Hey everyone just a quick question, when i open my door down at the bottom of the car it says body by fisher, does anyone know what that means?

GM owned a major share of a company called "Fisher Body" they built and assembled the body on the car. They closed forever in 1984.

If you think the Chinese work cheap, these guys will work for scraps :D

http://www.pusscats.com/Fisher_Cat.jpg

Actually, in the early 1900's Fred Fisher started Fisher Body Corp and they built bodies for many different automotive companies - even Ford 8O
.
They later became a part of GM.

then why does my 86 have body by fisher plates if they closed in 84?

Fisher Body is just one of the large and small auto related companies(Rochester and Delco are two others you may recognize) that became part of the GENERAL Motors banner in the '20s. For tradition GM continues to use some of these names even though they have long been a part of General Motors and have no real separate existence.

then why does my 86 have body by fisher plates if they closed in 84?

Leftovers? Dunno what to yell ya. Fisher did cease operations in '84, this is a known fact.

http://musclecarranch.com/bodybyfisherhistory.htm

In 1984 the Body by Fisher Plants closed their doors forever.

http://www.answers.com/topic/fisher-body

Fisher was dissolved by being merged with other GM operations in 1984.

1983 - Fisher Body and Buick division's Flint, Michigan operations are combined as Buick City.
1984 - The Lansing factory is melded with Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac to become Lansing Car Assembly.

The Fisher name did continue to be used for several years after the plant closed as GM had rights to the name. Of course, it was only a badge in the door sill by then. I think they phased the badge out entirely when they changed most of the body styles in '88. My '86 Elky has the Fisher badge. Fisher disappeared when it was lumped into Delphi when GM had another stroke of organiztional "genius".

ahhh, thanks for clearing that up

There was a well earned cache with the name, the body was designed by Fisher, and they had the rights to use the name so why not?

A piece of unsubstantiated trivia is that one of the Fisher brothers designed an air purifier for his allergic wife. It was ingenious in the use of water as a filter. Later, someone determined it made an excellent vacuum cleaner, thus Rainbow Vacuum Cleaners came to be.

Take care.

hey, we have one, ironicly, i used it to vacume the water out of the bottom of my passenger compartment and the dirt from my body by fisher plates the other day.....

My folks still use their rainbow vacuum cleaner, fill the bottom with water, and suck, or hook it up to the other end and blow...

Thing does a great job, they have it serviced periodically and the guy is like, "this thing is still kickin.."

One of the things I like about it is that it is sort of like using a steam cleaner. fill it with clean water, wash / scrub your carpet, vacuum out the water / clenaing crap, dump dirty brown water out. redo, until the water you are throwing out is pretty much clear. Much easier to see and tell that you are done cleaning your carpet. Did a great job on my elky carpet in the back half. I had previously cut the carpet in two sections as I was working on the dynamat stuff but didn't have the seat belt tool remover and figured I'd be replacing the carpet anyway. Last week, as part of getting ready for our n. california cruise to livermore, pulled the back section cleaned it about 4 or 5 times, water runs mostly clear, let it dry overnight, hit it with some interior fabric black paint, you can still see some of the original color but thats cuz I ran out of paint :(

I think another couple coats and it should be pretty good. I didin't have any at the time, but I had talked with marv a few weeks earlier to see how he was coming on his and he had gotten a carpet kit, but he didn't care for it. one the color didn't match, two, the carpet was of inferior quality and the backing rubber and sound stuff was no where near the quality of the original, so he opted to die his. The problem is that the carpet soaks up that paint, so it takes quite a bit, he used on his (which i didn't ) some primer paint for the first few coats to soak in and he only needed a little bit (in comparison) to do the rest of the carpet. In my scenario, I went through 2 and a half cans of the duplicolor fabric just on the section of the floor behind the seat and still need at least one more can. So on the front half I'll use the primer stuff first.

Anyway back on topic,

Gotta love those rainbow cleaners...

Well that was almost on topic.

I also have those fisher body plates, what is a good product / method to use to polish these guys back up. They look very dull next to my new diamond plate door panels I'm test fitting right now. :(

I think my mom has one of those Rainbow vacuums. She still uses it.

RE: The Rainbow/Fisher connection.

Please notice I used the word unsubstantiated. I was told of this connection with Fisher by a Rainbow manager and friend who indicated it is was well understood within the company management. Yet, their website makes no mention of any Fisher ties. Coincidently much of their history does seem centered in Michigan and the Detroit region in particular.

I would probably bet a friend a Coke on the story, but not a lobster dinner.

Take care.