Ford Rouge Factory Tour (7/9/2015)

Well, I think we finally finished with Henry Ford, after having spent the last 3 days with him.  First was the Ford Museum, second was Greenfield Village, and today was the tour of the assembly line of the Dearborn Truck Plant, watching them put together Ford 150s.  Unfortunately, we only got to see a small part of the process, from assembling the parts on the doors (lots of parts and wiring goes into those doors) through the installation of the front windshields.  We could only see parts of the process from the ends of the rows, on a catwalk or "elevated walkway", but it was all very interesting.  No pictures of that allowed, however.

A few facts we learned or were told.  It takes 40 hours to build a truck.  When they fill them with fluids, they put 7 gallons of gas in them, for testing, and then driving to the lot.  The trucks are framed up, painted in another building, then taken apart to begin the assembly process.  That's how they keep the red beds on the red trucks, and the black doors on the black trucks.  We wondered. 

They had a frame shortage last week, their supplier fills the needs for two other Ford plants as well as some other brands, and they had to shut the plant down until more frames came in.  There is a yellow cord at each work station that they can pull if they need the assembly line to stop for a little while.  That period of time is preset.  The whole assembly line shuts down at noon for lunch.  Fortunately, we were just finishing our tour, which we did at our own pace, when the 12:00 bell when off.

We did get to take photos outside and from the observation deck.  This is called a "living roof," on top of part of this building. 

 Front of building.

We took a bus from the main entrance over to this huge plant.  Also in this tour were 2 short films, and the "legacy theater" where there was a display of about 6 or 7 Fords, from the Model A, through the Thunderbird, ending with the Mustang.  A Ford F150 was also on display. 

We finished there about 12:30, boarded the bus, then headed back to camp.  And took the rest of the day off.  Mazie got a haircut, Dave went to the grocery store, and the Brundiges stopped for pizza on the way home, but Joe and I did NOTHING.  I tried to take a nap, but wasn't successful.  Then Joe did take a nap.  And we went out for Mexican for dinner, so we really had a "down" afternoon.

It rained most of last night and up until noon today, but the sun finally came out about 5:00 p.m. and it got pretty warm.  Joe did drive around a little after we ate, and we saw the lake at the edge of Belleville, which is just on the other side of I-94 from us.  We think we are finished here just outside of Detroit, although we didn't see anything except the Ford stuff, but we are moving on tomorrow.