VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1933-1936 1936 Chevrolet Assembly LIne

Check out this video of the 1936 Chevrolet assembly line. Note that the fan blade and the oil filler tube are painted engine color and not black!

I think I recall seeing a post or reply from Gene Schneider some time ago, stating that the fan blades and the oil filler pipe were installed on the engine and
so all were painted grey with the engine! When I 'detailed' the engine on my '35 Std Coupe, I did paint them black, thinking that was correct. Never got
'gigged' for it, so I guess the judges didn't know either! The last time I showed it was several ago! Flip

Also the 1934-1936 pictures from the proving ground test (black and white) show the parts matching the engine color.

Several years back a guy from Minnasota came to a meet with an all original black 1936 Master and the parts were black.

I have seen other original cars in this area with black ..................so????????

Different workers, different shifts, different factories, different managers, parts coming from different suppliers. The NOS fan I bought was black so if made off site by a supplier they would have arrived with some colour of paint/prime. Depending on when they decided to bolt on some of these items at different factories, it could have been before or after the engine was painted. Timing of parts arriving or delays in supply could change the timing of the painting.

Some workers may have painted everything completely while other workers may have skipped painting some of these items that came with a prior finish. Heck maybe they were suppose to leave these parts black but some lazy workers just painted everything.

I worked on the line at GM for a bit and I did things slightly different than the next guy and so on. Things like seam sealers, door paper putty, undercoating, ect we all tended to install a bit differently so paint work could vary too.

I used to watch cars being painted at the original GM Canada factory as a kid in the late 60's. Was a hot summer night and they had the doors open and were doing body finish paint in the open air. If it was done this casually still in the 60's, imagine the variation in the workmanship 40 years prior...

WOW, didn't they get bugs in the paint? We painted in our farm shop back in the '80's and we had trouble with flies, gnats etc even when we kept it closed up!

They are not very careful when they were putting the body down over the gearstick and handbrake lever.
Tony

Here is another link to an early Chevrolet production line. Also a later engine is shown on the assembly line and note too that it has a fan blade painted engine color.



In contrast, here is an assembly line for 1938 and both the fan blade and the oil filler tube are black.

Did anybody notice the pin stripping on the doors in the first video? I have never seen that before on any restored 36 where it has a wide band on the door. Was that just particular to that factory? It's about the 8:37 mark.

There are a number of differences between the vehicles in the video and typical production. If you look closely the engines have the full length water jackets first used in 1936. Yes they use updraft carburetors to test run the engines.