Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattchu60
Keith, just curious, but how fast did you guys install fenders on these things?
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Line rate at Flint Line 1 was 60 per hour, which is one every minute. (Line 2, Blazer and Suburban, was 36 jobs per hour).
You had about 45 seconds to install the fender and the other 15 second was walking to and from the job and reloading for the next one.
Fender-to-door gap was set using a little magnetic fixture which stuck to the door and had a little nylon tab of the desired thickness inserted into the gap. One fixture was stuck towards the top of the door (just below the A pillar) and one stuck to the bottom.
There were two guys per side working fender install, one at the front and one at the rear. They would take the fender off the overhead carrier, where it was presented upside down, already painted, emblems installed, trim installed and wheel liner installed. In one motion they would lift off the carrier, swing it toward the vehicle while flipping it upright and position it on the vehicle. The guy at the rear would jam it against the gap fixture and run the rearmost vertical bolt in; while he was doing that the guy in the front would start running in the nose bolts (to the radiator support, which was sitting loose on the chassis). The rear guy would open the door and run in the rearmost horizontal bolt and then hold the dogleg portion of the fender jammed against the gap fixture by wedging the aforementioned padded 4x4 between the tire and the wheel opening. The guy in the pit would run in the lower fender bolt.
These are Pontiacs but the process is the same: you can see a snippet at the 2:25 mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02eULOTP6CA
K