Poor Quality of NOS Grill

[glcaines]

Rather than attempt repair of my somewhat mangled grill, I found a NOS grill. Unfortunately, the quality control was very poor. Three of the mounting nuts on one side had the holes in the sheet metal over the nuts not lined up properly, which meant that it was impossible to screw mounting bolts in. It appears that the holes in the sheet metal were correct, but the nuts were not located correctly. Additionally, some of the small holes drilled for the twist pins on the front were not drilled at all. Very poor quality control on that grill.

[rickf]

You have to remember that these were military vehicles, not show cars and they were built as such. No frills and not much attention to detail. That all took time and money and those were not in the contract. And also not needed on a vehicle designed to be beat up anyway. If the holes did not align they would just drill the hole bigger so the bolt would align. And twist pins? If you are talking about for the winter cover then those are drilled at the time of installation at the unit level. Not at the factory. Most 151's would never have that cover or the holes.

[m3a1]

And then there's the possibility of this being the OTHER elephant in the room. We have seen, time and again, 'NOS parts' surfacing that weren't quite right. The conclusion has been that some of this stuff was refused by the manufacturer owing to poor quality control and being out of spec.

Now imagine how this stuff might have survived. Consigned to a dark corner of a back room, much of this stuff must have joined all the other parts being disposed of, perhaps at the end of the contract. At that point in time, no one cared it was out of spec. It became just another crate of parts. It went on the pallet and was hauled away. Eventually, it found its way to us, these many years later.

Cheers,
TJ

[rickf]

Yup, That is my famous NOSR parts story. New Old Stock Rejects. Someone finds a pile of parts in a corner or in a dumpster and salvages them and they end up for sale. I got a flywheel that had all the holes drilled .005 offcenter. Found out that there were a LOT of them apparently. It would go on the crank if you kind of wiggled/forced the bolts a little. Now you are trying to figure out why the engine vibrates so bad. If you replaced your flywheel about 8-10 years ago and after that you had a vibration.............. yea, now you know why. Pull the wheel and measure the hole center. This is found all across the board, I have seen quarter panels for Dodge Road Runners that did not fit, Same panel for Chevelles, did not fit. And not by just a small fixable amount, they REALLY did not fit! And these were factory replacement panels that somehow were stamped wrong and made it into the parts stream. Probably by way of the trash stream.