Quote: It's tough to stamp an engine block or transmission correctly after a 12 pack of beer and/or a couple of joints at the factory.
I never fail to get a kick out of reading these types of threads where our resident experts authoritatively try to determine with 100% accuracy what happened 40 odd years ago in a distant factory -- particularly when they themselves were never in one!
The author above has accurately described my own recollections of working in the mid-late 1970s at Chevrolet Metal Fabricating, Buick Final Assembly and Fisher Body in Flint, Michigan. While I readily admit the details I observed in those GM factories likely differ from those found at Chrysler, I bet they don't differ that substantially. The general state of the blue collar, auto industry at that time was the same everywhere.
As such, it is difficult to see how anyone can authoritatively state that anything coming from those factories was either possible or impossible back then. Yes, you can know what the company's policies were. Yes, you can talk to the old timers who worked the line. But in the end, what happened each day out on the line was inconsistent at best. There was a lame effort at quality control, but it never got close to producing 100% positive results at anything! General statements about what we think likely happened at the factory are the best we can do.
Obvious fraud needs to be called out when seen, but be careful about what you definitively state. These discussions almost always end up putting a cloud of suspicion over the car in question. That's appropriate in cases of obvious fraud, but financially damaging to those whose only crime is that they happen to have a car built by a factory line worker who went out to his car for lunch that day and had a couple beers and a joint. DAMHIK...
