went to stamp out sheet metal, and on to several various operations on all six floors, right to the final doll-up line. In all, he performed a "great many" of the 157,000 operations required to build a car, walked most of the 5.7 million square feet of floor space, and installed more than half of the 20,000 numbered parts that made up a 64 Daytona hardtop, all in three days! It's an excellent, detailed look at what it takes to build a car; truly a marvel, and most people can't comprehend what it really takes (or took) to build a car- and Stude was building 60 per hour![:0]
A funny note at the end: At the end of the line, they tried and tried, but could not get the R-4 engine to start. The car behind it bumped it off the ramp, and it was pushed by hand to the repair post. There it was discovered that the R-4, designed for transistor ignition, had had a conventional coil installed by our intrepid editor[:I] Once that was remedied, it was discovered the clutch would not disengage. It was then sent off to the repair garage to be corrected.
Once finished, running, and detailed, the car was then delivered to the engineers for 500 miles of running on a chassis dyno (SOP for all R-3 and R-4-equipped cars). After that the car was sent to Car Life for their testing- another great article.
All I could think as I read the story was, how much I'd love to do something like that[8D] If I could get my scanner working and figure out how to make a PDF file, I'd post both articles for you all to see. Really some great reading[^]
Robert (Bob) Andrews- on the IoMT (Island of Misfit Toys)
Parish, central NY 13131
In the Feb. 64 issue there's a really cool article called, "Build-It-Yourself Studebaker" by Pius Skarich (yes, that's the real name!). They had requested an R-4 Daytona for a road test; and Studebaker challenged them to send one of their editors to build it himself![] So editor Gene Booth was issued an employee ID and coveralls, and actually went through the process, start to finish. Then, in the next story, they got to test the car at the proving grounds... a fantastic pair of stories!
Mr. Booth started at 7am in the foundry with testing the hardness of the molten iron, then casting and pouring a block, then heads. (this car's actual engine was shipped ready to install from Paxton in Santa Monica, SOP for these). From there he went to stamp out sheet metal, and on to several various operations on all six floors, right to the final doll-up line. In all, he performed a "great many" of the 157,000 operations required to build a car, walked most of the 5.7 million square feet of floor space, and installed more than half of the 20,000 numbered parts that made up a 64 Daytona hardtop, all in three days! It's an excellent, detailed look at what it takes to build a car; truly a marvel, and most people can't comprehend what it really takes (or took) to build a car- and Stude was building 60 per hour![:0]
A funny note at the end: At the end of the line, they tried and tried, but could not get the R-4 engine to start. The car behind it bumped it off the ramp, and it was pushed by hand to the repair post. There it was discovered that the R-4, designed for transistor ignition, had had a conventional coil installed by our intrepid editor[:I] Once that was remedied, it was discovered the clutch would not disengage. It was then sent off to the repair garage to be corrected.
Once finished, running, and detailed, the car was then delivered to the engineers for 500 miles of running on a chassis dyno (SOP for all R-3 and R-4-equipped cars). After that the car was sent to Car Life for their testing- another great article.
All I could think as I read the story was, how much I'd love to do something like that[8D] If I could get my scanner working and figure out how to make a PDF file, I'd post both articles for you all to see. Really some great reading[^]
Robert (Bob) Andrews- on the IoMT (Island of Misfit Toys)
Parish, central NY 13131
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