2002 CHEVROLET CAMARO User Comment / Complaint

In august 2002, i produced brakes in 542 dept. at delphi chassis systems, dayton, ohio. the department was scheduled to cease work 2 months after the end of gm f-car production i was placed in inspection behind brake assembly. i inspected all brakes produced as service parts. before i arrived, there were problems with porosity in the brake castings. instead of requiring the castings producer to bring in an x-ray machine, general foreman sam hanakeri, on orders from vp guy hachey, installed an air gun driver and water tank to check parts as they ran. the air gun would shoot a special screw connected to a compressed air connection, and the part was dunked while the compressed air was attached to the brake casting. the problem: the compressed air attachment cross threaded about 5% of the connection holes in the casting. since these connections have to withstand hydraulic pressure when the brakes are in use, cross threading causes leaks and potential brake failure. a gm assembly plant had issued a prr for the cross threading, but only for one side of the brakes delphi management only wanted to inspect the threads on the brakes mentioned in the gm prr, not mirror images. they knew that the inspection process damaged both sides, but wanted to ignore the problems on the non prr side. sam hanakeri, gf, ordered me to inspect only the prr sides. he stated that the inspection process came from guy hachey, and could not be changed or improved. i inspected these parts 60 days. sam hanakeri objected to the scrap resulting from my finding bad threads, stating that previous inspectors had found less. i told him that i signed the forms, and as long as my name was on the forms, they would reflect what i saw. these service parts are still on shelves. the assembly parts have been in use since 2002. the inspection forms are still in existence, maintained by bill englund at delphi need more brake plant.