<VV> Assembly Line screw-ups
RoboMan91324 at aol.com
RoboMan91324 at aol.com
Mon Jan 19 15:51:13 EST 2015
Dennis,
Perhaps the "sidetracking" problem explains the worst assembly line
screw-up I saw.
At the time, I was working as a mechanic in a service station. A regular
customer had an early 70s Cadillac that was still under warranty. Because
it was under warranty, he took it to the dealership for major things but
brought us his other cars. One day, he brought it to us out of frustration
with the dealership. It ran rough and had less power than he thought it
should. The dealership replaced plugs, wires, etc. and couldn't find the
problem. They gave up and said he should drive it because it would probably
"wear in."
I checked this and that and finally decided to do a compression check
despite it having very low mileage. 7 cylinders had the expected compression
but one had zero. I slipped a dipstick into the sparkplug hole and it just
kept going. I drained the oil and pulled the pan off and, sure enough, it
had a piston/rod assembly missing. There was no scuffing on the journal or
cylinder wall. It ran surprisingly smooth for a 7 cylinder V-8.
GM/Cadillac failed but doo-doo happens. For this engine to get through
the process without detection, huge mistakes had to happen at several
stations. The guy who put the piston kits together might have been the original
screw-up. The guy who fitted, honed and inserted the piston/rod assemblies
was the major culprit. If there was an incomplete piston kit, put it
aside and use the next kit. The guy who assembled the rod bearings and torqued
the caps had to know. The guy who assembled the heads to the block had to
know. The people at the run-in/final test station had to see something.
Somebody must have red tagged the engine at some point. One disgruntled
or hung over employee couldn't explain this.
The real failure was at the dealership. First, how could they sell a car
that ran that rough without checking into it? (How could the customer buy
it running that rough? Great salesman? Drunk?) Once the problem came to
the service department, they had a testing machine that they either didn't
use or didn't know how to use. One of the tests available on those machines
was a function where you can disable each cylinder in turn. You would
observe the RPM drop. A good cylinder would drop the RPM more than a bad
cylinder when disabled so the piston-less cylinder should have stood out when
there was no RPM drop.
Understandably, the customer was pissed when I showed it to him. He asked
what I would charge to fix it. I gave him a price but told him that he
should make Cadillac fix it under warranty. I didn't bother to reassemble
what I took off and we had it towed to the dealership. Later, he told me
that the dealership started to give him the "voided warranty" routine because
I had opened up the engine. Maybe they thought I removed the piston/rod
assembly without removing the head. Anyway, they fixed it and I had a friend
for life in that customer. He referred several new customers.
Doc
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In a message dated 1/19/2015 6:50:50 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
virtualvairs-request at corvair.org writes:
Message: 5
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 09:19:57 -0500
From: "dennis dorogi" <dfamily at fairpoint.net>
To: "James P. Rice" <ricebugg at comcast.net>, <virtualvairs at corvair.org>
Subject: Re: <VV> Assembly Line screw-ups
Message-ID: <30AEC4CA115B4DB7B4AD8F5BB8FEAF26 at RuthPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original
Back in the early 60's I worked on an engine assembly line at Ford Motor
Co. One day they kept all the workers on the line after shift working hours
and rolled in a dozen or so engines that failed when they test ran them at
the end of the line (some with dramatic failures)! Of course the company
was blaming the workers but as it turned out the defective engines were to
be sidetracked to a repair line but the switching mechanism on the assembly
line failed allowing some of the engines to go to the end of the line
creating a real mess when they were started. The workers were not to blame. I
will never forget some of those mangled engines (rod bolts not fastened etc).
Dennis Dorogi
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