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Trans-Am Camaros / Re: 1968 Trans-Am Season Review
« on: December 27, 2012, 03:04:35 AM »
Some great pictures there, but the one of Smokey under the car with no stand is scary!!
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The duration of Christmas shutdown varied with the casting demand. The foundry was pretty maintenance intensive, so we tried to schedule a week shutdown in melt/mold to accommodate big projects. The finishing/inspection area would generally work a limited crew through shutdown to catch up on casting repairs & rough casting backlog. Also, personnel would be available to ship castings out of inventory to the motor plant. Ugh - that's a real flashback - digging pallets of blocks out of snow/ice! Under normal production though - the castings flowed pretty quickly to the motor plant (which is the topic of this thread).
The best time possible at Tonawanda = 30 minutes on the pouring loop to shake out on lines 1 & 2 (block lines) + 4 hours in the cooling court + 20 minutes through blast, grind, chip & inspect. The door to the Tonawanda Motor Plant was only about a 50 foot fork truck ride from the end of both block finishing lines. Sometimes the blocks were pretty warm when they arrived at the motor plant. At that point, the block could go right to the motor plant machining line. So...it's clearly possible for a casting to be produced and assembled the same day. We weren't "just in time" in those days though. Most casting waited on pallets in inventory que. If a block fell off of the conveyor in the cooling court it would sit up there until Christmas or Summer shut down. So a casting date could be many months before build date. The Flint motors would be pretty difficult to be cast & machined the same day due to the trucking required between Saginaw & Flint.