Working at Vauxhall Motors 1958
Mon, April 5, 2021 
1958 Vauxhall Cresta.
Writing last week about British cars, reminded me of my own somewhat brief experience working in the auto industry. For eight months in 1958 I worked as a maintenance engineer on a car body assembly line at Vauxhall Motors, in Luton, an industrial town, 30 miles north of London.
Vauxhall at the time was owned by the American General Motors Corporation. At the time aged 22, a year earlier I had completed a five-year engineering apprenticeship and was a skilled machine tool engineer. I was not working on assembling car bodies, but on the maintenance of the track itself, and the spot-welding machines. Today these would be fully automated, but back then men worked each separate station on the track spot welding the individual parts that made up a car body.
These spot-welding machines can best be described as two clamp-like jaws which came together when a trigger was operated, powered by compressed air pressure. Each pull of the trigger started a cycle. Two copper electrodes clamped down on the sheet steel parts. A large electrical current went through the copper electrodes which heated the steel enough to melt it and weld it in a quarter-inch spot.
Then the jaws released, and the operator moved on to complete a series of spot-welds and inch or so apart. All this done while the track was constantly moving. Each spot-welding machine was custom made for the job it had to do. Some long reach jaws, some short, for example. Some welded vertically, some horizontally,
Each had a large electrical transformer to produce the high amperage required to melt steel. The transformer rolled on its own overhead track having about six or eight foot of travel, just enough to allow each operator time to complete his task as the track moved slowly but constantly onward.
The hand operated spot-welder was too heavy for the operator to hold so it was hung on a counter-balanced system which allowed the operator to move it up and down with relative ease. This too was hung from the same short overhead track that the transformer ran on.
A large diameter cable carried the current from the transformer to the spot-welder. It had a water-cooled jacket around the cable to keep it cool. The copper electrodes were hollow and were also water cooled. Rubber hoses connected from above carried constantly flowing water to the spot-welder and back again. Other hoses carried compressed-air needed to operate the jaws of the spot-welder.
It was always stressed to me that that the track must be kept running, and any time it was stopped it meant a large amount of money lost every minute the track was Idle. Because of this, minor issues like a hose leaking or a copper electrode needed replacing was done while the track was idle at break times or the end of the day.
However, each copper electrode needed to be re-filed by hand sometime twice a day, to maintain a good weld. This was part of my job, but I had to do it in the few seconds left between each operator finishing his run of spot-welds, and the next car body moving up. The track operator had priority.
I would start filing until the operator stepped in and grabbed the spot-welder from my hands, then I would step back and wait until the next cycle, then repeat. When finished I would spot-weld two pieces of scrap steel together, bending them back and forth until the metal broke around the weld, rather than the weld itself. Thus, testing we had a good weld.
One particular day, I was filing the electrodes when I realized the operator was waiting for me. He was new on the job and didn’t know to step in when he needed to and grab the spot welder from me. I had unlimited time to do my job, but he had only as much time as the speed of the track allowed and being new on the job, he was slower anyway.
I realized the track had moved too far by the time he was finished and now the spot-welder was stuck, hooked onto the car body. The transformer and other overhead stuff like the hoses and cables were stretched to their limit. Everything began to creak and crack. It was then I ran to the emergency stop button, but it was too late, as every cable and hose was ripped apart.
Sparks showered down from the transformer, compressed air hoses ripped from their connection, hissed, and lashed around until someone could reach a valve that shut the air off. Water poured everywhere until it too could be turned off.
There was a spare spot-welder in every configuration, along with a spare transformer and a set of hoses and cables ready to go. The whole maintenance team jumped in and the damage was fixed within 15 or 20 minutes, and the track was rolling again.
I was never reprimanded or even questioned as to what happened. Neither did the new track operator, which pleased me because I felt it was partly my fault. I worked there about eight months until the end of 1958, when a downturn in sales meant a cut-back in the work force. As usual, the last ones hired are the first to go.
Pity, I enjoyed that job, good money too.
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Reader Comments (4)
Hi Dave,
Thank you for sharing that story, it gives an interesting insight into the production methods of the day. As you know, I recently sold my 1960 Vauxhall. It was built in August 1959, so a little after your tenure at the Luton factory.
The car has spent its entire life on the West Coast (British Columbia followed by California), so has not succumbed to the rust that would have been typical of a car of that era produced and residing in the UK.
A very interesting story, Dave. Back when I lived in the UK the only Vauxhalls I remember had the chrome flutes on each side of the hood, before GM ownership I guess. Production line automation has come a long way since then. At the last bicycle club meeting before I left one of the members showed up in a CAR! I was really surprised because no member I knew had a car. My parents didn't.
Reminds me of one of my manufacturing experiences. It was 1979 and I had a summer job working at a GM owned ball bearing manufacturer where most of the machinery dated to the 2nd World War. I was assigned to the "OD Grind" department. OD being Outside Diameter, where we took forged bearing cups and spun them down in massive grinding machines. It was my first night in the department and I operated a machine that was so decrepit dial micrometers were strapped along its length because machine's indicators which it was set to weren't accurate. I worked the overnight (3rd) shift and I probably saw the Quality Assurance person once. Things went well and I made my production rate. The next night I found the same basket of stock waiting for me a red "REGRIND". I expected to be disciplined or removed from the department. Instead my foreman told me it was normal for work to be redone again and again. And people wonder why America doesn't produce more of its own goods.
JohnB,
The two chrome flutes on the top edges of the Hood (Bonnet in UK) were a trademark, and a nice distinguishing feature of the Vauxhall car. Something that immediately said it was a Vauxhall. This worked in the pre-WWII years when the hood and fenders (Wings in UK.) were separate. But by the 1950s the hood and fenders became flat, all one piece, and there was no distinct place to put the flutes, so the style was dropped. Google “Vauxhall bonnet flutes” to see examples.
Bill,
Your experiences in Ball bearing manufacturing brought back memories for me as I served my engineering apprenticeship with Skefco (SKF) bearing manufacturer. The inner and outer rings, and the ball or roller bearings were ground to a fine tolerance, (100th mm. at SKF.) but were then graded (Measured by machine.) to 10 further sizes, bringing the tolerance to 1,000 of a millimeter. Each assembled bearing could be custom fitted with a matching Inner and outer ring, and a matching ball or roller bearing. Those over the limit, or if there was an excess of one particular grade, these were sent back for re-grinding. As I remember this was not “Bad” practice, but standard practice peculiar to the bearing manufacturing industry.
Dave