i just picked up the 75 chassis from the sandblaster and was amazed at the terrible welding.when it was covered with grease and dirt i never noticed.i cant believe g.m.s flagship of the day would have such bad quality.it looks like a kid was trying to learn how to stick weld with his eyes closed.im a professional welder and own my own business and could never dream of welding like that.now im going to have to grind out the bad spots and reweld,if there is anything left after grinding.has anyone else had the same problem.i could see welding bad on a car like a yugo but this is supposed to be a high dollar sports car for its day.i now know why the c3s rotted out,its a poorly designed frame and the poor welds give water and dirt all kinds of places to hide and do its damage.im going to do my magic on this frame since im ready to start reassembly and am going to come up with some better gussets and plates to shed dirt and water then smooth everything out with all metal.its going to be better than g.m. could ever do.maybe ill send them some before and after pics.

 

Flagship or not, the build quality of these cars was pretty lousy, even compared to other cars of that era. I found the same thing after getting my frame sandblasted; I ended up burning up a lot of mig wire getting it to look like I wanted.

 

It's a good thing that the 'design' and engineering of GM vehicles in that timeframe was pretty good....or they would have fallen apart from the poor execution of the manufacturing system. The mid-late 70's and the early 80's was the low point in GM product quality. After that period of time, it has been [primarily] the Executive strata that is the epitome of poor quality.

 

I'd argue that the nadir on quality was the years Jose Ignacio Lopez was VP of purchasing at GM. the accountants were running the company making few body frames and sticking different labels on almost identical cars and along comes Lopez who was a dictatorial jerk and cut prices paid on materials for the cars on contracts in place, rebid the contracts that had five years to run, stiffed suppliers, etc. He initially saved money but then the parts suppliers started light weighting parts, failing to meet specifications, diversifying to start serving Honda and Toyota to avoid Lopez which gave them even lower prices. The parts were so bad the warranty expense at GM skyrocketed and their competitive position actually got worse. Lopez fled to volkswagen with GM secrets and was sued for that and lost then Volkswagen got rid of him and he ended up literally in Jail. meanwhile, Euro models, Asian models ate their lunch in market share as a result of this. The modern factories are so heavily robotic assembly that quality at a high level has become routine...almost any car works well nowadays causing Mercedes problems. They used to sell based on higher quality.....a much harder sell today for the price differentials they wanted, needed.

I'd argue build quality was worst in the early to mid nineties.

Lance

 

Mine looked prety crappy. I even found wire hanging off of some of the factory welds on my 82.

While you are re-welding, you might want to get a Chevrolet racing manual for the era and add the gussets and reinforcements GM recommended for racing. They fully welded the frames on the race cars as well. No stich welding for them.

 

Welcome to the wonderful fantasy world of "they don't build'em like they used to".
At least you have welds,it wasn't that uncommon for a hungover/still drunk/stoned employee to miss the odd weld or two in those days...

 

Well Merc, let me tell you, it didn't just start in the mid '70's. My best car bud (a hot rod builder and welding instructor) and I joke about the horrid structural design and welding techniques on the sub frames both of our '68 Camaros. His comments were, "looks like first day in high school welding class." I ground most of the "seams" down and re-migged them all....
Due to poor design, there was substantial "rust outs" in important areas of the subframe. I also had to buy and weld-in re-inforcement plates where the frame's body bushing tangs had held water (as you also described) and rotted through to the extent that the bushing had nothing to be secured to.....SHODDY design and worse assembly indeed!
Side note: For those of you who don't "know" F body chevys, the sub frame (front 1/2 of the frame on camaros, novas, firebirds) is "secured" to the integral rear body frame by just (get this) 4...count 'em "4" bolts.....The entire front half of the car is held on to the back half by 4 bolts ........

 

The welds on your frame (and on all other C3s) met GM engineering requirements. None of these frames were ever welded full length.

Not liking what you see does not mean the frame was crappy or quality was low.

Frames were stockpiled outside at St. Louis. Your brand new (at the time) frame was probably rained and snowed on a time or two before it ever got in the building and went under your Corvette.

 

Exactly our 'point', Mike. Would the Japanese leave Honda platform parts out in the weather before assembling them?

 

Moot point. We cannot do anything about what occurred at St. Louis forty years ago.

 

You're right, Mike. It's just another example of the shoddy work GM "used to do".

 

For one thing, the frame is not on display, you don't see the frame most of the time, and there were probably quotas to meet each day. They were not meant to last 40 plus years, yet look how well they have held for the most part. Yes, a lot of bad design areas, but the welds held up except for the typical rot areas.

 

[QUOTEWe cannot do anything about what occurred at St. Louis forty years ago.
[/QUOTE]

We can and are rebuilding these cars using higher quality materials and better workmanship than was used in St. Louis. Granted, They are now hand-built cars and not the product of an assembly line, so now the ultimate degree of quality is up to the builder.

 

Many of these frames were built by A.O. Smith... famous for heating and cooling plants of all sizes. It is possible these frames were actually welded by union boilermakers and pipefitters which makes their low quality welds even more shocking!

 

I know a couple of guys who worked on the AO Smith line. The stories they tell.

 

i agree thet the frame should not be welded the whole length otherwise if it were welded the full length it wouldnt allow for twist and would crack.but when you have 1/2 inch long stallagtites hanging down from the brackets and gussets then there was a problem.imagine walking into the showroom and paying three times as much as a chevy caprice which i looked at and the welds are very good and changing your oil and seeing big gobs of weld hanging down.im glad that chevy got it right now.then again ive never crawled under a new c6,im not knocking chevy,i love their cars but i laugh when i see the old work which im fixing now.id like to go for a beer with one of the quality control guys and ask him what he was doing in the mid seventys,because it sure wasnt working hard at his job.i hate to say it but thank god for robotic welders.

 

My 69 frame was the same way. At first I started looking to see if the frame was damaged and rewelded by some fly-by-night shop when I found this same conversation on the forum a few years ago. It was enlightening to know I wasn't the only one with the sub-quality weld jobs and that they actually came from the factory like that.

 

as an old manufacturing executive I can tell you that you make the case for automated processing equipment. It generally produces higher volumes, repeats whatever it is set at and if your activity level can handle it, raises the overall quality level to that determined by the engineers who designed the product and set up the equipment. The robots don't come to work unhappy with the wife, pissed at their boss, tired that day and don't join unions. Once set up and maintained correctly if appropriate for the task, they work routinely well. A really good thing is that most car bodies aren't hand sprayed anymore but done with robotic sprayers with different spinning and misting heads on electrostatically charged bodies. For the most part you can't even begin to compare paint jobs of the 60's-70's-80's with what uniformly comes out today because of this. There is nothing wrong with good people but sometimes the industrial revolution makes better uniform quality without them. On the other extreme, if time and cost are no barrier there are people who are individually capable of doing amazing jobs well above what a robot will do but not 1,000 cars a day, every day....people = art, robots = good overall quality if done correctly.

 

My 71 frame was the same. When I got it back from the stripper they stood out like a sore thumb. And remember this was GM,s top end car. Imagine what was under a vega?

 

Bbought a replacement 70 El Camino frame for a project I am working on. Welds look pretty decent, realy nice in fact, and there were very few places to catch water, so no rust. A really a nice frame after all these years. If the supplier for that frame, who I believe was AO Smith also, could make such a nice frame for a lowly Elco, what prevented them from doing it on a Vette? Internal design or engineering requests from GM? There must be a reason, they wouldn't just do one right on thier own or do the other to a lesser level unless it is expected/allowed, right?

Best description of Vette frames is that they look like they were welded by Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder...

Tom