The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Chronicling the Advance Design Truck

I am new to this forum but something has puzzled me as I restore my Korean War era Chevy truck.

Does anybody ever wonder how there came about the AD factory assembly manual?

The AD factory assy manual, which is in wide distribution reprint, is a wonderful collection of “A” size drawings of the final (and to some the zenith) version of the AD truck. From my experience (as a systems engineer in aerospace) “A” size drawings are not the preferred drawing size. Rather “C” and “D” size is what we use to typically use, especially for assembly type drawings which are prevalent in the manual.

Also why are most of the drawings dated toward the end of the AD production (May – Aug. 1953)? Logic would say that this is because the compiler of the drawings picked the most up-to-date versions. However, my experience is that drawings are only updated when the design is updated, and some of the designs shown in the drawings are unchanged from what we know of late 40’s trucks.

When these drawings where produced in 1953 the Task Force trucks must have been in full design mode (picture many engineers at drafting tables drawing out parts and assemblies for the NEW design truck). So why then update AD drawings?

In my romantic imagination, I can imagine Chevrolet hiring summer engineering interns to chronicle the assembly of one of the finest truck series in history before the tooling switched over. But maybe somebody who worked in the auto industry has a better explanation?

John Shonafelt

others may be able to add more, but look around here a bit John and you'll learn how different the auto industry of the 40's and 50's was from aerospace, in '53 they were drawing up the changes for '54, the Task Force series was late to the line, beginning with a "warmed over" 54 as the first "new" truck offered in early 55, the Task Force 55's saw the line about 6 months after most new model years normally would

the assembly manuals were a supervisors tool, initially consisting of a loose leaf collection of instructions, many of which were carried over from year to year, GM had a good habit of using what was already proven and tooled up .... the manuals available from the vendors are a collection that didn't actually exist as a "manual", so no telling what size they originally were, and whoever collated the AD book the vendors offer used what they could get that might be applicable to the whole series, maybe the sheets from May-Aug '53 where what they could find, and as production usually started late summer of the year preceding the model year, those drawings would actually be for the '54

some of the TF assembly manual is dated '54, but the bulk of it is dated early '55, and all of it is really only directly applicable to the 55 2nd series truck, not including any '56-59 changes, especially the body changes in '58 - it's possible they weren't even fiddling with clay models for the TF trucks in mid '53 .... there are other instruction drawings that are rare which are called "running changes" that would have covered those few differences, some of those can ocassionally be found at literature vendors

one thing that affected that sort of factory-only documentation is that somewhere/ sometime along the way there was a fire at some GM facility that saw a lot of older documentation lost - might be why there's no assembly info for the previous series, '41-46 or the earliest AD years

Bill

I wish whoever reproduced that manual hadn't left the panel/Suburban/CE sections out.

And why no pick-up bed information?