Time to build at plant?
 

Anyone knows how long it took to build tha car at the plant? One day,three days ,a week?

Peje, you´ll have to get the 2009 August, September, October, November and December issues of Smoke Signals from POCI.

There is a POCI Historical Feature "Made in Pontiac, Taking a Look Back at the Historic Assembly Plant" By Eric White interviewing an assembly plant worker, Mr. Carl Papke.

Very enlightening......

www.poci.org

From coming out of paint (into trim) to the end of final line could be done within one 8 hour shift.

The chassis would be started about that same time.

From the start of body shop to the end of paint took a couple shifts.

K

My 2002 Camaro SS took about 5 days from start to finish to build. :)

I followed my '97 Ranger Splash down the line in the St. Paul, MN Ford Ranger plant. From the time the body truck hit the line at 6:30 a.m. until the moment it left the end of the line under its own power at 11:15 was about 4 hrs 45 mins. The body was built up and painted the day prior to final assembly. So total build time spanned two days, but the mechanical buildup was less than one shift.

Just to elaborate a bit more, when I followed my '87 Chevy pickup down the line:

I got there about 4:30 pm, at the beginning of second shift. The cab and box were just coming down out of paint, so I followed them all the way through trim. Once they were done being trimmed out they go overhead into a huge accumulator, so I ran downstairs just as they were setting the frame rails on the line. I followed the frame to motor set, and the chassis through to body drop, then down the final line.

At the end of the final line it went to roll test, where they wrote up 1) no back up lights and 2) a/c charge. On the short repair line they fixed the lights and I had them buyoff on the a/c charge cause I knew it was fine.

I drove it off the short line myself and over to the shipping building. I told Lloyd - "that's my truck" and left the plant about 1 am.

By 5 pm that same day it was sitting at Hank Graff Chevrolet in Davison - about 9 miles from where we started.

;)

Line rate at Flint Assembly was 60 jobs per hour on the Final line; slightly faster than that on all the feeder lines.

K