Looked at a beautiful looking 72 coupe, opened the hood and What the f---! Looked like 300,000 miles of Baaad road! Brown and gray mess of grease and leaves and who knows what? Bet the frame was rusty too. Dip stick was varnished and glazed. Walked away. Have you ever encountered anything like this?

 

How about this under the hood of an ugly body?

 

yeah in my drivers side door

 

Speaking of driverside door. A friend of mine worked in a Ford plant and said people used to throw all kinds of stuff in the doors of those Fords before packing them up. (candy wrappers, whiskey bottles and somebody even took a crap in one!) Gives a whole new meaning to being a "piece of shyt". Foul - Odor - Reconditioned - Doors = Ford.

Son, go out and buy a Chevy and call me in the morning.

 

[QUOTE=Bierbitzch;1563191643]....and somebody even took a crap in one!)

Is that a joke???
I can't believe it

 

[QUOTE=panic;1563191674]No Joke! I wish it wasn't true, but you don't know half of it. They ought to let them boy's on the line, use the facilities.

 

this isnt just done at ford, my dad bought a 58 belair new in 58.
while driving it he had a hell of a clunk from the passengers side on certain bumps.
back to the dealer 4 different times before they could finally
duplicate the noise.

some azzhat on the assembly line stuck a 8 oz coke bottle in the passengers
side door and i guess they way it was wedged in it would
shake loose every once in a while make the clunk and rewedge itself.
real comedians work on those lines.

 

I worked at a Ford dealer after school when I was in high school. Had a guy kept bringing a new Mustang in saying it had a tapping noise in the rear, they finally pulled the rear axle and there was a long screwdriver that had been welded in the middle above the axle and when the car vibrated it would start tapping on the bottom of the car. Ford, quality job 1?

 

It's not just cars. I worked on motorhomes for awhile as a coach tech. Had a customer with a bumping, banging noise. Long story short, I had to disassemble the kitchen slide out room to find an empty soda can under the false floor. Took almost 8 hours.

 

My Dad had the same problem with a new Studebaker. Had a Coke bottle in the right rear quarter pannel.

 

Haven't seen in a Corvette, but I bought a Dodge Lil' Red Express Wagon (yeah, I know...at the time it seemed like a good idea) that was in decent shape...but when I lifted the hood the engine looked like it had never been touched. The grease was (honestly!) 1/4" thick, and more in spots. It was the first time I ever pulled an engine just to clean it up

 

my mom bought a new cutlass supreme in 1971 had a clanging sound every time you turned a corner, took it to the dealers 4 times no luck so the dealer sent it to an upholstery shop where they pulled the head liner and found 4 large ball bearings and a note reading ( hope you had fun finding these ha ha ha)
I bought a 69 plane jane 6 banger camaro from the original owner in 88 and when replacing the carpet pulled the kick panels and found a nasty old beer can stuffed in the hole.

As far as engine bays i just looked at a 60`s panel truck and there was weeds and garabage stuffed in the engine bay i mean like old cloths,shoes,yard crap leaves sticks etc.. walked away also!

 

talking about engine bays - a buddy of mine who owns the local Chevy dealer and is into old trucks, went out to a farm to look at a 28 or 29 Ford that had weeds growing all through it, when he opened the hood he got bit by a rattlesnake inside the engine bay. Talk about your Ford Cobras..... he survived and tells the tale, guess that Ford didnt like the Chevy man.

 

I remember those days...

My brother worked on the assembly line at Lordstown in Ohio which was, at that time, GM's largest plant.

He would tell me that the workers would stuff all kinds of crap in the doors because they didn't want to walk over or didn't have time to walk over and throw the stuff away. He also told me that if the doors didn't fit correctly, they would use a heavy sledge and hit it afew times...

In those days, if you drove an import you had to park in the farthest remote lot for fear that it wouldn't be in one piece at the end of the day. My brother bought a Ford to make them happy. Funny, it didn't matter that it wasn't a Chevy, it just mattered whether it was an import or not.

 

now thats funny and creative.

 

I have no doubt those stories are true. I worked for a subsidiary of Ford Motor Company from 1969 to 1981. I finally got high enough in the company to rate an "executive lease car". In '79 I had ordered an 80 Mustang and the manufacturing facility for the west coast was nearby in Milpitas, CA (San Jose Assembly Plant). A buddy of mine knew the controller at the plant so we decided to drive over and see if we could find our cars on the line. We got a tour guided by the controller, but, as soon as we got out in the plant we started drawing hoots and jeers from the workers. Anyone with a suit on was the enemy in their minds. The controller told us to not show any interest in any of the cars on the line because, if the union guys suspected that it might be a Ford executive lease car, they'ed sabotage it. Loose hardware in the doors and who knows what else. Another friend of mine was a journeyman plumber whose company had the contract to re-plumb the Ford plant for facilities changes on the shop floor (pneumatic lines for power tools). He told me stories about some of the female workers running a prostitution business in the upholstry department and line workers stealing wheels, tires and engines with union protection if they were caught. When Ford closed that plant in the mid 80's I recall having very little sympathy for the displaced assembly workers. Just to be fair, GM was building the A-Body cars (Chevelle, Tempest, Cutlass, Skylark) a few miles north of there in Fremont, CA and I heard that the atmosphere in that plant was just about the same. Thier butts got saved when Toyota took over the plant, but the UAW had to knuckle under to Toyota management practices before they'ed accept any of the old GM workers.

 

 

 

I hadnt heard that one before! Good one!

 

Little episodes like that are probably why most of the assembly plants for the Big 3 are now off shore. Many guys in the UAW had a good thing going and screwed it up. The criteria for auto plants today is quality and if a plant can't produce quality products they close it. Many were closed as a result.

Most unions were formed to protect workers from unscrupulous business owners but they failed to protect themselves from a-holes who feel they were somehow entitled to high pay without regard for skill or pride in what they do. Most of the auto workers were good hard working people who had pride in what they did but it only takes a few idiots to screw up a good thing.