Chrysler assembly line workers!

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65dartcharger

Dart Charger 273 Historian
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During my restoration on my DartCharger I have got in contact with several Chrysler assembly line workers over the year. However I have not put up this question on FABO. There is so much history and knowledge from these guys and gals we need to keep. I've talked to a nice 84 year old lady in Detroit that was all excited about my phone calls. She told me so much how the cars were and what happended on the line. Some times she even said she had a great time bringing back old memories. So the question is;

Is there any old assembly line workers here and what kind of work did you do at the line? Which plant and what years?
 

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didn't work in B&A plant but at the Indianapolis Electrical plant. Started work on June 18th 1976 at 10:30 pm on Sunday night ( I think the dates is correct, that was too many years ago)

1st night I loaded Power Steering gears on an overhead conveyor, good thing I was 18

Ended up working in just about every department in the 3 years i was there as inspector. Finished as a machine operator.

Don't know if I would know anything of important (do know how to center a PS gear) set sector shaft torque

Been years since I rebuilt starter and altenator, but still have parts

I feel I learned a lot in the short time I was there, at a B&A plant they have tricks that help assemble and sometimes disassemble them.etting to talk to some of the ones that are retired can be interesting.

Soon I will be working in a B&A plant but not for chrysler, been at ford for 14+ years and will tranfer to Louisville KY LAP in Feb.
 
cool pics off the subject....
 

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I was 18 when I worked at Nu Car Prep in Los Angeles pulling brand new mopars off the train from back east. Loved pulling those brand new dusters and roadrunners off the train and driving thru the 1/4 parking lot to the prep area. Man those dusters were fun to drive in 74.
 
I was 18 when I worked at Nu Car Prep in Los Angeles pulling brand new mopars off the train from back east. Loved pulling those brand new dusters and roadrunners off the train and driving thru the 1/4 parking lot to the prep area. Man those dusters were fun to drive in 74.
now THAT is cool.i bet those TRAINLOADS of MOPARS was a sight to see. I scour the net hoping to run across that kind of thing.you got any pics???
 
I was 18 when I worked at Nu Car Prep in Los Angeles pulling brand new mopars off the train from back east. Loved pulling those brand new dusters and roadrunners off the train and driving thru the 1/4 parking lot to the prep area. Man those dusters were fun to drive in 74.

Santa Fe Springs' "Prep Plant" (Slauson @ Sorenson) ?!?
You must have known Ken and Dan (of the now-former "K&D Clinic for Chryslers" in Whittier , Ca.) .
Those guys knew their **** ; and since they performed smog checks at their shop , the knew that Chrysler did not used A.I.R. Pumps until 1972 (on select CA models only) , nor did they use traditional EGR until 1973 .

I truly miss those guys :prayer:

I wonder how many loads of cars went from the long-defunct Los Angeles (City of Commerce) Plant to the S.F.S. prep plant ??

The L.A. facility closed in July 1971 at the end of the model year . It opened in c.1932 at 5800 S.Eastern @ Slauson (s/e corner . Thanks to Barry Washington @ "Hamtramck Historical" for the info ! ).

The reason I've been given for its closure has varied over the years:

- Sylmar Earthquake (02/1971 @ 0600 HRS) caused lots of costly damage ;

- Air Resources Board ("CARB") was fining them constantly ;

- A strike caused it to close (yeah , right !)

The real reason (as revealed in a March '71 edition of the Los Angeles Times ) ?
Chrysler went to triple-stack-load railcars for the 1972 model year ; and since the L.A. plant had an in-house rail system (e.g. , the trains ran-through the assembly plant !! ) , accommodations for railcars that height could not be made , hence its closure .


 
It's amazing how much there is out there. Thanks for all the replys guys. Hope there are more to share.
 

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I grew up with lots of kids whose folks worked at either the DELCO plant, Harrison Radiator, or AirTemp. My uncle worked for AirTemp for 6 months in 1969, got laid off, and got called back in, are you ready...1983!!!
 
Here is some more pictures!
 

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Neat pics Ulf, that Superbird prototype is cool! Notice it is a 69 road Runner, not a 1970. Looks like the car was an air grabber car, white walls and full deluxe wheel covers. Look at all those cool parts in the shop too, very neat! :D
 
there is a daytona beak in the background as well, and a mean stack of 70 charger hoods !! those pics are awesome!! we want more we want more we want more!!!!
 
i love that stuff,old photos of what these guys were doing back in the day is the S%IT. a 69 rr bird would be so cool to see, had they put one on the street or the track ...
 
I can get a pic of an ocean of Toyota's Prius..any interest? Hahaha, Toyota dock at Long Beach.
 
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:D. 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:D.



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!
 
look at that the headlight doors already don't work right.. :)


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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:D. 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:D.



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!

Thanks for posting your story. I love the history!
 
My grandfather worked at the Chrysler plant in Newark Delaware until he retired in the early 1980s. He start there in 1952 while they were still building tanks. I worked at the Newark plant too but much later, I was there until it closed.
 

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I find stuff like this very interesting, and as a pretty much "PNW" guy I was never exposed to any of it, in fact, I've never worked for a union shop, although I've done a little work INSIDE one

(The physical plant at WSU Pullman can bit my ***, by the way)
 
We go on a cruise every year, last year I met a guy that worked for Chrysler from 1960 to 1990. I was telling me a story of a Hemi theft ring going on back in the mid 60s at Chrysler.

Any one else heard of this? Undocumented Hemi's may be out there somewhere
 
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