On Sunday, Jud and Sonya Engles hosted a block party with Wayne Mitchell . . . engine block heaters. Well attended, we gathered together for a group photo after the Sunday cookout:
http://hiwaay.net/~bzwilson/prius/pri_Georgetown.html
(Thanks Hobbit for the photo, more to come.)
The one hour plant tour was awesome but about eight hours too short! They take steel rolls and 22 hours later, roll out a fully assembled and running Camry, Solara, Avalon, or Camry Hybrid. That includes nine hours in the paint shop. Think of the most complex Disneyland animatronics, multiply it by three orders of magnitude engaged in a man-machine dance of incredible precision.
The massive steel rolls are fed into stamp presses tall as a three story house to make the body parts. These are fed to robot welders to spot weld followed by robot MIG welds finishing the bodies and doors. From here the bodies go to the paint shop where they come out nine hours later. The doors are taken off and go via another route to later rejoin the body.
Brake lines and pre-heated wiring (for flexibility) are installed. The wheel hubs are left dangling by the brake lines. Instrument and dash assemblies are installed, the engine and axles, head-liner, bumpers, bumper covers and eventually the doors arrive. Everything is operational and quality checked and finally taken to a train for shipping across the country. The car models are intermixed on the assembly line so there might be an Avalon followed by a Camry, a Solara, a Camry hybrid . . . One third of all Camrys from this plant are hybrids. Absolutely amazing.
For me, seeing a car assembled makes disassembly so much easier. I don't know why but going from a pile of parts to fully working car makes going from a working (or broken) car to parts a lot less intimidating.
I'll be looking for feedback from the team but it looks like either Columbus Day or Veteran's Day are good scheduling times. They correspond to three day, holiday weekends when the weather is less likely to be too hot. The Motel 6 was affordable, clean, quiet and pet friendly next to the plant. Now if we can just find a friendly shop in the area where we could 'rent a bay' for a 'fall tune-up' and tweakin' session. This could turn into an annual, 'bus man's holiday.'
Bob Wilson