All Things Buick: August 2010

Friday, August 27, 2010

Buick Through The Years.

This is the description of the photo above.

This northeast view is from 1947.

This north view is from 1930.

Back of above photo

follow link for a final view from June 7, 2000:

Buick's Second Main Office.

Here is a nice photo showing good detail of the east addition. Added in 1955. Link for this announcement. The 1916 building announcement.

October 4, 1917 article.

Here you can see it from the west end. That is factory #04 shown at the left. Factory #01 is still standing behind the office, so I know this is previous to 1963.

This shows the addition added to the east end of the office on Hamilton Avenue in 1955.

An aerial view from 1920 shortly after the main office was built. That is it in the center foreground north of Hamilton Avenue.

A closer view of the photos below with a good view of the bridges connecting with factory #01.

A close up of the photo below.

Taken from St Johns st. looking directly west up Hamilton ave.

August 25, 1927 in front of the Buick main office in Flint on Hamilton Avenue.

With factory #01 shown at the right. Facing north-west.

I have many photos of the office.

Buick's main office in 1919. It was built on the same site as the first office on Hamilton Avenue. You can see a small portion of the guard shack at lower left corner. The view is facing northeast.

March 1919.

Date of above photo.

follow links:

Main Office Building First & Second

Buick Main Office

THE FACTORY BEHIND THE CAR

Liberator Engine work at Buick.

Liberator advertisement from during the war.

Looks like a master die maker and his apprentice making a combustion chamber core.

Die and core for the valve area.

Die and core for a combustion chamber.

A master die maker at work. The aluminum foundry was one of the few factories to have it's own die shop "in-house".

This looks like one of the early test molds because of the crude way they are doing it. This could even be at factory #70 where the training took place early in 1942.

These wires were what kept the delicate cooling fins made of sand from collapsing during the molding process. After all the wires were in place, the rest of the mold was filled until it was flush.

The workers became very fast at inserting all the hundreds of wires for each mold.

Putting a finished mold together.

Compressing a new core. You always needed the other half of the mold.

Compressing a new core.

Making the new cores.

Making the cores before baking in the special ovens.

Just as any other casting, there was usually more than one part needed to make up the cavities.

Working on a special inner core. It took a lot of trial and error to get things right.

Inner cores made up.

Making a mix. Aluminum scrap could only be re-melted a few times before it was as brittle as glass when cured.

Slag removal.

Making ingots.

Making the aluminum ingots, so you had a precise amount ready for each pour.

Freshly made molds will be lined up for easy pouring.

Freshly poured.

Making a pour.

Filling another ladle.

The pouring of aluminum was a very precise operation. It had to be just the right temperature and consistency. It poured like syrup which was nothing like pouring iron.

This is where the ladle was placed between pours.

Opening another mold.

Opening a newly made head. In the early beginnings of this operation, you never knew what would be inside. Once they got all the heat cycles and such right, they were turned out by the thousands. The total was 3,120,000 to be exact.