[TR] Ultimate restoration

Michael Porter mdporter at dfn.com
Tue Dec 9 20:13:44 MST 2008


Bob wrote:
> On Tuesday 09 December 2008 19:16:49 Mark Hooper wrote:
>   
>> Must have been a treat watching him squeeze that 500 cu. inch engine
>> block into his lunch box.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>>     
> Mark,
>
> I believe there is a part of the song that states that some "parts" were taken 
> from the factory in a friends van or something.
>
>   

Odd things happen in factories.  There are a number of ways to abscond 
with things. Someone for whom I once worked had been a temporary floor 
worker at the beginning of WWII in a Curtiss-Wright aircraft engine 
factory.  He told a story about how the shipper, the QA guy and the 
company's scrap supplier had gotten together to declare good parts to be 
scrap.  The QA guy would reject them, the shipper would move the parts 
to the scrap bin on a particular day, and the scrap dealer would 
promptly pick them up that evening, and out the front gate they would 
go, and then onto the black market.  Took the company almost a year to 
figure out what was going on. 


Other strange things happen in factories when the employees are 
disgruntled.  I knew someone who, in the late `70s, was part of a 
Cadillac factory team assigned to handle problems in the Detroit area 
that the dealers couldn't solve.  One elderly woman had brought a Caddy 
in repeatedly for an odd sound on braking.  They tested the car, and, 
sure enough, the car would come to a stop and there was a sound like a 
cowbell.  They pulled all the door panels and threshold strips, looking 
for large nuts or bolts (a fairly typical trick in car factories) and 
found none.  Tore out the seats, and again, found nothing. They put four 
guys in the car and tried it again, hoping that one or another would at 
least be able to figure out from what direction the sound was 
emanating.  One guy swore it was right near his ear.  So, they tore out 
the headliner, and there, brazed to the left c-pillar, was a homemade 
brass plaque equipped with a bell clapper and a couple of tabs for it to 
bang against.


They had no problems identifying the culprits--they had etched their 
names into the plaque with a mechanical etching tool.



Cheers.

-- 


Michael Porter
Roswell, NM


Never let anyone drive you crazy when you know it's within walking distance....


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