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I'm coming to the reassembly stage of restoring the frame & driveline of my '70 442 W30 Auto. I'm trying to make it a fairly authentic restoration and I'm keen to redo correct paint markings that the car should have had when it left Lansing in '70.
The only marking left that I found were green paint markings on the front stub axles but I've seen photos of other cars where other parts like the tail shaft had similar paint markings.
Just wondering if there maybe someone out there that can assist me here or is there a resource book or reliable website that might have some of this info ??
Appreciate any suggestions. Thanks.
Inline tube has a sticker sheet with all the tags that were put on the car originally. Amazing how many there were. If your car is a show car then take a look but I can't image they last long if you use the car even occasionally.
I know its not the paint marking info you were looking for but they may have info on that as well.
Inline tube has a sticker sheet with all the tags that were put on the car originally. Amazing how many there were. If your car is a show car then take a look but I can't image they last long if you use the car even occasionally.
I know its not the paint marking info you were looking for but they may have info on that as well.
Thanks for your feedback. I'm planning to get a set of those stickers shortly. The car won't be a daily driver and it won't be a trailer queen but it will be driven every weekend I can. Keen to make it look as good as I can for as long as I can. I'm in Australia so its the start of nice weather here. I'll post some progress pics shortly.
a large percentage of those stickers are wrong. in fact in a fairly recent muscle car review article of the 68 Hurst being done by ILT they even acknowledge that no one will know if the stickers are correct.
In addition, several people on here who have bought them for their restorations have found out the codes are wrong. If you search the major builds threads you'll encounter their feedback
as for the paint daubs and grease pencil marks, they mean several things - nuts or bolts torqued, bushings lubed. basically whatever you find in disassembly would be wise to recreate during restoration and assembly. Some people like to make up markings also, so ...
a large percentage of those stickers are wrong. in fact in a fairly recent muscle car review article of the 68 Hurst being done by ILT they even acknowledge that no one will know if the stickers are correct.
In addition, several people on here who have bought them for their restorations have found out the codes are wrong. If you search the major builds threads you'll encounter their feedback
as for the paint daubs and grease pencil marks, they mean several things - nuts or bolts torqued, bushings lubed. basically whatever you find in disassembly would be wise to recreate during restoration and assembly. Some people like to make up markings also, so ...
Yes, it's those paint daubs that are of particular interest to me. My car had lots of additional coats of paint over everything so the green markings on the stub axles are all that I found.
It's hard to use photos of other restored cars on the web as a reference as who knows if those marks are actually correct. It's really only someone who has seen good unrestored cars or stripped their car like I have and found these paint markings that might be able to fill in the missing gaps.
Thanks for the lead on the Major Rebuild Threads, I'll go through those and see what I can find - some can be lengthy so I'll fine tune my searches.
Cheers from Down Under
Revealed another marking on the transmission casing tonight as I stripped off several layers of non-original paint on the housing. It's faint but the "OW" marking was there just as I've read about and seen on some other restorations. The size & the font looks different to the stencils I've bought from some Olds repro parts suppliers so I'm going to make a tracing and make a stencil myself.
Its quite faint but you can see the OW
Here's the casing before I started stripping the paint off it
X2 on those ILT decal sets. I used about half of them and either made the others or did without. Many people go overboard with them anyway. I had a 16,000 mile 72 W-30 that was stored inside from day one. It had some on it but most parts had zero sign of ever having a tag on it to begin with. Brake lines and fuel lines especially.
X2 on those ILT decal sets. I used about half of them and either made the others or did without. Many people go overboard with them anyway. I had a 16,000 mile 72 W-30 that was stored inside from day one. It had some on it but most parts had zero sign of ever having a tag on it to begin with. Brake lines and fuel lines especially.
Agree. I'm only planning to redo those markings that are definitely authentic or there is enough evidence to confirm that they should be there. Finding them on most cars is a challenge but its nice when they are revealed like this.
Have an artist's hand on the paint daubs. The variability on how they were applied was huge.
When I worked in a GM plant in 1972, the amount of care and precision for that kind of stuff was ZERO.
The goal of the daubs was to be a visual QC that something was done, as the noise level in the plant was too high to have any type of meaningful discussion across the assembly line.
Colors for brackets, clips, bolts, and plant applied finishes was all over the place. Vendor substitutions meant that a car built in the morning could have different parts on it in the afternoon.
The application of paint to the underside of the car was done quickly and with no preparation - just enough to stop flash rust.
Brackets and small parts were dipped in a large vat of water with an inch of paint floating on top. No primer or prep, just a quick dip and an air dry on a rack. That is why original parts have uneven finishes and lots of drips.
To make matters worse, each plant had a different process that they followed to build the cars, so cars from different plants would vary.
However, the driving force was to push out 60 cars per hour, no matter what. The QC on the GM cars in the '60s and
'70s was pretty bad.
My442, thank you for the first hand insight of assembly line techniques. I love watching films of Detroit assembly lines. As I presumed some cars are over-restored and do not show the factory assembly line flaws. Good post, great website.
The majority of restored cars are significantly better in terms of fit and finish than what GM originally put out.
Think about this: 60 cars an hour is 1 per per minute. That is all the time you had to do your job. I worked in the body shop, and one of my jobs was a door hanger. The car comes down the line, and you identify the door (Buick,Olds,Pontiac) that is coming down a conveyor belt in sequence with the car. You pull down this giant fixture hanging on pulleys and clamp it to the car. You proceed to pick up the empty door, place it in the fixture, then drive in the hinge bolts with a pneumatic driver. You then release the fixture from the car, and check the alignment with a smaller clamp on fixture. Adjustments were made with a 5 pound ball peen hammer. How good was the alignment? Meh, good enough.....
All that in 60 seconds - rinse and repeat until 480 cars were built.
At that point, the car body was in raw metal, from the firewall back. TONS of razor sharp metal everywhere....all the parts were oily. You had to wear coveralls even if the temperature was 100 degrees. A very hot, smelly, dirty, and loud environment. Some of the jobs were so tough that people would work an hour or two and just walk out. Anyone who spent an entire career in an assembly plant has my total respect.
But the worst job in the entire plant was working on the "Lead Line". All cars that did not get vinyl roofs had a thick layer of lead applied to the front and rear rood pillars. The lead was in large pots in a molten state, and the worker would slap on a glop of lead, and roughly spread it out. The next worker would use an air grinder to get the now hardened lead to a better shape. Then another worker would use hand files to get the final shape, acceptable to be painted. The amount of lead dust was phenomenal - it covered everything in a 30 foot radius. The sad part is a lot of the Lead Line workers ended up with lead poisoning. I never saw any OSHA type folks in the plant.
awesome stories, thanks, it is great to hear first hand experience of what it was like. I for one completely appreciate and understand the desire to restore a car to "assembly line perfect" or to even "over restore" a car but I drive my cars and can't ever see myself getting that particular, it could change but not any time soon. On the other hand this barn find craze it just as nuts to me. Seeing cars with the dirt from the barn still on it is cool for the first year it sees light. I think after that you are really just showing a car with newer layers of dirt on it. The gold W30 I have is a barn find. After one summer of showing it that way I cleaned it. Funny thing is it got more attention at car shows than my W30 convertible.
Assembly line and perfect are not synonymous terms.....
Remember that there were no robotics back in 1972, at least in the factory that I was in. Everything was done by humans, so discretion of the operator was the rule. And, it is very true that Monday and Friday cars were not as good, due to liquor, drugs, and disinterest.
Cars were painted by hand, and they were ushered through the process as quickly as possible. The front clips were painted separately, and a lot of cars had a slight mismatch if you looked closely. And the paint formulations were in acrylic lacquer.....no where near as good as the BC/CC paints of today. That is why original cars don't have the shine and depth of a restored car.
The UAW had very little interest in the QC, and if there was a beef with management, the order would go out to sabotage cars until the lie stopped due to non conformance. I saw this happen many times, and if did not comply, there would be a problem in the parking lot.....
November 14th, 2017, 06:03 PM
