Old Ford film on building the Model A engine

[thatdarncat]

We’ve seen some of these old Ford films before, here’s an interesting 10 minute one on how the Model A Engine was made. Lots of coverage of casting the blocks, forging the cranks, assembly, etc. I always find these interesting, but they also give you a good idea how grueling the work was. And the shots where the camera pulls back and shows how massive the operation was. Unfortunately there’s no narration, but still fascinating. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bVsCaHcKj14

[MRadke]

So siamesed cylinders may have been as much for ease of production when building the cores as anything else.

[gregaba]

That was interesting. I never knew that Ford safety wired the flywheel bolt's.
All the one's I tore down in the 60's did not have any wire and I never thought to look.
I wish they would have put some explanation on each process as I don't know what they were doing on a couple of them.
Greg 

[thatdarncat]

That was interesting. I never knew that Ford safety wired the flywheel bolt's.
All the one's I tore down in the 60's did not have any wire and I never thought to look.
I wish they would have put some explanation on each process as I don't know what they were doing on a couple of them.
Greg

I thought that was interesting seeing the safety wire too, but I’ve never worked on a Model A. My professional mechanic buddy has a customer with one, I’ll have to ask if he ever tore into it that far.

My guess, and it’s simply a guess, is years ago when that film was made there possibly was a record that accompanied it with narration, but it’s probably long gone now.

[gregaba]

More then likely a silent film.
When I was fairly young and my dad was racing in the southern calif. area he had 15 or 20 friend's who would gather around our house on the weekdays and weekend's when there was no racing.
I was surprised at the number of guy's who were still running the Ford 4.
About 6 or 7 of them.
Of course when they needed to repair them I was the youngest so I got to tear down whatever was being worked on.
The owner's normally put them together themselves but let me help most of the time.
Never worked on a stock one though.
Greg

[cleandan]

It is interesting to watch these period films because they are usually a proudly made film showing the best practices of the era.
The casting floor looked to be horribly dirty.
ALL the workers were covered in dusty grit.
None of them were wearing any type of ear or respitory protection.

The pace of the work looked to be one step below impossible to keep up with......Just imagine working that fast all day long, every day. While the workers do not appear to be hulking muscular men I would bet they were strong just the same.

Then you move into other areas of production and at every turn I see highly dangerous things going on for what likely was 100's of times per day.
Like the assembled engine being lifted and allowed to freely flip as the worker reaches out to grab it to steady it so the engine can be placed on the next step of the trip.

The crank polishing line was interesting too with its line power feeding all the lathes that were simply grabbed by hand to stop as each crank was checked. Then inster the lock bar as the crank is removed while the power is still applied to the entire line....some lathes spinning with nothing on them only because they are part of that line power.

The only guys who appeared to not be covered in grit of some sort were the go-no go gauge inspectors.......That must have been a pretty high level job in the factory. But their only safety gear was a nice hat. I'll bet that factory was loud as heck all the time.

The pay was good, the work was steady, and you could advance if you proved yourself worthy....a different time indeed.

[gregaba]

Safety was not a big concern back then.
When I was discharged in 70 I went to work for Ready tank's. We buildt those large grain storage tanks you see in the Midwest.
Some of them are 150 feet tall.
You build them with 4x8 x1/2 inch sheets of steal [stay's]witch are bolted together. Put together one floor and them add each floor as you go up.
They have angle iron pieces which bolt to the side's of the stay's
They are 8 feet apart.
What you do is grab the bottom part of a stay and pull yourself up to the straight part and balance yourself with your hand and gradually stand up. A lot of fun when you are 100 feet above the ground. No safety belt's, just you and the side of the silo.
Hard to explain.
However the very last thing we installed on the side of the tank was the ladder.
Its amazing what you will do for a paycheck.
Greg

[cjshaker]

There's still a large part of the world where this work environment is still the norm. I got into watching machinists and production operations in 3rd world countries for a while (started with watching the machinists, then snowballed  ). While maybe not on this scale, the work environment was/is no safer. Pretty amazing though, what they can produce or create with what we'd consider basic machinery, like a simple hand operated lathe.

[Dr Mabuse]

Notes from below the video that some of you missed:

Using 22 different archived videos spliced together this video depicts the Model A engine being produced, from sand molds to being dropped in a chassis. Every Model A engine destined for one of Ford's 30+ US assembly plants was cast and assembled at the Rouge Plant in Dearborn, MI.

Make sure to look out for the main bearing babbitts being poured, the flywheel being balanced, and the manifolds being assembled.