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Chevy Vegas were shipped vertically


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That escalated quickly...

At that time, my father was the advertising manager for Pettibone, who made the Cary-Lift that tilts the Vegas up into the boxcar. He used to bring home 8mm and 16mm movies demonstrating the machines they built, and one was a film of the Vegas being loaded.

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GM's idea and design for the Vertipac was to make the shipping $ per car more cost efficient. The Vega was one of the cheapest new cars you could buy back then, smaller cars didn't have big profit margins. Also there was no problem with fluids GM designed a special package for the Vertipac cars, plugs for the dipsticks, oil and trans fluid changed the routing on somethings etc.

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I read that they shipped them vertically due to wheel bearing issues. The train would cross 10's of thousands of railroad track seams during the shipping and it would cause damage to the wheel bearings, as they were supposed to take stress under load while rotating. This eliminated that issue. Not sure if that's true or not.

It that was true, the problem would be due to false brinneling
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"Maybe this is why they also fell apart on the showroom floor... ;-)"

It actually depends on where the vega went, mine had no rust here in Oregon, pretty much every vega I've seen here hasn't had much rust, just a little around the windshield trim and rear window and small bits in various places that are very easily fixed.

BTW, Sorry about the quote, the site isn't working for me and I cant post pictures from photobucket either, pretty irritating.

Edited by Dragfreak
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