C2 Jack

[Dennis B.]

I pretty well have read everything I can find in the Archives and am about to search further but I thought I would ask something about Ausco Jacks.

I have seen numerous pictures of Ausco Jacks on this and other boards and the thing that intrigues me for some stupid reason is the rivets. They appear to have the same heads, multiple consecutive circles emanating outward from the center and I would have thought "Peening" would be standard? I would have thought the peening over of the rivets would be done by one machine? But, I see some rivets in the baseplate with an X peen, and other base plates with the Inverted Pin type peen. Some of the tops are X peened and others peened with the inverted peen.

All appear to be Ausco. Has anyone pondered the anal-ness of wondering about the peening?

I also ran into a fellow who was adamant as most restored vette owners do, that his Jack was 100% original yet the Center support for the top plate was totally different from what I recognize as an Ausco center support?

So was there more than one type of center support rod? Here are pictures of what I mean. Pictures 1 and 2 is my jack and 3-4 is his jack.

[Mark F.]

Re: C2 Jack

I pretty well have read everything I can find in the Archives and am about to search further but I thought I would ask something about Ausco Jacks.

I have seen numerous pictures of Ausco Jacks on this and other boards and the thing that intrigues me for some stupid reason is the rivets. They appear to have the same heads, multiple consecutive circles emanating outward from the center and I would have thought "Peening" would be standard? I would have thought the peening over of the rivets would be done by one machine? But, I see some rivets in the baseplate with an X peen, and other base plates with the Inverted Pin type peen. Some of the tops are X peened and others peened with the inverted peen.

All appear to be Ausco. Has anyone pondered the anal-ness of wondering about the peening?

I also ran into a fellow who was adamant as most restored vette owners do, that his Jack was 100% original yet the Center support for the top plate was totally different from what I recognize as an Ausco center support?

So was there more than one type of center support rod? Here are pictures of what I mean. Pictures 1 and 2 is my jack and 3-4 is his jack.

Hi Dennis,

Ausco probably made hundreds of thousands - maybe millions of jacks during their reign supplying GM and Ford (can't confidently say whether they also did Chrysler or not?).

Based on my experience with automotive supply chain manufacturers making those kinds of quantities, they probably had multiple assembly lines with multiple tooling doing the same thing hundreds of times daily.

The bulls-eye pivot shaft heads (see red circles) were probably supplied to Ausco from a screw machine shop somewhere - unless they did there own manufacturing of those parts (dunno)? Those shafts I have seen on Corvette jacks always had that type of pattern in the "Head end" (fat end) of the shaft...

Anyhow, my guess is the "shaft peening machine(s)" for the other end were set up to do both base plate shaft peens on one machine while locked in place in a jig or fixture so the parts could not move. (see blue circles)

I could see that assembly - now with four arms attached (2 in front; 2 in back) moving to a second station where 2 more arms and the center saddle support bar with a yoked end are attached and the "shaft peening machine(s)" at those stations were also set up to do both ends on one machine - again while locked in place in a jig or fixture so the parts could not move. (see orange circles)

Finally, the jack saddle and center support bar go to a third station where the same process takes place to complete shaft peening (red circles) before inserting the coarse screw, washers, nylon bushing and finally painting...

Was there a technical reason why the peens were different (xs vs dimpled)? dunno?
Were the peening tool heads interchangeable on all stations? dunno?
Were the shafts always inserted in the same way? (I think - but can't be sure I've seen them in different orientations, but can't remember for sure).
I can't comment on the different style support bar under the jack saddle

One thing I do know is Harry Ledgerwood is the expert on this kind of stuff, so if he sees this string maybe he can shed some more knowledgeable light on your topic!
Rivets 3 different ends Doc1_001.jpg

[Dennis B.]

Re: C2 Jack

Thanks, I assumed the other way I would have thought there would be a dedicated assembly line doing jacks to fill an order. No matter where or whom ordered them. So I thought that parts would be made and then shuffled to a line of workers doing various parts of the jack and, if you had X type machine for the base, then all would be X, etc I guess the thought of numerous assembly lines with possibly different machines never occurred to me. Thanks

[Mark F.]

Re: C2 Jack

Thanks, I assumed the other way I would have thought there would be a dedicated assembly line doing jacks to fill an order. No matter where or whom ordered them. So I thought that parts would be made and then shuffled to a line of workers doing various parts of the jack and, if you had X type machine for the base, then all would be X, etc I guess the thought of numerous assembly lines with possibly different machines never occurred to me. Thanks

Dennis,

No - I think you are right...Ausco would probably get an order of 10,000 to fill (or whatever).
Corvette orders were probably a much smaller subset of such an order - and probably not run separately from other GM orders that had the same configurations.

I still think they may have run (been interspersed?) on parallel lines (given the massive quantities of jacks they produced).
But, who really knows?

I agree the peening differences and bulls-eye heads are interesting features of Corvette jacks.

[Dennis B.]

Re: C2 Jack

Thanks Mark, I found it interesting my jack has all the same peenings with the bullseye rivets and then started looking at numerous other combo's wondering how it could be......another mystery