Bandit asked me for some stories about my Coop work at GM in '78 and '79. Here's, a couple of quick ones. At that time it was a straightforward manufacturing plant. Pretty straightforward stuff.

My Industrial Engineering supervisor was as I recall Dan Cameron, who was 40 or so at the time. He had a Sunbeam Tiger and was very involved in the Tiger club. He was a real car guy and top notch engineer. I really liked him. I tried searching for him on the web but no luck.

There was another supervisor that had a '79 Vette 454 that he bought through the factory plan. Everybody bought a new car every year and had a 13 month balloon loan so they had to sell it as there was a new one coming. I thought at the time it might be a deal. I guess it was one of the worst vettes ever. https://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/features/top-10-worst-corvettes-of-all-time.html

I remember one time walking with another supervisor through the plant and he said boy, "this plant must be behind in production". I asked him how he knew and he said look at all the inventory at the manufacturing stations. He said they did that so that whatever happened they wouldn't have a shortage of raw materials.

He explained to me that a factory is like a beast of nature. He told me "there is no beast in nature with an alligator's mouth and a tweety bird's ass" If you stuff enough stuff in one end, something has to come out the other. He also said the fastest way to be an ex-GM plant manager is to shut down Willow Run due to lack of parts.

Another story was '78 was the last year of the big FWD Eldorado. And they got a lot more orders than expected. Saginaw made the tripot front wheel drive axles. The supplier had built to forecast and the tooling had been pulled so now they had orders but no way to build the tripot CV joints.

I found out because one day I walked by a corner of the plant and there were a bunch of guys with a pile of reject CV forgings that were supposed to be returned to the supplier and scrapped. They had micrometers and were measuring the surface that plugged into the transmission seals. I believe the problem was they were not concentric and they were looking for rejects that were good enough to build axles with. I bet a bunch of those last run Eldorado's had leaky transmissions. Well, you know the saying about plant managers and Willow Run.

One last story for the night. The plant made the GM emission Air pumps and they had a chronic problem was that some would show up at the assembly plant locked up. They found that out after the car was built when they started up the engine on the line for the first time and the pump is locked up and won't turn and the belts are screaming. I recall being told that they cars were pulled off of line and sent to a rework department to be repaired. It was a big department.

Now each pump was dyno tested after assembly so they were turning when they left the test station but maybe something loose internally and locked it up. So I was asked to look into it. One last thing was that the pump had a filter fan (a plastic fan on the front of the pump that made it hard for dirt to enter the pump).

The plastic fan was on the front of the pump and as a part of the packing, the guy on the line would pick up each pump and give the fan a twist to see if it was free. I walked by the station several times a day, and the guys were always doing it. I did not believe that they were letting bad pumps through, so what was the problem?

Well I looked into the fans which were also molded in the Saginaw plant and they were made on three different 8 head/station molding machines. Well guess what, nobody really was following the ID dimensions of the fans because as long as the hole was big enough that the fan pressed went on the shaft everybody was happy. And that was the problem, one of the stations made fans whore ID's were really too big which resulted in a loose fit. Not a problem as long as the pump worked because the fan was pinned by the pulley. But this was a problem as the guy packing the pumps could not tell when he grabbed the fan to spin it whether it was the pump turning or was it the fan spinning with the palm of your hand when he gave it a twist.

Well that was it, they tightened up the tolerance by rejecting the bad fans and they could find the bad pumps.

Anyway I walked into Dan's office and told him how I had figured it out and there was the department supervisor there. Well afterwards the supervisor told me that in no uncertain terms I was not to go to a manager above his head without talking to him first. He was pissed. Lesson learned.

I did my second summer and was one quarter from graduating from Iowa State. I considered my options and decided I did not want to work in manufacturing Industrial Engineering. The reason was if you were really good, maybe you got to run one quarter of the plant. Not my cup of tea. I ended up in new product development/marketing in the air conditioning industry which much better fit my interests.

Nuff for now.
bob

Went out for the first race of the season. Its 37 years since I first showed up with my '80 Rabbit to do a drivers school at Blackhawk farm. I still love it.

Car ran great, I asked and was allowed to bump myself up a class as my car has been running at the pole position of the Spec Miata scrum which has far too much chance of mayhem for me.

I came, put it on the pole for my new class, set a personal lap record, raced and won, and drove it on the trailer without a scratch. Unfortunately I lost the 4th gear splines on the cooldown lap so I have a project on my hands. Not a big deal though. It was a very successful weekend,

This was a Midwest council of sports car clubs race. Good people, fun racing, nothing much has changed in 37 years for me other than there a lot more grey hair there today,.

Locked and loaded

Blackhawk Farms, Beloit Ill.

Very quick, momentum track. I qualified at over 80 mph which isn't bad considering there are four 60 mph turns.

You don't see one of these every day. I guess the owner tried to sell it as a street car but wasn't getting the offer he wanted to he turned it into a race car. That's a plan I can respect.

Just a bunch of club racers doing what they love. I guess I am not too old for this, the guy with the yellow formula V has a good 10 years on me!

An example of why I wanted out of the Miata Scrum. Because Miata.... And no, that will not buff out..... PS driver fine, though his wallet is definitely lighter.

Taking our 1982, 1984 TVs and our 2004 tube type monitors to the recycling event. The TV's made in US (with Japanese parts), the monitor made in Korea. At current values, we paid $2k in US dollars for them at the time. All still work, but are no longer used for the last 10 years or longer.

The TV on the right had a ultrasonic remote. It had three tones. On/off, Volume and channel. There were 12 different settable tuners that it switched between. How the world has advanced since then.....

t are no

I stripped the teeth of the 4th gear of my '98 Type R on the cool down lap of my last race. The car has 66,000 miles and I believe it's the original gearbox with I would guess 30,000 race miles. I guess I don't have a reason to complain.

Fortunately the chips didn't go that far so a complete rebuild with new 3rd and 4th gears as well as new carbon synchro's, clutch disk and bearings and I expect it will be as good as new.
23 years of racing before wearout, come on Honda, are you even trying anymore?!!!!

By the way, for hard applications, Synchrotech carbon synchros are outstanding, When I was using stock brass synchro's I was replacing the 4th gear syncrhro after every endurance race. This set of carbon synchros has lasted 10 years and was just now getting tired,

Toothless 4th gear.


Its beat up mate

Given to me as the old guy at work....

BBS Basket wheels and '80's German cars.....

Its the Packard DR-980 aircraft engine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_DR-980

Imagine working for years to develop a revolutionary new diesel aircraft engine that met every technical metric but have it fail.

The Packard DR-980 was a personal project of the chairman of the Packard Automobile company. It was a successful development project in that it was reliable, had excellent power and exceptional economy compared to gasoline aircraft engines of the time. It should have taken over air transportation applications. It should have been a success but wasn't. Only 100 were built.

The reason? It stunk. Once developed Packard had three of them installed on a Ford Tri Motor as a demonstration plane for the airlines. It was the Ford Ford 11-AT, a redesignation of a single Ford 4-AT-E, fitted with three 225-hp Packard DR-980 diesel engines.

What the engineers overlooked was the exhaust smell and it stunk. It was so bad, airline passengers would get off at intermediate stops and take the train. It stunk so bad that pilots complained that after flights their wives would not let them come into the house with their uniforms or stay without bathing. It was a magnificent failure.

It was also loud and vibration prone but I assume that could have been solved. But nothing could solve an engine that stunk. It must have been a disappointment to invent and develop this revolutionary engine and have only 100 built.

It did set the world record for flight endurance that stood until Rutan broke it some 55 years later. Here is an excellent article on the record. https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/85-hours-in-1931-airplane-180968358/

@hfv What? This isn't allowed in Wisconsin!!!! I hope the statute of limitations has run out.......

My buddy has a '44 Studebaker deuce and a half. He is/was a car and race mechanic and his father was an air force mechanic in England during WW2. My friend bought it nicely restored and he took it to parades and stuff. I once rode with him to the steam days over in Mabel Minnesota.

It has a gas engine, it drove with a lot of momentum and liked about 45 mph. He let me drive it. I got about 1000' as double clutching at the next stop sign was not my thing.

He says the Studebakers are rare compared to the GMC's built deuces which you typically see in most movies and historical pictures. The GMC's have louvers in the side of the engine covers. The Studebakers did not, had a more rounded cab and sloped hood. I believe were unique as they had windshields you could tilt open. Drivers liked them because the cabs were nicer...

The Studebaker company was founded making wagons for the western expansion. He thought the Studebaker were a better built truck than the GMC. His dad worked on them in England but a lot of the Studebaker production went to Russia in the war. I always look at Stalin organ trucks to see if they are Studebaker trucks.

https://www.historynet.com/studebaker-us6-the-lend-lease-deuce-and-a-half.htm

Cousin Anthony doesn't waste time. Per he, Meet my new daily beater. 2004 Mercury Grand Marquis. 111k miles. Perfect mechanical condition. A trunk that can swallow my Honda lawnmower with room to spare.

Gonna weld the 200lbs cow catcher from my dead Camry to the frame. Bad QCA drivers beware! I'll smack you good with it!

@skyfire77 If we are talking about fighting with external stores against tanks, I agree the A-10 isn't really better. Though I think its been decades since fighting tanks was a priority for A-10's.

I think of its missions is CAS for infantry in third world advisories where the gun is the primary weapon. There is where the A-10 has an advantage.

Now we can all agree that we are not sure exactly if there will ever be another Isis or Afghan conflict where it is needed. I hope not. And if there is not, then maybe its time to park it.

@facw said in Warthogs: an endangered species:

The A-10 is overkill for those third-world conflicts anyway,

Oh, I suspect the ground troops would disagree. I think we have a bad habits of sending a dozen troops into situations where there are 100 bad guys with rifles and then needing somebody (or some force multiplier like a A-10) to bail them out. The F-35 can't help them when its back on the runway for the third time of the day being either re-armed, refueled or repaired.......

One of the hilarious parts of the narative is when the Army volunteers to take the A-10 from the AF, all the sudden the AF goes all ballistic about it being their plane.....

@silentbutnotreallydeadly Well, getting it towed or in the alternative having the tow driver try starting it is probably a good idea.

I say that because sometimes people messing with fuel lines and or starter fluid cause leaks, backfires and engine/garage fires. If you really do not know what you are doing, its best to let someone who does do the work.

Or in the alternative, if you do try, please take and post lots of videos and pictures so we can enjoy the calamity!

@hfv Here you go. Its a very close match for our car. Dad bought it and we all went out with the seller on a test drive. The seller knew what he was was doing and stomped on the gas and it was sold. It was the 4 door equivalent of a V8 mustang.

I doubt this was our car as my brother pretty much killed it by '76 by jumping it and pushing a rear leaf spring through the floor.

It was basically a modern car with unibody construction, a small lightweight V8 and 3 spd auto transmission. The only thing that let it down were the drum brakes.....

https://classiccars.com/listings/view/1323325/1964-ford-fairlane-500-for-sale-in-council-bluffs-iowa-51501

Oh the common narrative by the Air Force is that the A-10 would be doomed in any engagement with a first world enemy. They say that it would be more humane in that case to shoot the pilots on the runway than let them be shot down and killed in the first minutes of a first world engagement. The problem is we keep getting into fights with third world enemies where the A-10 is very useful.

It is interesting that you mention the F-35 as its massive cost has sucked the Oxygen out of the AF budget making cuts like the A-10 necessary. The F35 is probably one of the worst substitutes for an A-10 mission. It doesn't have a gun unless you count the external store one and has very limited loiter time. Also much less protective armor for pilot and machine.

Asking a F-35 to do close air support is kind of like asking a ballerina to play line backer in my opinion,,,,

@facw All they are charging is what the market will pay.

In my opinion, the people that drop $2K for first class are either spending somebody else's money or else for them $2k represents a drop in the bucket for their normal spending.

@pip-bip Maybe they would rather bank the revenue off selling the Model Y and buy two Transits instead,,,,,,

@essextee Ford/Lincoln found a new low bidder for alloy wheels?....

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