Quote:
Originally Posted by Duncan and son
When Jason (sameyrasmea72) was a kid he grew up watching us build NCRS, bloomington gold and top flight mid year corvettes. Of all the folks that restore cars, corvette people are the most fanatic, duplicating factory runs in the paint, over spray in undesirable places, not only bolts with correct finish but correct pattern on the head and no paint under parts that were on the unit when under the hood and bottom were blacked out. Example: the hood hinges were natural with black over spray and no paint under the hinge. Probably an over kill on explanation but my point is that Jason probably knows as much about correctness as anyone. I always say he is smarter than a white rat. Paul
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Corvette guys have it easy. One plant, one product, relatively low line speed.
Trucks inherently have a greater variety of product (ie, seven engines, four transmissions, two or more wheelbases, two or three cab types, two or four wheel drive, dually vs single rear wheel, etc). The amount of proliferation in the truck world is one of the hardest obstacles to overcome.
Additionally, during the squarebody era, trucks were built across seven different assembly plants. The opportunity for build variation, due to environment or history (past build monuments) was overwhelming. There was even process variation within the same plant building the same product (ie, at Flint Assembly: Line 1 pickup front end sheet metal was built "piecemeal" - one fender added at a time. Line 2 Blazer/Suburban front end sheet metal was installed as a unit - fenders and radiator support added at the same time).
Lastly - there can be variation between shifts and individual operators.
The Corvette guys would have a cow if they knew some the stuff we did/varied in order to get trucks built - 60 jobs/hour (that's one truck every minute).
K