[thepontiacman]

Watched a Fisher Body "The Bodybuilders" General Motors 1970s Auto Assembly Line Film 44164 on YouTube.

Interesting to watch.

Sent from my moto g power 5G - 2023 using Tapatalk

[Keith Seymore]

Not with a 'bird, but with a pickup truck:

I designed the engine air induction system for the GMT800 series trucks, to be introduced in the 1999 model year.

Water ingestion testing is, by definition, a destructive test. The problem with the GMT800 was that not only was the truck new but the engines were a new design, too. That meant there weren't many around and you sure as heck didn't want to damage one.

We debated for a couple months about how (and if) we were going to test our design. We ran a couple of competitive vehicles through our test and they passed, so we knew we had to do it. Finally we hit upon an idea: we found an "old" prototype GMT800 radiator support and fender in the trash, so we added those to a carryover GMT400 pickup, and then installed our new induction system to emulate the new front corner. We remote mounted the engine air cleaner in the existing truck and then plumbed our new system to a shop vac (and generator) in the pickup bed. That allowed us to (a) drive the truck in the water trough, (b) not damage a current production engine (c) flow air through our new system in a somewhat representative environment and (d) collect and measure any water that was drawn in. Pretty clever, I think.

I still remember the first time we hit the 1000 ft trough at 25 mph with 12" of water: water was spraying over the top of truck and flowing big time into the cab through the heater box. I imagine this is what it was like on the Titanic, and I was crouched standing on the passenger seat and screaming like a little girl. But - our basic idea worked and we were able to continue the development process.

I was still pretty nervous, though, the first few times we had rain once we started driving the trucks on the road.

Many of the parts in that system I designed are still in use today.

K

[nas t eh]

How long does a TA front spoiler last doing that?

[turbo69bird]

I have done FAR worse than that to a 69 bird . I used to have this one spot it was about a 6 foot rise in the rd and the. A flat spot on the other side and we used to take a 69 bird and absolutely launch it off that steep rise. . Up 6 ft in about 10 -t0 15 ft distance. Have ti remember these cars were maybe $400 at the time . We had. A blast. And certainly when the road flooded as it does here like that picture we hauled azz through those deep puddles in the flats . Many times spinning the cars out . One time my buddy did it and there was a water main that had frost heaved and he caught the x member on it and bent the crap out of the sub frame . Lucky it didn’t get past it and rip his feet off.

We were absolutely crazy and had tons of fun w our fast cars back in the day . But when the tickets added up I decided to go strictly to the track after a few major court dates. It was a differnt time back then.

One of my birds that didn’t make it., in the picture The Willy’s is the kind of cars we grew up around and how they were used!
bTW the D and E on that car is doyle and exkstrom .bill Eckstrom was the driver of the Stephens Pontiac race cars! He was like a GOD in my town to the kids w those cars. . His whole car club the DRAG N RUN club was sponsored and racing at a high level most dealer sponsored. By different makes GM Chevy Pontiac FORD and Mopar. It was a racing town for sure. .the new departure GM plant was set up like a drag strip and the 1/4 mile is marked off in front of it. They drag race there to this day.

[giles]

Firebird? Not quite, other models and other tests absolutely. As a test engineer for Buick in the 80s I ran what was called the “windrow gravel test” on a pre-production ‘86 Grand National. The road is prepped with a row of gravel about 8 inches high by a foot wide and hundreds of feet long. The idea being a grader could leave a row like this along a gravel road. Our goal was to see if the intercooler air scoop would flip damaging amounts of gravel into the intercooler. Fortunately the scoop broke away from its lateral mounts and no harm came to any other parts of the car.
We gotta try and break them before customers get their hands on them.

[VCho455]

I used to live in Norfolk VA back in the 80's and in the summer when the thunderstorms would roll through and drop an inch or more rain in 20 minutes you would see people doing that exact thing during or after every storm. And about every other storm I would see someone who misjudged the water depth sitting on the roof of their car surrounded by 3 foot deep water.

[72projectbird]

Originally Posted by giles

Firebird? Not quite, other models and other tests absolutely. As a test engineer for Buick in the 80s I ran what was called the “windrow gravel test” on a pre-production ‘86 Grand National. The road is prepped with a row of gravel about 8 inches high by a foot wide and hundreds of feet long. The idea being a grader could leave a row like this along a gravel road. Our goal was to see if the intercooler air scoop would flip damaging amounts of gravel into the intercooler. Fortunately the scoop broke away from its lateral mounts and no harm came to any other parts of the car.
We gotta try and break them before customers get their hands on them.

Hmm that's pretty wild

I have a front mount on my GN now, but the stock setup did the job pretty well.

[cpu]

There are some great scenes in that Bodybuilders film. In one scene the engineers are using an electromechanical "tracing" device to trace a prototype body or clay model, to digitize it! When was that shot, 1969? Amazing.

Wasn't there another scene with a 70 Catalina being tested in a drive-in freezer?