Unique Spot Welds

[brian6373]

Yesterday, as I was scraping 61 years of accumulated mud, grease, and ? on the firewall and around the frame rails, I uncovered the body seam on the lower firewall where two pieces of sheet metal were spot-welded together. They were randomly spaced along the seam and not in line at all. I got to thinking that this is something that no longer occurs in modern cars. A robot spot-welds in the same places every time. Day in and day out, the exact same places on the body of the same model car. From the beginning of the production year, to the very last car made for that year. I was looking at those newly reveled spot-welds and started thinking about who made them. The man who came to work and operated the machine that made those welds, randomly. I wondered if he ever thought that 51 years later someone would be looking at his craftsmanship. Or was he wondering if he would have a job next year. Or maybe who would win the pennant? As I gazed at those randomly spaced spot-welds, I realized that they were unique to my car, and that no other car that came down the line would have those spot-welds in the exact same place, and that from beginning-to-end, the building of our cars, and the many people who each did their job, put their own uniqueness into them. In that small way, all our cars are unique in a human built way, that the cookie-cutter modern cars can never be.

Brian

[jclary]

Good observation. On my first big comprehensive restoration project, I dreaded having to tackle removing and replacing sheet metal behind the rear fender. It was a rusted area where body panels had been joined at the factory. Lacking a planishing hammer, or an english wheel for shaping curves, I knew I would have to depend on simple hand hammering and worried about how successful I could be. That was before I had removed the fender and mud baffle. Much to my surprise, once the fender was removed, I found all kinds of hammer marks made on the assembly line when the panels were originally joined. Since that area was to be covered by the fender, no effort was made to use lead filler to smooth out the joint. The leading was reserved for exposed cosmetic areas such as roof panel to body joints.

However, don't think that such efforts are not still happening. Although fixturing and precise repeatability is constantly being improved, there remains an "art" to the manufacturing process. I have sold Fanuc robots to assembly plants and automotive suppliers. We can program a robot to open a door, spray paint the door jam, reposition the door, change fluid pattern, paint flow rate, and spray the rest of the car, but, someone has to program it, monitor it, and maintain it. All manufacturers have teams, that at each level of the process, whose job is to inspect, catch, and repair glitches. You'd be surprised at how much rework, body filler, and other custom touches are in those cookie cutter looking pretty new cars sitting on new car lots.

Believe it or not, there are some high end cars on the road where entire batches of door panels have body filler. I know of one instance where a stamping mold developed a problem. There was no back-up mold for that particular door panel. The cost of making a new mold, and lost production time, was prohibitive. Since the particular model was due for a design change, the mold was hastily repaired to complete the run. The result was that all the remaining doors of that model were produced with a panel flaw that required body filler.Although some assembly plants can produce in a week what used to take months...it still takes skill, and a human touch.

I'm just curious as to what, contemporary cars, will become the collectables of the future. On our mostly metal cars...rust and re-chrome are the challenge. What do you do about cracking and warping plastic body panels? Is someone going to stockpile, reproduce, or economically supply those things? How 'bout all the different generations of computer parts to keep aging fuel injected electronically controlled engines running? Something to ponder????

[brian6373]

Interesting John, my cousins and uncles in Michigan all worked at G.M assembly plants. The last one who worked "on the line" retired 10 years ago. They do have some comic stories about robot assemblies back when they were a new thing. You see on tv modern assembly of cars, and it gives you the impression that it's all automated with little or no workers input. Having a vinyl dash pad slowly crack and decompose on my 63 might be a glimpse of the future. Maybe there will be a future industry that makes custom reproduction plastic door panels, headliner moldings, ect. using something like a 3-d copier. I understand that in Silicon Valley there's already a museum devoted to early computers. I guess one could say that if there's a market for something, there will probably be someone willing to fill that demand. Or it could go the other way and only customs will be around that are up-graded to a more modern standard as the older tech is no longer supported. Defiantly something to ponder!

Brian

[8E45E]

However, don't think that such efforts are not still happening. Although fixturing and precise repeatability is constantly being improved, there remains an "art" to the manufacturing process. I have sold Fanuc robots to assembly plants and automotive suppliers. We can program a robot to open a door, spray paint the door jam, reposition the door, change fluid pattern, paint flow rate, and spray the rest of the car, but, someone has to program it, monitor it, and maintain it. All manufacturers have teams, that at each level of the process, whose job is to inspect, catch, and repair glitches. You'd be surprised at how much rework, body filler, and other custom touches are in those cookie cutter looking pretty new cars sitting on new car lots.

http://forum.studebakerdriversclub.com/showthread.php?74182-Wonder-if-studebaker-would-be-doing-things-like-this&highlight=achtung

Craig

[Noxnabaker]

I remember when I got my -62 New Port in -96 & after being a rocker's car since the early 70's the padded dash looked pretty baaad to say the least; torn & bashed & cracked all over... so I went to a hobby-shop & bought latex paint & started to fill the lower parts & then do the whole bit.
The latex dried real quick & it didn't take me long to suddenly have a red dashboard that got people to go "WOW!!!" when they looked at it!
But then again: 60-62 Chrysler dashboards aint that awfully ugly to begin with either...
So repairing plastic can be quite fun!