67 SB with BB hood.

[Roy B.]

Re: 67 BB hood with right side

Wayne I think he meant there is no sign that the support was ever there by looking at the glass work under the fender, I agree why should they drill the holes in the first place? Could it be that the person on the line new that a big block hood was to be installed , then the hood was different? so they mounted it on the left side. I don't know any thing just what Noland said.Is the hood look different in my pic.? I don't as I stated enter NCRS judging, and don't care eather way.

[Wayne W.]

Re: 67 BB hood with right side

This is what you would expect on a body that was to be equipped with a BB hood. The holes were undrilled leaving the locating dimples. The proceedures were the same, both St. Louis and AOS.

[Roy B.]

Re: 67 BB hood What about hood Wayne

Wayne is the hood a repro? where is the mounting area for the right side on the hood?

[mike cobine]

Re: 67 BB hood What about hood Wayne

Here is a thought. If the car was a small block and supposed to have a small block hood, it would be drilled for the small block mounting.

However, as it gets down the body line to where it should get a hood, there are no small block hoods. So the big block is put on. At this point they would have to drill holes for the left bracket and mount it or figure a way to put a right side mount on the hood.

I'd bet the left bracket was easier to install on the fenderwell than the right bracket on the hood.

And of course, the right side holes are already drilled from way back up the line.

[Wayne W.]

Re: 67 BB hood What about hood Wayne

OK, Mike, lets analyze this a little. I agree that your scenario is possible, but not probable. Taking the figures for Feb-Mar 1967 there were about 3000 cars built during that time frame. If we say that half were St. Louis and half were AOS, then each facility was building about 50 units per day. Looking at the pictures in Nolands book of the `63 line, it looks like there may have been 30-40 bodies in the process at any one time. It has always been assumed that it took only a few days for a body to go through the system and that is consistant with the numbers. So there could only have been a few days at the most from the time the parts were prepared and the car rolled out, but we are not even talking about that amount of time. We are only dealing with the time that the inner fender was prepaired and the hood was installed.

Again looking at the pictures of the line, you see the hood is installed before sanding is done on the body assembly. So the body is still in the body shop. Now on the slim chance that the tow motor driver suddenly realized that there were no more hoods in the warehouse and a line supervisor makes a snap decision to replace the hoods with BB units, what do you think would have happened? Would it be more efficient to grind the rivet head off and move the bracket or would it make more sense to just put another bracket on, leaving the one already installed. After all they had them right there in the body shop. As I said it is possible but not probable.

And we all know it wouldnt have happened that way. Someone would have known in advance that there was a supply problem and proceedures that were already in place for installing BB hoods would have been reverted to. We are only dealing with minutes or hours here, not days. That proceedure was to install the bracket on the LH side and leave the holes on the RH side undrilled. So I would expect a real one, if there is such a thing, to have either two brackets or an undrilled RH inner fender.

[mike cobine]

Re: 67 BB hood - brkt both sides or only left

I agree with you Wayne, I think I may have misunderstood what brackets were being discussed.

If the small block car suddenly ran into a lack of SBC hoods, then the underside backing plate with the welded nuts would have been installed much further upstream in assembly and thus be present.

If the small block car was planned to have a BB hood, then the small block RH inner fender would have not been installed in the first place.

The possibility is that BB RH inner fenders were already accounted for and could only be used on BB cars, so the supply of SB RH inner fenders had to be used. However, that would assume the SB RH inner fenders were made up already in large quantities and not made "just in time" as the cars came through. Time in the St. Louis plant tells me that there were large quantities sitting (there were stacks of every other body panel, so lack of an inner fender would be odd) so the idea of two backing plates is the most likely scenario.

I would doubt there would be holes without a backing plate with the exception of screw ups. By force of habit, the operator would drill the RH inner fender and then remember it wasn't needed. Or else the drill operator was very far ahead of the backing plate installer and there was a backup of drilled inner fenders awaiting a backing plate, which now the backing plate installer didn't install.

Heck, the night shift at St. Louis was like the night shift in most companies - anything is possible. The times I was there at night there weren't a whole lot of people around. The whole thing could have not been a shortage, but someone running over a stack of hoods with a forklift. I remember a QA inspector putting a vacuum on a TOW missile guidance set in the leak test once instead of pressure. Three feet under water with vacuum and you guess what happened. It took four of us to get it out of the tank. Popped it open, soaked it at 140 degrees for four hours, and it seemed to pass the electronics tests without blowing up.

Point is, a bunch of us covered for him, and depending on who and what happened in Corvette, the hood thing could simply be a cover. In which case there may never be a straight answer and it sure won't be documented anywhere.

[Steve Pettit]

Re: 67 BB hood What about hood Wayne

Long ago I was a tow motor operator for the General. I can think of many times when no one seemed to know what was going on and some line foreman, who had been getting his ass chewed out for delays that he had no control over, would go to any length to get the production out. I remember one time I was out in the back bays and there was my old press room foreman taking the red tags off baskets of stuff that the inspection guys had refused. Of course that was just regular stuff not corvette hoods. Anyhow, I hadn't thought about being a tow-motor operator for years, it was actually kind of fun, especially going through the press room and seeing the poor sons of guns humping away in the late afternoon on a sultry midwest day while I'm cruising through the plant on my electric tow-motor. I paid for it in the winter though.

Regards,
Steve Pettit