"Land_Yacht_225" (nadenator)
05/27/2016 at 15:53 • Filed to: None
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"Land_Yacht_225" (nadenator)
05/27/2016 at 15:53 • Filed to: None | 5
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The recent article about Indy Pace cars has reminded me to tell a story which I think you’ll all find quite interesting.
So, for this summer, I’ve been transfered from working at a branch to working out of an Enterprise repair facility at the airport. I spend my days riding around in a base spec Chrysler Town & Country with people who have at least 50 years on me. Retirees. Most drivers for enterprise, the people who shuttle cars around and pick up deletes for transfer to their next lives as J.D. Byrider specials, are all old farts. Most of them, are well enough off that they’re just working to socialize anyway.
I’ll tell you the moral of the story right now, if an old fart says he has a story, you may just want to listen. Because I had lunch with the man who designed the intake and fuel injection for the original Dodge Viper.
His name is T.C. and I bumped into him at Arby’s when we all split for lunch. He was quiet in the van, mainly because everybody kept telling him to shut up and quit rambling. But over lunch we got to talking, and I told him about my S600. He asked me about it after seeing me get out in the parking lot. I said more cylinders, more problems. And he started telling me about the viper. How the design for the intakes was tricky because the Dodge designers wouldn’t move the alternator out of the V. And how he had to design the whole intake to look like Mickey Mouse to accommodate it. He worked for the company that Dodge contracted to for the original Viper design, hired because he had experience in fuel injection. His degree was in mechanical engineering, and he had a 20 year career with Cummins back in the 60s under his belt before he started working for this North Carolina company. He had to fly up for three weeks in 1991 to Detroit in order to help hand build the engines for the prototype Vipers Dodge had to run in order to have pace cars when people got pissed about the idea of a Dodge Stealth captive import as the pace car. HE HELPED BUILD THE PROTOTYPES!
Then he told me about how he and his wife used to race on the weekends. He owned an MGB GT in the 70s that he traded in on a Lotus Europa, an original with a Renault engine. He’d get annoyed because they would put him in the class with Corvettes and he’d lead all day. Then he put a Gordini head on, and not even the Twin Cam Europas could catch up. He described it as “terrifically boring after ten or fifteen laps.”
And he’s a Leyland trained mechanic, and was one of the few people in all of Ohio who could sync the carbs on a Jag V-12 in the 70s. And he still can to this day.
So there you go, it’s amazing who you can meet at work.
shop-teacher
> Land_Yacht_225
05/27/2016 at 16:01 |
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That is very cool! I do enjoy listening to the old farts and their cool stories. Occasionally you get trapped listening to some boring pointless ramble, but a lot of times their stories are amazing.
ESSSIX GmbH - Accountant/Wagon Thumper
> Land_Yacht_225
05/27/2016 at 16:40 |
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Or he told you he did all those things.... You might have just met an internet troll before the internet...
Kidding, old people are awesome. And they do have the greatest of stories/experiences.
Chariotoflove
> Land_Yacht_225
05/27/2016 at 16:58 |
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Just spent an hour and a half Wednesday listening to an “old fart” who used to be the head of the NIDCR talk about the future of biomedical research. Having a career that spans multiple decades gives a person a kind of perspective on things that we who are younger can benefit from.
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shop-teacher
> Chariotoflove
05/27/2016 at 19:11 |
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Yep. My grandfather worked in the oil & gas industry for 70 years, I miss talking to him about it.