Fender tag question

[69Coronetrt]

The body shop only needed to know 4 door, from station wagon, 2 door and so on. Are you referring to the Body in white panel assembly stage? Wouldn't the body shop also need to know panel details to construct a specific car? i.e 26 inch radiator support? Provision for A/C? Dash frame?

Body tags were assigned as they came out of paint and as it entered the first step of production. How does one account for painted tags? This would mean that the SO/VON was not assigned to the car until after paint meaning the numbers would be above the paint and not under the paint. Tags were attached before paint.

The body shop and paint department each have bank of bodies. Please walk me through this one. I don't understand the comment.

In paint they had them in every color they made. Again. Please clarify this statement.

Starting times were staggered to keep the banks full. Any vehicle could be pulled at anytime or changed till the vin was stamped on the frame, then it was truly born, but the body could still be change and tag reinstalled. That left room for in system damage, say, if car body fall off a carrier or so on........We've compared the sequence number assigned to Lynch Road cars to the VINs assigned. The number of body's produced exceeds the number of VINs assigned. Given what we know about mass production and errors, the only reason we can come up with right now is to account for failed assemblies i.e. welds that didn't meet standard, misalignment of panels, improper panels were used i.e. incorrect a/c application or other manufacturing mistakes where the body was scrapped and the assembly process started over again with another body. The percentage of unaccounted for bodies appears to fall into an acceptable range of manufacturing errors.

 

[Islandkent]

Is the hack for your power windows done for switch room? Do you happen to have a picture?

I believe so.



View attachment 972039

 

[Islandkent]

Me too. What year?

For my 70 Charger 500

 

[Hey-O]

I can not speak for 1960's or early 70's. Cars and trucks were more standard with less one off for this or that.
While leaving paint tags were painted and hung on the vehicle with a wire and installed on the first job out of paint,
then hit first stage of assembly, because in most case any body would fit that build.
The bank in both body in white and paint were for back up in case one department or the other went down. This way cars could still come out of each department keeping the assembly department running, in most case a red car is a red car.
Many cars were scrapped and or destroyed. Say a fully load car came down the line with a no option wiring harness, in some cases the car was pulled and either scrapped or became what we would call a yard car, to used around the plant either by parts chasers or plant security. It was a heavily frowned on problem. Cars being driven from one location to the other in the plant being wrecked happened almost daily.

 

[Hey-O]

In early years a car could be repaired in plant with lead. It became such a problem that later on when we got busted for selling cars that had been repaired with body fill in plant, it was band to even have a can of body fill in the plant, period. I have seen a van with a damaged rear quarter spend weeks being bang out filed, banged, filed again till it was perfect, absolutely no fill used. At some point it was to late to destroy the vehicle and have to explain to Detroit why it wasn't shipped.