Wow…
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Curious George is a magical little film
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Chevrolet Vega being loaded on a rail car, specially designed to vertically transport 30 per car. 1971
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I wonder why ? It must have required all sorts of additional precautions as far as the various fluids go, both the large volume ones (oil, fuel) and the small (brake fluid, battery acid).
VB
Looks like 6 cars instead of 2 or 3 in the same space. Seems mad that the cost saving was worth it vs, either putting fluids in the cars and manually moving them around or designing the car especially to deal with that angle and not leak anything out.
Can’t think of any fluid system on a car that isn’t closed so not sure why the angle of the car should matter.
I wouldn’t have guessed that this arrangement was 50% car, 50% air
but you might be right.
Somehow I assumed that they filled each car up towards the end of the assembly line and checked its complete functionality before shipping it, however far, to the dealership. Although I suppose if the assembly was almost always faultless and the dealership had the resources needed to deal with the very occasional lemon then that wouldn’t be necessary. Filling and emptying again doesn’t sound cost-effective. The long and the short though is that clearly they did it. So it must have made sense to someone a lot closer than I am.
I’m guessing it added up on paper 30 per car. Not sure if this method is still in use, if not the ‘practice’ may have been a costly boob.
Air bubbles in the brake lines ? Fuel running down into the carbs and thence into the inlet manifold and air intake system ?
This is 70s Yank build quality we are talking though.
The breaking system is sealed, how would air bubbles get in?
Don’t know what angle the butterfly or float would fall open at but I’m pretty sure they had though about all that stuff beforehand (perhaps by plugging the fuel pipe to the carb)
Its all on the wiki.
" Although Lordstown Assembly had a purpose-built exit off of the Ohio Turnpike built to make shipment easier, the Vega was designed for vertical shipment, nose down. General Motors and Southern Pacific designed “Vert-A-Pac” rail cars to hold 30 Vegas each, compared with conventional tri-level autoracks which held 18. The Vega was fitted with four removable cast-steel sockets on the underside and had plastic spacers—removed at unloading—to protect engine and transmission mounts. The rail car ramp/doors were opened and closed via forklift.[49]
Vibration and low-speed crash tests ensured the cars would not shift or suffer damage in transit. The Vega was delivered topped with fluids, ready to drive to dealerships, so the engine was baffled to prevent oil entering the number one cylinder; the battery filler caps high on the rear edge of the casing prevented acid spills; a tube drained fuel from the carburetor to vapor canister; and the windshield washer bottle stood at 45 degrees"
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On my 1980’s Escort I seem to remember the brake fluid reservoir, while indeed being sealed, had a smallish air gap above the fluid. It might even have had Max and Min lines on the outside of the translucent plastic reservoir body. I know that when I was bleeding the brakes I had to be careful not to let the fluid level in the reservoir drop too low. Normally all this gubbins was the highest point in the system, so the air never moved down into the fluid. But if the car had been nose down then, obviously, the rear brakes would have been above it and prone to bubbles. However Ed’s pointed out that they designed the car for transport in this orientation. In that case they could have run the piping to use ‘air lock’ (strictly ‘fluid lock’) principles to keep bubbles out of the important bits.
Fucking love you lot 
Someone posts a really cool pic and the AA smash it to bits.
The real world only exists here. All else is just bollocks 
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Obsessive Concerns Disorder
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A lot of current grapefruit production is a result of radiation experiments.
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Lilliputian
Liverpool is officially back to being a dump.
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