How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

[Philip C.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

Just for FYI my 66 orig motor cast A-21-6 assy T0401IP car trim tag H13 (April 13). Phil 8063

[Ralph S.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

My 1969 427 engine August 13 /// car build Dec.11/69

[Larry M.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

Somehow I seem to remember they were trucked to STL. Rail service during that era was very unreliable.

Agree with Dick W. I have always heard that Flint produced engines were trucked in, with the trucks continuously running back and forth.

AO Smith produced bodies were shipped by rail to St Louis.

Not certain about Tonawanda produced engines. If shortages were expected at St Louis, I bet they would use a few trucks to move these engines. Also, RR was always having a strike or slowdown for something, so a back-up plan would have been needed regardless.

Larry

[Ridge K.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

Well known Corvette historian and author of the book The History of GM's Ramjet Fuel Injection on the Chevrolet V-8 Ken Kayser, has told me he is considering a book about the Tonawanda plant and it's impact on Corvettes. I had a conversation with Ken about two years ago, where he told me the book was in the early planning/evaluating process.
If I remember correctly, Ken Kayser had worked at the Tonawanda plant in a management/engineering role. That possible book would be fascinating.


On a side note, Ken and I only met two or three years ago. We are close to the same age. After a good chat, Ken and I agreed that very likely our great grandfathers were in fact, brothers. We must have had a mutual love of vintage Corvettes in our genetics. Fuel injected C1s for Ken, .....bigblock C2s for me.

Ridge Kayser

[John H.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

Hey Guys,
But............couldn't the body trim date tag lead the car's assembly date (birthday) using the calculator by even as much as a week or so........depending on when that color body was needed?
Bill

Bill -

There was no "bank" of painted bodies to select from; there were far too many variations of body configurations to ever hope to match up with the hundreds of possible permutations of dealer order specs. Each body was built to a specific dealer order's specifications from scratch and proceeded through the system, just as that car's engine and chassis were built to the same dealer order specifications, and they met up at the Body Drop.

Tonawanda engines were shipped by rail, just as the Flint engines were; there wasn't that much difference in volume from either plant - big-blocks were 40% of production.

Engines were built and shipped based on a 30-day advance schedule produced by the St. Louis production control department (which is why there's normally at least a 30-day span between the "order received" date on the Corvette Order [tank sticker] and the "expected date of production" date). It took 30 days to schedule, procure, and ship the material after receiving the order.

If the system broke down or the railroad "lost" the rail car, engines could be expedited by truck, but that was extremely rare.

When the hi-lo driver unloaded the engine racks from the rail car, depending on inventory conditions in the plant, those first racks could either go directly to the engine dress line, or into the bulk storage area across the aisle. There was no attempt to put them in any kind of date-related storage sequence. Nobody in the plant paid any attention whatsoever to part dates - all that mattered was having the correct part number on the line.

Maybe Ken Kayser's future book can explain some of the extremely long time spans (1-3 months) seen on many big-blocks between the casting dates and the engine assembly dates; the Tonawanda foundry was on the same property as the engine plant - blocks only had to travel a couple of hundred yards from the foundry to the engine plant. That alone tells you the kind of inventory controls (or lack thereof) that were in place in the 60's.

[Steven S.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

John, your memory does amaze me, no doubt about that. So if I'm understanding your post correctly, there was no set "ship on Fridays" or "ship on Mondays" schedule they adhered to, shipments were all based on the 30 day advance schedule? And were transit times predictable? From what I am reading from others it sounds like that was not the case.

Thanks,
Steve

[John H.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

John, your memory does amaze me, no doubt about that. So if I'm understanding your post correctly, there was no set "ship on Fridays" or "ship on Mondays" schedule they adhered to, shipments were all based on the 30 day advance schedule? And were transit times predictable? From what I am reading from others it sounds like that was not the case.

Thanks,
Steve

Steve -

The engine plants shipped in order to maintain the assembly plant's production schedule; they had information 30 days in advance from St. Louis that told them how many of each suffix engine were required each day for the next 30 days.

Most finished engine inventory was in rail cars in transit; there was precious little floorspace at either of the engine plants to store engines. After hot-test and painting, engines went directly (at 300 per hour, one every 12 seconds) to the rail shipping dock to be racked by suffix for each assembly plant and loaded into rail cars.

The engine plants had to understand the rail shipping issues and plan their own schedules to stay out of trouble; shutting down an assembly plant for lack of engines could be a career-limiting issue.

Even though Corvette engine volume was miniscule compared to other assembly plants (only 72 per day out of 5500 engines produced daily at Flint V-8 and 48 per day out of 5500 daily at Tonawanda), the St. Louis schedule had to be met, every day.

[Steven S.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

John, thank you very much for the explaination, how you remember all the stats after all this time is beyond me!

[Jack M.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

Thanx for all the info/discussion in this thread...very enlightening.

[Ralph S.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

any ideas as to why there is such a big gap in time from my engine assembly date T0813LX to the car build date Dec 11 1969 Q11

[Joe L.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

any ideas as to why there is such a big gap in time from my engine assembly date T0813LX to the car build date Dec 11 1969 Q11

Ralph------


One distinct possibility is that the engine got stuck somewhere towards the back of the engine bay. Other engines were repeatedly placed in front of it and pulled out with yours languishing in the back of the bay. Finally, for whatever reason, the engine bay inventory was depleted to the point that they pulled your engine out.

[Michael H.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

Most finished engine inventory was in rail cars in transit; there was precious little floorspace at either of the engine plants to store engines. .

And the St Louis assy plant had the same problem. No storage space. That's why engines arrived every day or every 2nd day. (at least that was the way it was in the 70's)
Engine assy's didn't sit around that place for long. They were ordered/shipped as required for scheduled production.

[Steven S.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

And the St Louis assy plant had the same problem. No storage space. That's why engines arrived every day or every 2nd day. (at least that was the way it was in the 70's)
Engine assy's didn't sit around that place for long. They were ordered/shipped as required for scheduled production.

Thanks for this comment, that helps clear things up (at least in my mind) about the frequency of shipments.

Steve

[John H.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

Ralph------


One distinct possibility is that the engine got stuck somewhere towards the back of the engine bay. Other engines were repeatedly placed in front of it and pulled out with yours languishing in the back of the bay. Finally, for whatever reason, the engine bay inventory was depleted to the point that they pulled your engine out.

Precisely! That's exactly how "inventory control" in assembly plants worked in the 60's.

[Joe L.]

Re: How often did Tonawanda ship engines to St. Louis?

And the St Louis assy plant had the same problem. No storage space. That's why engines arrived every day or every 2nd day. (at least that was the way it was in the 70's)
Engine assy's didn't sit around that place for long. They were ordered/shipped as required for scheduled production.

Michael------


The information I provided above regarding the engines being "stuck" in the rear of the engine bays at St. Louis is essentially as it was related to me on several occasions by Phil Hawkins and George Barlos, both of whom worked at St. Louis Corvette for about 25 years.