[07Shelby#6200]

A friend of mine works in the Shelby Plant in Flat Rock. I told him my car was scheduled for production on 032607 and he said he would watch for it. This morning I got the following email from him.
"Your Car is scheduled to be built on 03-30-07. It will be held a couple of days in the Paint Shop for extra special inspection. Then a couple of more days because it has to be sent across to another building to have
the stripes put on. One bad thing that I did hear is that It will be shipped by rail and there is a shortage of rail cars to send them on so I don't know how long that will take? I will try to keep you posted. It's kinda
like having a baby, isn't it. LoL Pretty exciting!"
I thought you all might enjoy this. I know there has been some talk about the striping department behind about 200 cars. Sounds like that isn't the only reasons some cars have been slow to arriving!

Mark

http://www.twinoaksrvpark.com/

This post has been edited by NipNTuck: 28 March 2007 - 10:16 AM

[Shelby-Don]

NipNTuck,

Sounds like your in the wrong forum, this is the Shelby GT forum not GT500

[Grabber]

Shelby-Don, on Mar 28 2007, 07:55 PM, said:

NipNTuck,

Sounds like your in the wrong forum, this is the Shelby GT forum not GT500

I moved it.

[str8black500]

Behind on stripes by 200 cars? Does that mean there are 200 GT500s waiting around to be striped... Now not to say that i can do someone elses job, or to put anyone down... But how many people do they have working on striping these cars? and how long could it honestly take to stripe the car? They are just big stickers really. I mean i know they want to get it perfect, or as close to it as possible... but once you get on a roll doesnt it kinda just roll easy? Please tell me im wrong anyone who has put these stripes on. For i would imagine that they could stipe cars faster than they can be built, but thats just me.

This post has been edited by str8black500: 28 March 2007 - 10:28 PM

[Three Cobras]

Str8 -
This seems to be 'normal' for the entire time these cars have been being produced. My car was built on 6/27 and I picked it up on 7/21 at the dealer in VA. VNMOUS1 (BJ) had his car built the same day and got it two and a half weeks later. I think he lives in the Chicago area, but don't remember if he bought the car elsewhere. Granted, there were two weeks of plant shutdown in there at the beginning of July 06. But, trust me, when you are watching every freakin' grain of sand go through the hourglass, that is a loooooooooooong time.

[Alloy Dave]

str8black500, on Mar 29 2007, 02:26 AM, said:

Behind on stripes by 200 cars? Does that mean there are 200 GT500s waiting around to be striped... Now not to say that i can do someone elses job, or to put anyone down... But how many people do they have working on striping these cars? and how long could it honestly take to stripe the car? They are just big stickers really. I mean i know they want to get it perfect, or as close to it as possible... but once you get on a roll doesnt it kinda just roll easy? Please tell me im wrong anyone who has put these stripes on. For i would imagine that they could stipe cars faster than they can be built, but thats just me.

I would think just the opposite, I would think it's very difficult to get the stripes on and aligned just right. I don't know the "cycle time" for a Mustang, but it has to be mere minutes. In other words, a new Mustang rolls off the line every so many minutes.....don't know whether it's 3 minutes or 12 minutes...but I'm certain it's not hours. I don't see any way they could install stripes in "minutes".

I'm only speculating, but I bet they have multiple teams of people doing striping since they take longer than the average cycle time.

The other thing that confuses me is that we just had a guy tell us his car was the "first one striped in the AAI plant". This would infer that they didn't do a "clean" switchover on striping....maybe they are running both operations (AAI + "foreign" plant) for awhile until they are sure all is going well.

Dave

[UPSTATE]

Alloy Dave, on Mar 29 2007, 08:29 AM, said:

I would think just the opposite, I would think it's very difficult to get the stripes on and aligned just right. I don't know the "cycle time" for a Mustang, but it has to be mere minutes. In other words, a new Mustang rolls off the line every so many minutes.....don't know whether it's 3 minutes or 12 minutes...but I'm certain it's not hours. I don't see any way they could install stripes in "minutes".

I'm only speculating, but I bet they have multiple teams of people doing striping since they take longer than the average cycle time.

The other thing that confuses me is that we just had a guy tell us his car was the "first one striped in the AAI plant". This would infer that they didn't do a "clean" switchover on striping....maybe they are running both operations (AAI + "foreign" plant) for awhile until they are sure all is going well.

Dave

Even if a car comes off the line every 12 minutes not all are Shelby's, simple math considering shut downs tells you they are making 40-50 Shelby's per day. 6 people should be able to handle that per day. Putting on the stripes is not to bad, you wet the car, slide them on, position them and squeegee them out and let sit, done.
If they thought it was a problem to add one or two people is not a big deal. You are not going to let 44K units back up for stripes, lets face it a minor part of the assembly.

This post has been edited by UPSTATE: 29 March 2007 - 08:40 AM

[ColdwaterHotrod]

44,000 units!

What makes you think that?

[Alloy Dave]

UPSTATE, on Mar 29 2007, 12:37 PM, said:

Even if a car comes off the line every 12 minutes not all are Shelby's, simple math considering shut downs tells you they are making 40-50 Shelby's per day. 6 people should be able to handle that per day. Putting on the stripes is not to bad, you wet the car, slide them on, position them and squeegee them out and let sit, done.
If they thought it was a problem to add one or two people is not a big deal. You are not going to let 44K units back up for stripes, lets face it a minor part of the assembly.

This comment about a "minor part of the assembly" is probably one of the most complained about items on this forum, especially in the early months. Couple that with the comments from people like Ralph who said this was the bottleneck operation....and the fact that for some reason they decided to move it into AAI....so you can call it minor if you want...but it's certainly presented issues for them to this point.

How do you know there are 6 people doing it...or are you simply saying that's what it would take?

And I don't get your comment about 44,000 units...where did that come from?

AD

This post has been edited by Alloy Dave: 29 March 2007 - 11:14 AM

[GT06]

Alloy Dave, on Mar 29 2007, 03:13 PM, said:

This comment about a "minor part of the assembly" is probably one of the most complained about items on this forum, especially in the early months. Couple that with the comments from people like Ralph who said this was the bottleneck operation....and the fact that for some reason they decided to move it into AAI....so you can call it minor if you want...but it's certainly presented issues for them to this point.

How do you know there are 6 people doing it...or are you simply saying that's what it would take?

And I don't get your comment about 44,000 units...where did that come from?

AD

I think he meant $44k

[str8black500]

You all know there is a simple fix to this problem... Go with stripe delete!!! WOOHOO

Plus i know it takes more than minutes to do a stripe job but not all the stangs coming off the lines are GT500s. The GT500s are mixed in with the GTs as we all know because of a lack of ability to find out the number car ours is in the line of GT500s. I would believe that there are far more GTs produced than GT500s so i would assume that the figure of 40 GT500s a day could be about right (maybe a bit high) and i would think that unless they only have a couple crews working on stripes there has to be some other reason for hundreds of cars being backed up. I am going to assume that there is a good chance there was a large number with held from striping due to other issues that some people have been waiting out with their orders *quality holds.* Perhaps they just dumped a few hundred on the striping plant all at once when they passed quality control. But still simplest solution is STRIPE DELETE! WOOHOO

[Alloy Dave]

GT06, on Mar 29 2007, 05:38 PM, said:

I think he meant $44k

You're probably right.

[nilkilla]

skipping striping seems to shave about a week off of the dealer eta. i.e. a customer of mine had an eta of 4/12 and then got bucked, then was released from plant. as of this morning it has moved to dealer eta of 4/05!!

considering he's been waiting since 6/23/06(stupid shaker 1000 hold on t89s) this is good news.

another customer shaved a week (or more) when he had us remove the striping off of his black coupe!

considering that I can get a better job done through 3m with a lifetime warranty or spend some money and get hand painted, I am unafraid to suggest to my customers to get a 'stripe delete' option, if they are even mildly worried about an extended wait!

[ColdwaterHotrod]

str8black500, on Mar 29 2007, 04:40 PM, said:

You all know there is a simple fix to this problem... Go with stripe delete!!! WOOHOO

Plus i know it takes more than minutes to do a stripe job but not all the stangs coming off the lines are GT500s. The GT500s are mixed in with the GTs as we all know because of a lack of ability to find out the number car ours is in the line of GT500s. I would believe that there are far more GTs produced than GT500s so i would assume that the figure of 40 GT500s a day could be about right (maybe a bit high) and i would think that unless they only have a couple crews working on stripes there has to be some other reason for hundreds of cars being backed up. I am going to assume that there is a good chance there was a large number with held from striping due to other issues that some people have been waiting out with their orders *quality holds.* Perhaps they just dumped a few hundred on the striping plant all at once when they passed quality control. But still simplest solution is STRIPE DELETE! WOOHOO

Have you ever heard of COLD TEMPS, SNOW & ICE?

The metal & decals need to be warm to be applied to the car, so this is where IMO the backlog came from & now they are playing catch-up as the weather bonces back & forth here in Michigan.

[07Shelby#6200]

Seems as though I picked and passed some bad information up on the forum. I just got an email from my friend in the plant and he said the "striping department" is union? I had read somewhere it wasn't-sorry. I believe I got this info on another forum.

Sorry about the bad info on non-union! The Striping shop is apparently union. I am going to keep my mouth closed from now on. My father always told us your mouth is your worst enemy.

Sorry.......

This post has been edited by NipNTuck: 29 March 2007 - 08:51 PM

[Dropping__Chronic]

NipNTuck, on Mar 29 2007, 07:54 PM, said:

Seems as though I picked and passed some bad information up on the forum. I just got an email from my friend in the plant and he said the "striping department" is union? I had read somewhere it wasn't-sorry. Here is what he said this afternoon.

Quote"The striping work is Union, but I don't know how many cars they are backed
up. I'll have to find out and I know the right people to talk to. I'll keep you informed
Heck, I'm as excited as you. I will try to get the build # for tomorrow
and see what if anything is going on with it. There is a system in place-
its called error proofing and when something is wrong with the car it
automatically goes into the system and I'm not quite sure, but I think this info
goes with every car and a magnetic record. You should get it in your
glove box when you get your car."

Sorry about the bad info on non-union!

Not to rain on anyone's parade, and I'm certainly excited for you and your progress - but I've seen it happen where Ford figures out who posts information on stuff and takes it out on the worker. Certainly nothing has been said thus far that isn 'inside information' but I'd be cautious with what you put on the net, perhaps just keep your exact conversations private and share the information you feel prudent?

Just trying to protect your friend more than anything. The internet is a wonderful, yet dangerous thing.

Peace,

-DC

[VNMOUS1]

Three Cobras, on Mar 29 2007, 05:59 AM, said:

Str8 -
This seems to be 'normal' for the entire time these cars have been being produced. My car was built on 6/27 and I picked it up on 7/21 at the dealer in VA. VNMOUS1 (BJ) had his car built the same day and got it two and a half weeks later. I think he lives in the Chicago area, but don't remember if he bought the car elsewhere. Granted, there were two weeks of plant shutdown in there at the beginning of July 06. But, trust me, when you are watching every freakin' grain of sand go through the hourglass, that is a loooooooooooong time.

Yup, my car didn't get moved to Mazda before the July 4th hiatus. They were checking mine over and it missed the cut. When they got back there were umpteen cars in front of mine over at Mazda for stripes. There were only 4 teams of 2 workers that were striping at that time. They were way behind because there were some cars still coming off the line during the holiday shutdown. I'm lucky enough to have had someone push the car through or I still wouldn't see it to this day. The dealer was in northern KY...very small town...very low volume...non-Pres award, but oddly enough, full-line SVT. It got pushed through and trucked down there, as it was supposed to go by rail. The story is lengthy, but the bottom line is, I got it the day it showed up (8/5) and am grateful for the way Ford handled the situation. Their customer service was outstanding once I got to the right person. They didn't think for two seconds that this car would be as hot as it was/is. They also thought the striped cars would be a much smaller percentage. Oops.

bj