Dang no pictures here but I did work in the mid 60's and up.
I didn't work much in the assembly plants except for Jefferson assemble and dodge main for a couple of months each time.(67-68, 73-75) I got stuck stuffing the rear end chunk into the rear housing and installing seats at the other. (I'll take the rear end work any day!) SEATS SUCK! they are cumbersome as all get out! I did most of my machining type of work at (8 years)Trenton Engine working the lehrs and the natco's doing small end rod drilling and honing and then graduated to the lambs which was automated, that is if you could set it up correctly. All 30 stations had to be perfect or it worked you to death clearing jam's . Every once in a while I'd get stuck on the engine assembly line and have to shoot pistons or installing cams in the /6 line, I got really good doing the slanty's
. then I got moved to the final plant I worked in. the McGraw Glass plant. I did just about every job there except janitor and hilo driver (you had to have MUCHO Seniority to even think about those slacker jobs! lot's of overtime in those and not much hard work, but you did have to drink like a fish to be one of those guys,so I had to pass on those)
Windshields were just hot and sweaty jobs either Cut, grind,load or unload glass, that is unless you were female(and decent looking) then you got to go to the vinyl room putting the vinyl in between 2 piece windshields and work in the air conditioning. be a not so good looking female and you were on the floor with the rest of us.
I hated doing the 65/66 barracuda rear windows. we had to use 2 people to lift the glass off the hot fixture that had just came out of the furnace and swing it into a carrousel rack that ran it through he cooling bays and then to the packing stations. DAmn thing were impossible to break unless you pinged the edges or corners just right with a center punch. I had to laugh at the desert car king guys, they just don't break like that. Heck we used to give tours and had a minivan rear tempered window that we place on a rubber floor mat and had a 300lb guy jump on it, the backlight went almost flat and then sprang up bouncing the big guy about 3 foot in the air. we then took the same piece of glass (after using wide tape to mask it)turned it over and center punched the edge. It shattered really nice with very little force needed on the center punch.
when we ran flat glass some of the guys would take some bad(out of shape or size, maybe a vendor defect or chip) ones home and then sandwich it in between two other pieces of thin glass, tape the edges so none of the center piece of glass could move and then center punched the tempered piece they had brought home. it made an awesome coffee table center piece. every once in a while I see pieces like that for sale and wonder just who did it and if I knew the guy
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I enjoyed the jobs that made me think about what I was doing. so I ended up running a 1/4 mile long glass furnace that was pretty much automated with only 4 or so people
1 hilo driver to load and unload the racks
1 printer to make sure the silver and black printing machines stayed running
1 person (me that set up the grinding/cutting area, furnace setup for the correct shape) plus I could stay warm in the winter!
1 person inspecting each piece of glass produced and watching to make sure the racks were rotated when full)
I liked it because I had no Boss to tell me what to do just picked up the schedule every morning looked outside to make sure I had a printer and inspector and started the setup procedure. 2 hours later good glass was being produced.
it was pretty challenging when they wanted to run prototypes and had no clue even how to set it up to run a different part. I retired in 2003 when they closed the plant. then move to where I didn't freeze every winter, since they closed my heating source for the winters!
