factory use of bondo
 

working on rust repair on my burb, and i have ran into bondo which really appears to be factory. original paint, or so it looks. and how much did the factory use back in the day?

Re: factory use of bondo
 

Where was the repair area ? Only filler I've run into on factory original was lead and that was at roof seams on cars

Re: factory use of bondo
 

Some.

My Chevelle had bondo in the front fender from the factory.

We found it the first time we stripped it down for paint. There was a small area near the wheel opening.

K

Re: factory use of bondo
 

We used to fix new cars from the local Ford and Chevy dealerships. You wouldnt believe how many got damaged in route or on the lot

Re: factory use of bondo
 

You would not believe how many get damaged before they even make it out of the factory.

Re: factory use of bondo
 

The company I was working for was doing a job at the Ford plant in Oakville Ontario Canada and I witnessed a head on collision in the plant. I didn't notice where their wrecking yard was located. Have a good one eh!

Re: factory use of bondo
 

My dad worked at Chrysler in Belvedere ILL in the late 60's, he has told me many times that body filler was a common thing on the assembly line.

Re: factory use of bondo
 

My experience is like Mark's- lead at the join of the roof to the quarter panel. They'd go light when the cars had a vinyl top, too. As for abuse of vehicles at the plant, You wouldn't believe the drag racing between the cars out in the "back 40". I know a guy who started a '72 350 Z-28 engine while it was on the chain, using a can of gas and a battery. He wound it out until the exhaust manifolds were red hot and then disconnected the battery. It hung there, dieseling, for awhile. I wonder if the dealer had to replace the engine before selling the car that went in. :devil: He was a real jackass.

Re: factory use of bondo
 

Did workers just get away with that stuff? was there no supervisor around?

Re: factory use of bondo
 

A story I was told from one of my grandpa's buddies who worked at the GM Van Nuys plant in the late 50s/early 60s said that when it was time for model change at the end of the production year, one of the line supervisors would go down rows of cars ready to ship and he had himself a clipboard and a hammer. He would go down the line and smack so many cars so that the body/paint and finish parts of the line (who had the most seniority) would not be laid off during the downtime while the line was updated for the next model year. So probably quite a few cars with bondo in the from the factory.

Re: factory use of bondo
 

Here's a cut and paste from Wikipedia on the old Fremont GM Plant that became NUMMi and has since became the Tesla Plant.
I was involved construction wise on the conversion to NUMMI and heard horror stories from some of the rehired GM employees of the stuff that went on. They all had the same consensus of "I would have shut it down too".............................................:::::

Before NUMMI, the site was the former Fremont Assembly that General Motors operated between 1962 and 1982.[3][4][5] Employees at the Fremont plant[6] were "considered the worst workforce in the automobile industry in the United States," according to a later recounting by a leader of the workers own union, the United Auto Workers (UAW).[7][8]

GM as a company was departmentalized (design, manufacturing) as per Henry Ford's division of labor, but without the necessary communication and collaboration between the departments. There was an adversarial relationship between workers and plant supervisors, with management not considering the employees view on production, and quantity was preferred over quality.[8][9][10] Like all American car plants, the production lines at Fremont seldom stopped, and when mistakes were made cars continued down the line with the expectation that they would be fixed later.[8] By the early 1980s, the adversarial relationship had deteriorated to the point where employees drank alcohol, smoked marijuana (at the time, an illegal activity), were frequently absent (enough so that the production line couldn't be started), and even committed petty acts of sabotage such as putting "Coke bottles inside the door panels, so they'd rattle and annoy the customer."[7][8]

Attempts to discipline workers were often met with grievances or even strikes, putting the plant into near-continuous chaos. By 1982, GM had had enough and closed Fremont Assembly and laid off its thousands of workers.[8]

Re: factory use of bondo
 

Hasn’t changed much. My ‘22 silverado 2500HD had transport damage. Both bumpers replaced, and paint work on both driver side doors, all before I ever took delivery. That kinda pissed me off. Delayed delivery by 3 weeks and the truck was paid for in cash.

Re: factory use of bondo
 

Yup. Supervision was pretty lax, but he could have rigged it quickly enough that he'd have had it running before supervision would or could intercede. My son had a '70 Dart that we put new carpet in. When we pulled the old carpet out we found a paper bag with a sandwich in it. Likely put there right as the carpet was installed at the factory.

Re: factory use of bondo
 

Had an acquaintance that worked at the van nuys plant. Same stories about the drinking ,pot smoking and sabatoge . Said all the line supervisors were also high and were the major suppliers of pot. I am a proud union man. IBEW. I was taught as an appprentice that you ALWAYS gave an honest 8 hrs work for 8 hrs pay. No goofing around. Anything less amounted to theft and hurt the union as a whole. Those UAW run plants in Cali are what gave unions a bad rap.

Re: factory use of bondo
 

That wasn't just a California problem. The Chevy Vegas were highly vandalized at the Lordstown, Ohio plant due to the level of automation involved in their assembly. I'm sure that there are more examples.

Re: factory use of bondo
 

My dad bought a brand new 1987 Custom Deluxe when I was a kid, that had # different shades of white on it when he bought it. I guess on the lot, overcast day maybe, it didn't really show until he got it home and the sun was shining. Bed was obviously one color white, cab another, and doors either matched the bed but looked like a third color, or whatever. In any case, he got a free paint job on a brand new truck. Who knows if it was transport damage or just a mess up at the plant.

Re: factory use of bondo
 

Had to have been a paint "mix" up, because there is only one white in a given year.

Re: factory use of bondo
 

I guess bondo was never intended to be used at the factory, but sh!+ happens. I have a driver side door from a '68 truck that was original paint before I stripped it bare. Stripping it bare meant grinding off all the bondo in the mirror area and below, standard mirror. There are slide hammer holes and they got all the high spots out. It's ready for fresh bondo. This is not me making a repair. This is me restoring to factory specs :lol:. I figured it was a transport mishap but could have happened anywhere along the way

Re: factory use of bondo
 

I didn't really have any problem with malicious, intentional sabotage with in Flint except for one occasion: one of my regular workers, a really great, faithful "good" guys didn't show up one night, which was very unusual for this guy. He finally came rolling in just before lunch and he was high as a kite on something . He was in very good spirits, working his way down the line, socializing - until - he got to his locker and somehow got it in his head that someone had taken his boom box.

He went ballistic. He started threatening anyone near by, yelling, and starting running down the line banging the power tools into the side of the trucks. I called plant security and they tried to catch him, but he out ran them all the way to the parking lot, turning over trash cans and generally leaving a mess in his wake.

As my other workers came back from lunch, I remember them commenting (unknowingly) - "geez, boss, you should see the parking lot: looks like a tornado hit it with all the trash cans turned over..."

I don't recall that he ever came back. It really broke my heart because, as I say, up to that point he was a great worker...

We didn't have to intentionally smash cars in Flint because we had enough repair to keep us busy as it was.

Re: factory use of bondo
 

"Often met?" They mean "would be met".

It's just the way the game was played. Even for most obvious offenses the foreman could write the guy up and it would immediately be met with a corresponding grievance. Kind of like "charges" when you get arrested: they throw everything they can think of at it to see what sticks, and so there is a bunch of fat that can be negotiated away later.

I had one guy that only worked about 3 days a week (and when he did show up he was usually out of it).

He came in one day and said "...you are not going to believe this, but I had four flat tires yesterday".

He was right. I didn't believe him, so I wrote him up. I immediately was hit with a grievance.

When it came time to negotiate I told his commiteeman "if you show me a receipt from a tire store, for four new tires, or four tire repairs - I'll throw the penalty out".

I'm still waiting. It's been 45 years. I'm starting to lose hope.

K

Re: factory use of bondo
 

Let's talk about the penalty process for UAW employees at the time.

As you can see below (I'm going from memory here), there's sort of a logical escalation in the process.

But - there's a couple caveats.

1 - what happens "on paper" is not the same as what happens in real life. There's a bit of a stagger there (negotiated during one of the famous GM/UAW contract agreements) that buys the employee a bit more time.

2 - it's not obvious, but the employee can work his way backwards. There are a couple ways this happens, either because the violations can time out and fall off if the guy keeps his nose clean, or they can actually be negotiated away during dispute remediation. When they "go away" the infraction is redacted using a grease pencil so it cannot be read. This means you could have a guy with a "clean record" but his rap sheet is as long as your arm with black grease pencil marks. Similarly, a different guy might ride the rev limiter, bumping against "BOS & 30 days" or Termination but never quite crossing the goal line.

I have a cousin that got fired from GM. I'm not proud, but you can see that is quite an accomplishment.

K

Re: factory use of bondo
 

OK, the guy that burnt up the Z-28 engine also stole lots of stuff but never got caught. Back in the '70s when cars were selling like crazy, and overtime was required, he got in a fight with another person. It was him running his mouth that started it. But he's big,- 6'-4" and strong as an ox, so he gets away with a lot.

He's up in the office waiting his turn, reading a brochure about a Las Vegas getaway. They're going to give him BoS and one day off. He shows them the brochure and says he'd enjoy the time off. He was told, "Get back on the line, you SoB!". Worse punishment. :lol:

Re: factory use of bondo
 

You've reminded me: one time my General Foreman got knifed.

The guy that did it was back to work before my General Foreman was out of the hospital.

K

Re: factory use of bondo
 

:crazy: But I believe it. I hope the guy ended up in jail. It wasn't until some people sued one of my former employers for millions when they (multiple cases) were attacked and injured by fellow employees that they started doing something about the bad apples. Used to be that they just got reprimanded, maybe some time off.

Re: factory use of bondo
 

it wasn't just the CA plants. Local GM plant was notorious for a "nose candy" problem and it was common local knowledge that the "best stuff" came from the GM plant. A months long DEA/federal investigation resulted in numerous arrests and convictions and it was discovered that one of the guys caught in the round-up was one of the largest coke importer/dealers in the Southeast. His job was driving a large floor sweeper/mopping machine and used his position as a way to "distribute" product throughout the plant to his "resellers."

The UAW got most all of them their jobs back afterwards.