[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by RAII 4-speed

I am not sure of exactly when the car was built, I do know it was delivered on 12/11/1964. here is a picture of the fire wall tag

The body was built first week of December 1964 calendar year, and the rest of the car completed just prior to your 12/11/64 delivery date.

My sense is that the order was placed in July but the physical build was not started until after the strike was settled and production resumed.

As opposed to getting the order in and the car out before the strike (which is what happened with my car).

The only other scenario is that the car was started and then stuck mid process. Typically we cover the cars/parts with visqueen during long work stoppages, like a strike or volume adjustment downtime. We try to minimize the number of vehicles in this case because damage can and does occur. That doesn't seem to be what happened here.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by John V.

RAII, the '65 strike started about a month after '65 production began. Apparently your GTO failed to get built before the strike began? The strike was settled within 38 days, walkout started Sept. 25, 1964 and generally all plants were back running by Nov. 9, 1964. The contract was ratified by the UAW on Oct. 25 and many workers were expected back on the job by the next day according to news reports at the time, but most of the final assembly plants remained out another week or so to resolve local issues. Fremont was one of the Plants that did not return right away. I don't know when Fremont returned to production.

While trying to learn when Fremont started back, I found the attached story in a radical newspaper. Published on the day I think they DID start back up Nov. 9), it explains what was happening at Fremont and why they did NOT return to work after the national agreement was passed on Oct. 25. I thought the story was pretty cool, so posting it here.

I think it is common for there to be variation in when the different plants come back on line.

The National Agreement would control the overall bargaining activity, but the individual plants would still need to iron out their specific nickel-and-dime local grievances, which could delay the start of regular production several days (and which would probably not be well documented on a national level).

K

[RAII 4-speed]

Keith, the original owner stated in his notes that the car was covered with foil on the roof (convertible) and a wax type on the paint..... was this typical of all cars back then or ?

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by RAII 4-speed

Keith, the original owner stated in his notes that the car was covered with foil on the roof (convertible) and a wax type on the paint..... was this typical of all cars back then or ?

Convertible tops - yes; they got some type of protective covering -





Wax - no. Sounds like something his local dealer may have done.

K

[Kenth]

I may add that for 1965 Tempest mag. pulse distributor for 326 eng. was 1111081 and 389 eng. uses 1111047.
My info on the 1964 Tempest is for the 326 eng. only.

John V, this info is from the Delco Remy Parts Catalog 8 - 1 - 68 Index No. 8 Supplements to Car Application Index Delco-Remy Equippment for 1963-64-65-66.

[John V.]

I wondered about that "wax coating" too. I knew about the convertible top covering, Eric White's Made in Pontiac series mentioned that IIRC.

The wax coating, never heard anything like that. Kinda makes no sense to me that they would put anything purposely on the fresh paint. A petroleum based product would probably have as likely damaged the paint as protected it.

I wonder if the car was just especially dirty, maybe it rained on the transporter, and the owner thought the road grime that coated the car was a protective film?

Keith, the UAW (headed by Walter Reuther) announced the end of the strike on Oct. 25, a Sunday, after the national vote came in.

102 of 130 bargaining units had reached local level agreements on that date.

Of the remaining 28 locals that voted to continue the strike, 15 of 21 assembly plants (which included Fremont as per the article I attached to my earlier post) remained out because of local issues.

The locals were kinda hung out to dry at that point. The UAW was under political pressure, all the way up to LBJ, because the strike occurred just prior to the Nov. '64 Presidential election and was an embarrassment to LBJ (history shows it didn't hurt him very much). Plus Reuther didn't want the strike in the first place.

Once the national agreement had been ratified, the UAW statement said it would "intensify its efforts to clear up the problems in the remaining 28 locals". Basically, the locals were put on notice by their own leadership to get the strike over with.

And as the Fremont guys recognized from the article I posted, they were in a no-win situation. The national agreement had sold them out.

They remained on strike awhile longer but with union strike benefits paying single guys $20/week and family men no more than $30/week, at a time when I think the average line worker was making about $75/week for 40 hrs, more with overtime, I doubt they stayed out much longer when the handwriting was on the wall.

Keith, the '64 strike may have been the first to have been settled in a piecemeal fashion. Reuther kept some 90 GM locals from striking at all, keeping 80,000 on the job so that parts production wouldn't be interrupted. And he gave the marching orders to his staff to get the most militant locals to settle once the national agreement was ratified on 10/25. Still can't find anything specific to Fremont, which may have been one of the most militant, but everything I can find says all of the locals settled by election day, which was 11/3. The very fact that the locals chose to strike was a slap in the face of Reuther since he had accepted a GM offer in Sept. before the strike but the locals refused to ratify it. Line speed among other things stuck in their craw.

It really was an interesting strike and a precursor to labor unrest and general societal upheaval that followed.

Not sure how the order for RAII's '65 would have been handled.

I believe orders could be placed before production started, but not really sure a Dealer could place an official order for a '65 in July.

The Time Built code on the Data Plate makes it clear to me, the order was not initiated in Fisher Body production until after the strike, it was not caught mid-process. And for sure was not already on the final line when the strike started on 9/25.

If it had been, the Time Built code would have indicated a Time Built code prior to or during the strike. Instead it shows 12A. I know we've never quite understood what calendar dates correspond to this date code, but from what I can tell at Fremont in '64/'65, this date code corresponds to the expected delivery of the Body Assembly to the final line. So this Body Assembly was likely produced during the last days of Nov or possibly the first days of Dec so that it would hit the final line either the week of Nov 30 or Dec 7 (depending on which of those 2 weeks was considered week A of Dec for the final line). In other words, Fisher timed the Body Assembly production so that the body arrived at the final line during the identified week. And it was identified as a "12A" build from the moment Fisher started to produce it. So it would not have begun production earlier.

Still don't know if I am correct about this, but it is the most consistent way of interpreting the Fremont cars that I have been able to come up with.

Makes me wonder what was done with the order in July. Did the Dealer fail to enter it, did the Zone Office drop the ball? Doesn't appear to have been anything special about the order (like a special paint order) that would have delayed the order broadcast.

Perhaps order volume was extremely heavy and it simply didn't get into production (broadcast) before the strike. But there was a full month from the start of production to the day they walked out. Just seems like if the order had been properly entered when the Dealer first accepted it, it would have been built before the strike.

I'm not sure when the Dealers were allowed to start selling the new Pontiacs that year. I mentioned earlier that "opening day" was usually 1 month after production started.

So all of the cars that had been produced and shipped from 8/24 until the stoppage on 9/25 would have been on the Dealer lots, and they were allowed to start selling them on or about 9/24.

None of that really pertains to the Dist used for this build.

Perhaps it was used because of the general chaos as the Fremont Plant tried to recover from the strike. Perhaps parts were in short supply and deviations were abundant.

Kenth, thanks for confirming your source.

Since the SCN showed a couple TI usage changes, it would be very helpful to know what TI Dist was being used BEFORE the switch to the 1111080 on the 4 bbl 389 & 421.

I'd still like to know what the '65 Tempest Shop Manual or AMA specs shows for the specified Dists.

Keith, do you still have your points original to check?

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by John V.

Keith, do you still have your points original to check?

I believe it has an Accel dual point installed right now.

I'd have to check the shelves in the basement (at Mom's house) to see if there is a stock distributor laying there. Last Wednesday, when I was up there getting the numbers off the convertible, would have been the ideal time to do so...



K

[Cardo]

Just starting to work on my 65 with TI and came across this thread. My car is a 4 bbl 4 speed car with California emissions also has a 1111040. Built first week of January of 65. It is a 42000 mile car, and after just pulling the heads off judging from the lack of much of a ridge at the top of the cylinders, I believe it. I think it's entirely plausable that the "wrong" distributors were installed at the factory. Being such a low take rate of an option, they may have run out of one, or just decided to use up old inventory. My date code on my distributor is 3 M 23, so according to the above thread that would be December 23 of '63. Judging from what I'm seeing on this car, I believe it is the distributor that came with it. This car even still has the factory coil installed.

[Baron Von Zeppelin]

Great job on finding this thread and adding more content , Cardo .

Fremont had more inconsistencies than all the other plants combined .
Now if someone can ever come up with a listing for the 040.

As much as they pre-date the 65 model year - seems they should show up on some 64 model year Fremont cars too .

[Cardo]

Thanks Baron. This one really got my curiosity too. If you look at the charts in post #16 It shows as being used on both the 421 AND 326 with TI. Car companies were notorious for not rotating their stock back in the day, and boxes and pallets being shoved in the back and stock being used off the front over and over, just out of convenience. Being my car was built the first week of January, there is a good possibility there was some clean up going on over Christmas break, or the possibility that this was just 5 weeks after the return to work from the strike of 1964, and there may have been a shortage of the other units due to some "slack" in the supply chain. As rare as the TI is in the GTO's, How many were ordered in a Lemans? Even less I'm sure, and Fremont would have no doubt had some of the 040 on hand as they did also build the Lemans. No doubt in my mind, a line supervisor made the call to "use 'em up" either to get rid of them, or if a shortage, to keep the line moving. I see it happen all the time.