Mustang IRS Blog

There’s a lot of history in my family with Harley Davidson. Let me tell you a few stories.

As my cousin tells it, “We had stopped for fuel when a bunch of mean looking bikers surrounded the entire fuel island. Loud and intimidating, they fit the Hell’s Angels image perfectly. Dad got out of our truck and walked right into the middle of them.

“We’re dead!” I thought.

Dad said, “Harley Davidson. Good motorcycle.  I rode one in The War.”

Instantly, the atmosphere changed. From being intimidating and loud, they welcomed us as brothers and were interested in what Dad had to say.

That was my cousin’s first introduction to what motorcycle people call The HARLEY HERITAGE.

When WW II started, the newly mechanized U.S. Army needed something to replace the horse, and the obvious answer was a motorcycle. Captured German soldiers, when taken behind the lines, always asked, “Where are all the horses?”

The Army requested Harley build a “workhorse” for mechanized cavalry and military police to carry messages when radios and wire were not available, or not secure. The WA series was the answer. Nicknamed “The Liberator” in Europe, because they were always the first Americans the liberated townspeople saw.  Based on production parts, it was rugged, with heavy duty crash bars, luggage racks and scabbards to carry Thompson machine guns. 

Many were delivered with a side car which turned the WA into VIP transport, or even an ambulance in a pinch. The simple 45 cubic inch flat head motor with 5:1 compression (to burn the crappy gas available) and a separate hand shifted 3-speed transmission, it served well in the Pacific, Russia, and in Europe. Harley produced over 90,000 of the WA series.

The WA didn’t like the sands of Africa though. The Army urgently requested a reverse engineered BMW R71, with shaft drive and opposed air cooled cylinders. Harley made several prototypes which performed well, but the complexity was “Not suited to field conditions.” The final answer was to issue each rider several chains, which could easily be changed in the field. Riders took to wearing the chains as a fashion accessory, and wearing motorcycle chains is still popular today.

Returning soldiers wanted “A bike like I rode in the Army,” so they bought thousands of surplus WAs, stripped them of all the military gear and made them their own. This kicked off the custom chopper culture.

The “Limey Bikes,” BSA and Triumph, had begun to appear on U.S. roads as the 40s passed into the 50’s, and they handled and rode much better that anything Harley had to offer. The Triumph Bonneville was faster in stock trim than a full race Harley, and it was named after the Utah Bonneville Salt Flats to boot!

Advances in lubrication during the war allowed a single oil to withstand the heat, pressure and scraping motion of a piston, as well as the slicing motion of a gear box. A 4-speed gear box was integrated into the WA engine structure (unit construction) and a right-side foot shift (a first for Harley) made it possible to race in flat track competitions, which only turned left. A modern swing arm rear suspension with coil-over springs produced the Harley K Model in 1952, which ran until 1956 or so. Some competition models were available as late as 1969. Harley hoped the 45-cubic-inch (650 c.c.) flat head with 6:1 compression could compete with the imports.

In 1957 the K Model was enlarged to 54 cubic inches (883 cc), equipped with overhead valves and 7.5:1 compression, and became Harley’s all-time sales leader, the Sportster.

When my best buddy, Bob, had saved 600 dollars, he told his dad, Stan, that he wanted a bike, so they headed for the nearest Harley store. You guessed it, Dad rode one in the war. Sam  Arena, owner of Harley  Davidson  San Jose, was an American Motorcycle Association (A.M.A.) Hall of Fame inductee in 1998, known for his dominance in hill climbs and flat tracks. Sam determined the only bike in their inventory he could sell for $600 was a well-used K Model, complete with saddle bags, fenders and mud flaps. He took the K to an adjacent parking lot, showed Bob where the throttle, shift lever, and brakes were and told him, “Get on. It’s all yours.” 

Bob was instantly the coolest kid in our high school.  His dad, Stan, who had a garage/shop with a drill press and his own lathe, became the fount of wisdom and knowledge for us aspiring gear heads.

Looking back, I can see that Stan was very patient with our almost total lack of mechanical wisdom and knowledge. Wisdom splattered all over you when you didn’t apply your knowledge. “Here, wipe that wisdom off your face. Use the knowledge I taught you and try not to make the same dumb mistake twice.”

College, Uncle Sam, other distractions, and a few ownership changes resulted in me giving the K to my brother-in-law, who promptly took it apart. “Gonna restore it someday.” He put the pieces in his greasy garage with parts of other bikes and cars, and when he passed the family spent months sorting the pile into identifiable machines and selling them to anyone who was interested.

I took what I hoped was a complete K Model to the Salt Lake City Harley dealer, who recommended the local “outlaw” shop Dirty Ratz Motocyco as the best place to put it all back together.

That was a great suggestion. He told me Harley dealership mechanics, like car dealerships, are trained to work on the current stuff, and are paid a flat rate for each procedure. Any job that doesn’t fit that model, or is more than 10 years old, they’re not interested in. “Outlaw” shops know what fits what, what years interchange, and where to find what. They did a GREAT job. We installed hydraulic disc brakes, a modern set of forks, updated carburetor, installed a 12-volt alternator, bigger rims, radial tires, and a bunch of other goodies.

Well, it’s finally back home after a 60+ year absence. Thanks to everyone who helped me (and there are a bunch) relive a lifetime of adventures.

When my son, Mike, and I picked up the finished bike (after paying the bill) the shop gave us a 1953 K Model poster they had found somewhere. I insisted “our” mechanic autograph it. It‘s at the glass shop now getting framed.

There’s a spot in the living room of my son’s condo, which thankfully is on ground level, where THE POSTER will live. The K will join it there.

No telling what the future will bring, but I think it’ll always be in the family.

You may be interested in this little film we made a few years ago about my grandfather.

UHP

I guess HARLEY HERITAGE RUNS DEEP.

When Lee Iacocca, a tough car salesman from Allentown PA, became the President of Ford Division, the first thing he said was “Ford’s going to stop building boring cars. The baby boomers are now driving and nothing Ford has interests them … even a little.”

Lee’s predecessor, Robert S. McNamara–A.K.A. The accountant’s accountant–left Ford on Jan. 1, 1961 to become Secretary of Defense in the Johnson Administration. His main achievement at Ford was to birth the famous Edsel (1958 – 1961).  “The first car designed by a computer!” Every feature on the car, from hood ornament to taillight, was focus grouped to see which design potential buyers liked best. “Mac” had succeeded in building the first passionless car.

Before the Edsel, Mac had overseen the development of the Falcon, the bottom of the line of Ford products. When first introduced in 1960, the Falcon sold over 435,000 units, but dropped to 120,000 in 1961 and continued downward. The MSRP for a 6-cylinder, 2-door Falcon was under $2,000, about $25,000 today. Mac thought the reason Falcon sales had tanked was the market wanted an even cheaper car.

His answer was a tin can with a front wheel drive transaxle ahead of a longitudinally mounted V-4 motor, and nothing else. It was to be called the Cardinal, and later became the Ford of Germany Taunus.

Ford had some of the best designers on the planet, but as Lee looked at what they offered to promote his vision, only one sketch came close to what he had in mind, and it was only a sketch.  It looked like a mid-engine 2-seat roadster.

The engine and transaxle already existed, thanks to McNamara’s Cardinal concept. Turn that engine-transaxle 180 degrees and voila, you have an independent rear suspension, mid-engine race car platform. The hard points of the chassis only exsisted between the engineer’s tape measure and his eyeball, and the body shape only exsisted between the designer’s thumb and his pencil. 

Ford Advanced Vehicles (FAV), headed by Roy Lunn, formerly with Aston Martin, stick welded some tubing  together into a “skunk works” proof of concept.

Ford Advanced Suspension Design, led by Klaus Arning, formerly with Borgward, took the opportunity to develop his independent rear suspension (I.R.S.) designs, on which he received several patents reassigned to Ford. An engineer working in Klaus’ department, Chuck Carrig was working on a computer designed suspension program, and was tasked with putting all this together into a first of its kind design program. All of this technology later became crucial to the GT-40 defeating Ferrari four times in a row at Le Mans, and played a part in the success of Foyt, Andretti, Gurney and many others in F-1, Indy, etc.

The computer program, envisioned on a Friday afternoon on the back of several bar receipts from The Brass Rail, allowed chassis engineers to change one component and see what effect it had on the rest of the car in three dimensions–a first–that all suspension programs have followed since.

Lee loved the thought of a Ford two-seat roadster and challenged FAV to turn out a finished car in 100 days, to be driven at the U.S. Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, a traditional gathering spot for East Coast college students.

“No budget, no problem. We’ll hide the cost in the production cars, and we’ll all work after hours for free–‘cause it won’t take very long–or cost much money. We can turn this into a car in 100 days!”  The bare minimum engine-chassis was shipped to Troutman & Barnes in L. A., who was used to working on back of the napkin race car ideas.

Troutman  built two cars.

Dan Gurney drove one around Watkins Glen on Oct 7, 1962, at race pace. It was supposed to be a slow parade lap but “It felt so good I couldn’t resist.” said Gurney.

The Mustang I concepts gave birth to the Falcon-derived MUSTANG with Independent Rear Suspension (IRS) and the FORD GT-40 with similar suspension concepts.

Roy Lunn and F.A.V. showed the Mustang I to the Detroit Chapter of the Society of Automotive Engineering (S.A.E.) Congress and Exposition at COBO HALL, now called Huntington Place. It is the center of downtown Detroit. The show ran Monday and Tuesday Jan. 14-15, 1963. On Sunday, Klaus and his oldest son, who was about 10 at the time, picked up the Mustang I on a trailer from F.A.V. and were delivering the car to COBO when a wheel bearing on the trailer froze. Fortunately, a pay phone (remember those?) was nearby, so Klaus phoned the P.R. agent who had arranged the whole thing to ask him what he wanted to do.

“You and your son ride dirt bikes don’t you,” said the PR. Man.

“Well, yes,” Klaus said.

“Unhitch the trailer, drive home, and get your helmets and face shields (it was a typical Detroit January day–bitter cold–thus the face shields) and drive back to the trailer. Hitch the trailer back onto the car and leave the keys to the car over the driver’s visor. Unload the prototype and drive it to COBO.  I‘ll have someone pick up your car and trailer and bring them to you. You can drive your car home and we’ll get the prototype and trailer after the Exposition is over. Thanks for your help.”

The staff wouldn’t let Klaus drive the Mustang I into the 400,000 square foot COBO Hall, so Klaus and a staffer pushed it down the halls while his son became the youngest person to ever drive the prototype! The Exposition apparently went smoothly and Mustang I was a big hit!

Click to access racecar_engineering_2007-10.pdf

Like we said at the top of this piece, it was a different world.

This is something we have never done before: publish a follow-up story. We heard so many personal experiences about towing and haul ratings that a second story seemed like a good idea.

When we were building the Shelby facility in Gardena my son Michael and I transited the Sepulveda Pass more than 900 times.

https://mustangirs.com/b.php/2024/08/23/shelby-gardena-facility-sold

We would get up in Redondo Beach every morning at 6:45, blast up the 405 for 25 miles, over the 1,100 foot Sepulveda Pass, to get to the methadone clinic in Van Nuys by 7:30. Ten minutes later we’d be doing the reverse to make it to Shelby’s in Gardena by 8:30. In the 1 1/2 years we were there we summited that pass more than 900 times. We got to know it and its inhabitants pretty well. We even had pet names for features of the road. Over Steer Bend and Pay Attention Corner were  two of our favorites.

B.T.W., if you are traveling and on methadone, you have to get a temporary card from your home clinic to a clinic near you. Early in the morning is the best time to go, for obvious reasons!

When we passed a haphazardly driven vehicle towing a haphazardly loaded trailer up the Pass, we shook our heads as it barreled past us on the downside. We never saw an actual crash, but we saw a lot of Death Wobbles, steering corrections followed by over-corrections, etc. There was lots of evidence of crashes too. The calligraphy made by the locked brakes of the towing partners as they pirouetted across several lanes of traffic was really quite interesting, until they kissed the side of the Pass.  A never-ending supply of clothing, bits of cars, trailers, and household goods lined the hill, always on the downhill side where the dancers came to a stop.

In the first story, we referenced Society of Automotive Engineers ( S.A.E.) standard J2807, which addresses vehicle gross weight and towing requirements.  The Society has an interesting web site, www.sae.org/volunteer, that may be of interest.                            .

Popular Mechanics (remember reading them in study hall?) has a good site.

It’s four long pages long and mentions things such as “equalizer bars” and “anti-sway hitches.” My feeling is, if you don’t know this stuff by now, you’ve never been interested in it and are not likely to absorb it with one or two readings.  And remember a little knowledge can be dangerous. There are companies out there that offer classes for newbies.

Consumer Reports has a How to Tow site. The text is full of “might be” and “some-times,” which I guess is necessary, but not very comforting.

Even AARP, American Assoc. of Retired Persons, has a guide for old folks hitting the road for the first time in their new motorhome or camp trailer (yikes!).

In my home state of Utah, Grandpa and the kids can head out in their new 45 foot motorhome weighing 26,000 pounds, towing a 20 foot trailer.  65 feet from the front axle of the tow vehicle to the rear axle of the trailer is the maximum allowable length. In practice, that results in a train over 80 feet long and weighing over 40,000 pounds — with just a regular driver license.

As seen in our first story, even the manufactures can’t–or won’t–say what your new rig is capable of doing safely.

My friend Bob is one of the few owners of a camp trailer that actually uses it. He travels and camps several months of the year. We were at his RV storage facility when he mentioned to the proprietor that his new Yukon doesn’t tow as well as the previous one. The proprietor said he may want to visit a local alignment shop that has a reputation for improving tow vehicles.

The shop took us right in, and the owner explained that most new cars can only be adjusted for toe. In the “old days” you could adjust for caster, camber and toe. Some could even be adjusted for bump steer.

The front end of Bob’s new Yukon was made by a vendor using parts, sub-assemblies and assemblies from all over the world (read low cost) and was designed to drop into the assembly line with no adjustment required. Apparently, if you know what you’re doing, you can improve on the “good enough” factory settings.

For about an hour and 1/2 we watched the owner loosen, tighten, shim, bend and persuade, even giving it a couple of loud whacks with a big hammer. Using his four-laser-beam alignment rack, he made both front wheels point in the same direction, with just a bit of toe-in, and increased the camber to aid tracking and improve steering feel. Bob’s new Yukon “towed like a dream.” especially in downhill corners.

With all the lack of information, half-truths and self-serving lies out there, we decided the best thing to do is, ”Ask the man (or lady) who owns one.”

Find an RV storage or repair shop, or visit an RV camp ground, find a rig like the one you own or anticipate owning, and ask the owner what their experience has been, and what they would recommend. This tag line from a 1930 PACKARD ad may still apply.  

Thanks to Road and Track for the above title, which I’ve shamelessly stolen from their recent column on pickup truck advertising. I’ve always liked homophones, words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings. You could say BEST IN CLASS tow ratings and BEST IN CLASS carrying capacity are homophones, manufactures saying one thing while meaning another.

Let’s start with trailer manufactures. When I lived in Vail, my friend Marty decided to go into the concrete forming business. He drove to Denver, bought a trailer rated at 5,000 pounds carrying capacity, drove to the form vendor, loaded up 5,000 pounds of forms, and headed up the hill to Vail. Stopping about halfway, he noted his new trailer looked kinda sway-backed.

Carefully returning to the trailer store, he asked, “What the Hell is going on?!”

The trailer salesman agreed the trailer looked a bit tired, and asked “How much weight do you have on?”  

“5,000 pounds, just what you said it could carry.” answered Marty.

“Oh, no. You asked for a 5,000-pound trailer, which is what I sold you. If I’d known you were going to actually haul 5,000 pounds, I’d have sold you a 10,000 pound trailer, and sorry, I can’t take the 5,000 trailer back since you’ve ruined it.”

Say one thing and mean another.

About 15 years ago, The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) set out to determine once and for all what BEST IN CLASS towing and BEST IN CLASS carrying capacity really means. SAE J2807 was the result — and it was supposed to bring some sanity to the manufactures’ wild claims.

Bragging rights and big bucks were at stake, so you can imagine the maneuvering that went on.

The stage was set about 90 miles south of Las Vegas on a stretch of Arizona Rt. 68 known as the Davis Dam Grade, an 11.5-mile, 6% climb from 500 feet to 3,500 feet. If a specially prepared, lightly optioned two-door short bed, two-wheel drive almost out of gas pickup, driven by a 120-pound tester and carrying a 100-pound sandbag on the passenger seat to simulate a passenger, with the AC blasting, could pull or carry the hoped-for weight up the grade, on a 100-degree day at 40 MPH without puking its guts out or throwing codes, it was deemed capable of carrying or towing the desired weight. YEAAAAAH !

Your results may vary.

Curiously, no mention is made of wind speed & direction. A light headwind will greatly increase radiator efficiency, and if that 100-degree air temp was at the bottom of the grade, what was the temp at the top?

What were the humidity & barometric pressure (air density) during the test? As you probably know, 100-degree air at sea level with 100% humidity is capable of absorbing a LOT more heat than 100 degree air with single digit humidity at say, Vail, CO  8,000 feet above sea level.

A friend of mine at Ford was eastbound on I-70 a few years ago, doing a cross country test drive in a prototype Ford van towing a weighted trailer. Up the 7-mile-long, -7% grade leading to the Eisenhower Tunnel at 11,158 feet, with no shoulder on the barely completed road and the tunnel portal in sight, the temperature gauge suddenly spiked. Something blew in the engine compartment which sent the engine cover onto my friend’s lap, followed by clouds of smoke and steam. He jammed on the brakes, threw the transmission into Park and bailed out!

Fortunately, a Colorado Highway Patrolman was right behind him, who stopped, turned on his lights, and ran forward with a handheld fire extinguisher.

Unfortunately, the prototype van was also testing a carbon fiber driveshaft, and when the flames reached the shaft, the van and trailer lurched backward, hit the cruiser, and jack-knifed off the edge of the road, ending up in a clump of aspens at the bottom of the grade. Air density or lack thereof can do that.

“Well, that’s why we do testing. Back to the drawing board.”

The ink-stained wretches over at Road & Track (mentioned above) shamelessly stole and butchered this subtitle, FEAR & LOADING IN LAS VEGAS, from one of my literary heroes, Hunter S. Thompson. Writing in the late 60’s and early 70’s from Aspen CO, Hunter is generally credited as father of Gonzo journalism, where the focus is on portraying the feelings and atmosphere of an event, rather than just delivering detached objective facts.  I’ve always admired that style, and I think Hunter would find the machinations of the various pretenders to their various weighty thrones hugely entertaining. 

I became friends with a TV cameraman from Aspen when I worked on the 2002 Winter Olympics. He knew Hunter and, in fact, shared a horse pasture with him.  He told me “Yes, Hunter did go out into our pasture at 4 AM, after a night of chemically infused writing, shoot his pistol into the air and howl at the moon, even if there was no moon.

In this writer’s opinion, pickup truck advertising–hell most advertising–has all the moral rectitude of howling at the moon.

 R.I.P. – H.S.T.

And thanks for listening.

Until next time.

Duane

“Park Your Car Now. Get Out, And Call Your Dealer!”

Stellantis is taking the rare step of telling some owners of Jeep, Dodge and Ram vehicles to park their cars immediately, and issued a formal “Do Not Drive” order for 225,000 vehicles with unrepaired Takata airbags. The National Highway Traffic Safety Admin. has documented 28 deaths and many gruesome and life altering injuries from exploding Takata airbags. Metal fragments and pieces of the dashboard could be blasted into your neck and face.
Hmm … sounds serious to me. For a little perspective, my friend Klaus Arning, who helped me bring the Mustang I.R.S. back to life, was working on airbags in the 60’s. To paraphrase, “Setting off a dynamite blast in a closed car full of women and children was quite a challenge.” All the auto manufactures were cooperating in the rush to develop a technology the Federal Government said it would soon be mandating.

The first bags were designed to catch a 200-pound man not wearing a seat belt. Hey, those were the guys doing the testing. After children in car seats and shorter women were reported being horribly killed, some decapitated, designers reduced the power.

When the design work was done, most of the American suppliers settled on using sodium azide (NaN3 ) as an inflator. The Japanese firm Takata chose ammonium nitrate, because it was cheap, and as we all know, CHEAP is the holy grail in automotive purchasing.

Ammonium nitrate mixed with a little water can explode spontaneously. Timothy McVeigh used a rental truck full of ammonium nitrate to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on 19 April, 1995.

Ammonia loves water and will get it anyway it can, even pulling it out of the air. Therein lies the rub. Ammonium nitrate has an explosion expansion ratio of about 1,000, while the expansion ratio of water turning to steam is roughly 1,600. You can see that a very small of water would increase the power of an airbag inflator by a lot. OUCH ! .

One of the axioms of physics is…everything leaks … so a car in a humid location will probably have a bag inflator with some moisture inside it. 100 million cars world wide, 67 million in the U.S. (or about 1 in 7 cars on the road) are Takata equipped.

The solution: Park your car until replacement parts are available. Takata is out of business, of course, but the 7 manufactures who chose their air bags are producing replacement parts using a different inflator chemical. It could take a while, but please keep making your car payment.

In the mid 80’s I was working for Morton Thiokol as a Facilities Engineer. Morton had about 65% of the airbag business using sodium azide. We were doing a transformer swap late one night when I saw lights on in the test lab. I went in to see what was up. One of our senior engineers was trying to get a batch of sodium azide samples to pass our test cycle.

Test samples were placed in a 3/4 inch thick stainless steel container about 3 feet in diameter and about 3 feet tall with a lid secured by spring loaded latches. That was inside a concrete cell with a blast proof window and a heavy duty chainlink fence ceiling. Above the chain link was the concrete of the second floor. That concrete was covered with deep gouges made by the the container lid when testing “overly energetic” samples.

I didn’t know the engineer well, but it was late at night, and in a conspiratorial voice he said, “Duane ,we don’t really know what these things will do.” I said we’ve been making and testing them for years. He said, “ I know, but we don’t know what they’ll do 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. A farmer who lives at the end of a ten mile long dirt road stands a good chance of having the wafers (the sodium azide is pressed into wafers about the size of a Ritz cracker and put in a holder to guarantee a uniform burn) turn into dust from the vibration on a rough road. Azide dust burns MANY times faster and hotter than we’ve designed for.” You mean if the bag goes off it could kill the farmer and his entire family I said. “EASILY, he said. Hopefully I’ll be retired before that happens.”

The DO NOT DRIVE order is more bad news for the Stellantis corporation, whose RAM pickup brand is sitting on a 460 day supply of trucks, while their competitor Chevy Colorado has the opposite problem, a 19 day supply …a 70 day supply is considered healthy.

A solution would be stop requiring air bags.

Some SUVs now have 10 (!) airbags that all go off at once. They decrease the chances of injury by 10% over just a 3-point seat belt. Many accidents are multiple impact events, car hits curb, airbags goes off, then car hits tree and rolls.The air bags are of no help in numbers 2 and 3. In fact they could decrease your chances. If you and your family hadn’t just been hit in the face with 10 sledge hammers and you could have possibly avoided that damn tree.

How about we make all the government required “safety” features optional. No “lane assist,” no stop/start, no electronic stability control, no cameras, no tire pressure monitoring, no anti-lock braking, no automatic emergency braking, no blind spot detection, no computers that can only be programed by the dealer. These government-mandated safety features raise the cost of a new car by thousands, and they have the power to kill you and your entire family.

Please form two orderly lines, Product Liability lawyers to my left. Personal Injury lawyers to my right.

Feeding time will commence shortly.

Thanks for listening.

Duane

It was late summer of 1995. My son Michael and his friends were dreading the start of 9th grade at Davis High School. My wife saw their suffering and made a phone call to the school principal to see if there was anything we could do to improve the classes Mike and his friends were scheduled to attend. They were separate from the normal classes and called Resource. Students with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or any other “disorder” were sent there, and the other kids of course called the classes “Retard.”

Suzanne, in her usual polite manner asked the principal why Mike was in a room full of kids, some in wheelchairs and others just staring out the window, while the teacher loaded one video after another into the player. “He’s just wasting his time there and he deserves something better.”

The principal said, “Good we don’t want his type here at Davis.”

If you’ve ever seen a mama Grizzly protecting her cubs, you saw Suzy taking on that public servant. After much sound and fury, we knew we were through with public education. Suz and I both have teaching certificates, BYU class of ’69 thank you, and after our student teaching experience we decided, “It’s not for us.”

We met with the parents of Mike’s friends and decided to set up our basement rec room as a home school, get the best curriculum we could find (there are lots of them in Utah) and call it SOMERSET ACADEMY after the private development called Somerset Farms that we live in.

We would teach the boys the building trades in the morning and do home school in the evenings. They would learn how to build a house from the ground up, and if they liked one of the trades–carpenter, painter, roofer, etc.–they could pursue that as a lifetime skill.  I was a contractor/builder/developer in Vail in a previous life.

A friend and neighbor was building a house in a nearby development so I bought the lot next door to him, the prints for his house and a list of the sub-contractors he was using. I quit my job with an engineering company and, with a little schmoozing down at the bank, we got a construction loan. We were off and running.

It’s amazing how much I remembered from the Vail days, but also how much I’d forgotten. Fortunately, we had the house next door to use as a teaching tool. Other builders in the neighborhood, when they heard what we were doing, would stop by. “If there’s anything we can do for you, just let us know.” One old guy and a half dozen 14-year-olds gonna build that house from the ground up? Hmm.

My previous employer sent an excavation crew to dig the basement for us. When I called the concrete guy on my list of subs, he said “We can be there tomorrow.” A typical U.S. home consists of roughly 3,000 major components if you count only major construction assemblies (like roof, foundation, or walls) and over 600,000 if you count every nail, screw, and wire. Each of these has to be speced, ordered, and delivered to the right place at the right time in the right sequence. I told my crew, “If we do the right things, in the right way, in the right order, the house will build itself.” Life’s lessons are right there before you if you’ll only listen.

With the help of a few major and a lot of minor miracles (or coincidences) we managed to finish the project and actually made a little money! The bank got nervous when it took so long, over a year, but we had no trouble selling it. We built it to be handicapped accessible just because no one else was in that niche.  We printed flyers and posted them everywhere we thought handicapped people might see them.  Once we found the right buyer, it was an easy sale, saving us the 6% realtor fee. 

Suzanne handled the home school component with her usual aplomb.  She taught English and History and used some of the many private tutors available, most of them moon lighting public school teachers–“Your place or mine?“–to handle math and science. All of our students passed the General Education Development (G.E.D.) tests with ease and became high school graduates. Proving that “fools rush in,” we decided to build another house, with some modifications, in the same neighborhood. Slightly larger, again with a walk-out basement, but with an extra room built into the trusses which gave us 500 more square feet and a ½ bath. Our subs were a big help, pointing out where we could make their job easier and cost less. Since I was the owner, architect, and general contractor, changes were no problem, and the project took about half the time of the first one.

If one of our crew decided he wanted to be a painter, for instance, I let him spec the material, schedule the delivery, and coordinate with the other trades he would be interfacing with. Mr. Murphy’s lawyers paid us a few visits, but overall it went pretty well.

The housing market was still booming under Obama’s easy credit plan, so we decided to try it again. Our loan officer, whom I was becoming friends with, had a daughter about the same age as our crew, and warned us this would probably be our last dance. The housing market was due for a turn, since that is what it always does. “Be in when you should be in, and out when you should be out,” she said.

We bought the biggest lot in the neighborhood, expanded our plan to a little over 4,500 square feet, with 2 ½ baths upstairs, a big bath with a jetted tub downstairs, two kitchens, two living rooms, and a walk-out basement. A big deck out back completed the package.  We had become friends with many in the handicapped comminity and hoped to rent it out to one of the Group Home companies in that business, which we were able to do. Girls were upstairs, boys were downstairs, and the full-time manager lived in the attic room. I mowed the lawn and helped shovel the snow while keeping an eye out for any needed repairs or maintenance.

One day I saw a new teenage resident, who had been living in her stepmother’s basement for years, guide her powered wheelchair up the curved walk and into her brand new home as she burst into tears–and so did I.

As the markets got crazier and crazier, my mortgage guy would come by every few months and yell, “Hey Duane, I can get you another $30,000 on your house and lower your payment.”  “Sure,” I’d say, and a couple weeks later he’d show up with the papers and a certified check.

If you want to see what the financial world was doing at that time, find a video of THE BIG SHORT or THE WOLF OF WALLSTREET. Lenders were making huge loans to anyone with a 520 credit score or above. 520  basically means you are still breathing.  These were “bundled” into something called a Collateralized Debt Obligation (C.D.O.)  and sold worldwide to retirement plans and conservative investment funds as AAA rated bonds, backed by the reputation of the good old U.S. of A. Everyone knew the music was gonna stop eventually, but in the meantime–!

The nice lady at the bank and the Group Home company I was renting to both “suggested” I sell the house to the Group for what I owed, cash out, and go find a real job, which I did.

Then it all hit the fan.

On Friday, 15 Jan, 2010, at 4:45 P.M., federal marshalls entered our bank, which was founded in 1891, and announced, “This bank is now seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Everyone please stand up, keep your hands in view, do NOT touch anything, especially files or keyboards, and line up against this wall. You will be allowed to return to your desks one by one to retrieve keys and hat and coats. Nothing else. Your final checks will be available Tuesday morning at 9:00 A.M. when the bank will reopen for withdrawls only.”

The F.D.I.C. covered 277 million in losses on insured deposits. Uninsured depositors and Bank stockholders lost hundreds of millions of dollars, but that was nothing compared to what was happening worldwide. My friend was now looking for a job, along with many others.

Well, it was a good project. The three houses are still in good shape some 30+ years later. The Home is fully occupied and doing well, and we provided many young people a better shot at life than they would have had otherwise.

Duane

When we moved to Farmington, Utah, about 40 years ago, we bought a lot in a new subdivision called Somerset Farms. There was a stream on 2 sides of the lot and a hiking trail that lead directly into the mountains. We had lived in Vail for 8 years and wanted something with a mountain feel, but without the deep snow and 8 months of winter.

It was also one of the few lots in the subdivision with a nice flat spot for the house I wanted to design.

When we finished the excavation for the house, I used my high school Earth Sciences knowledge to read the geo-history of the 8 foot wall. The bottom 6 feet showed several million years of “alluvial sand and gravel” that you’d expect to find where the valley meets the mountains. About 3 feet from the top there was a thin line of compressed vegetation, some of it still green, and above that was dark rich topsoil that could only have come down from the mountains in a huge debris flow. Mixed into the top layer was a jumble of boulders and logs.

When the first settlers arrived in Farmington they found there wasn’t much that would grow in the alkaline soil that was once the bottom of Lake Bonneville.  Some say it was an act of God, others say sheep had over grazed the mountain side, but in the spring of 1850 a massive slide brought topsoil, rocks and timber down from the mountains to the bench land. That slide shaped the future of the whole area.

As we built our house, I kept finding pieces of rusty iron attached to chunks of rotted timber with crude hand-made bolts. Being interested in such things, I started a pile of mystery metal.  I found out later that flat spot our house sits on was also the spot where the original settler built his barn.

After we got the house all done (is it ever really done ?)  we had time to solve our little metal mystery.  My son Mikey and I would arrange bits of rotted wood and rusty iron into various configurations, hoping that we’d discover the long-ago craftsman’s design. The break came when we rerouted the hiking trail thru a 10 ft. diameter clump of wild roses and found 2 pieces of iron and wood that looked like sled runners buried in the roots.

It is very rare to find any metal older than 1940 around here because virtually every piece was gathered up in WWII scrap drives and sent off to war. Our “sled” probably survived because it was so hard to find.

Farmington was settled in 1847 so the runners could have been over 100 years old. We weren’t sure of the overall design, but we were pretty sure of the original dimensions of the wood pieces. They were all odd sizes (no Home Depot) and they had been cut with a rotary saw, since band saws were way into the future.

With the pieces in our hands and the design in our heads, we found a small family-owned saw mill near Jackson Hole willing to tackle the job. When we got it all assembled, we found we had a 1/2 scale front to a horse drawn sled!

The Mormons who settled here were very communal. They had to be. Rocks and timber brought down by the slide supplied building material for homes and farms and the rich top soil would grow anything. Row crops such as corn and wheat were impractical due to the number of huge  rocks everywhere, but trees, especially cherry trees, did very well. The settlers chose a variety of sweet cherry and a variety of tart cherry to plant that they hoped would do well.

Modern place names still tell the story: Cherry Hill, Cherry Lane, Fruit Heights, etc.

Once I knew the identity of our stow away, I had to know more about it. This was probably a cherry sled. A sled makes more sense than a wheel in the flood irrigated orchards, where a wheel would get stuck in the soft soil. It was small enough a horse could pull it between the trees and rocks, and low enough that children (the most important crop) could pick  cherries and place them in a box mounted to the sled. That box was then loaded onto a full-size wagon that was taken to the processing center at lunch time where long tables of food awaited the pickers.

As I write this on January 1, 2026, and I put my hands on the pieces where my likely relative placed his, I marvel at the Civil War era workmanship, and I’m reminded of this recipe for success from tennis great Arthur Ashe … “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”

All the best to you in the new year. 

Duane  

Addendum

As I was researching some background for the SLED STORY, I was impressed by the names used in the horse & buggy era that were carried over into the automotive era, such as:

TIRES: Before there were steel wheels and rubber tires, wheels were made of sections of wood held together by a tight-fitting iron ring known as a “tire” …  spelled in Europe as “tyre.” Sound familiar ?

Since coil springs and leaf springs mostly didn’t exist, the passenger compartment of a coach was suspended by leather straps arranged in an X pattern and the straps suspended from 4 posts.  This dampened the worst shocks from the dirt roads. The whole arrangement is known as “the suspension” and the leather straps replaced by the “shocks.”

We now use those terms, and the whole arrangement is known as “the undercarriage.”

In the days when large logs needed to be turned into dimensional lumber, the first step was to dig a pit. One man would stand in the pit (the pit man) while another stood on the log (the sawyer) and together they sawed the log in half lengthwise. In the car world, any steering component that just goes back and forth is known as the “pitman arm.”

Words such as Brougham,  Landau, and others have made the transition from horse to horse power.  

I’m sure there are others.  Let me know

Home

The above dwelling, 1212 Sanford Avenue, Richland Washington was our government supplied home from 1944 to 1949, while the U.S. chased the plutonium bomb at nearby Hanford Atomic Works. It’s been updated a bit since then … chain link fence, sloped roof replacing the flat roof, vinyl windows and some wood siding. I wonder if insulation was ever installed along with the other updates? The structure was prefabricated plywood, with one oil fed wall heater to fight off the -20 or so winter weather. It took a crew 8 hours to assemble and set up on concrete blocks. About 550 square feet of real linoleum flooring kept the wind whistling under the floorboards from entering the living space. Cool!

 My mother said I was always a “busy boy,” so she gave me the job of dragging the steel garbage cans out to the road once a week, and I could ride my tricycle (most treasured possession) to the neighbors on either side … but no further!

Studying the photo carefully, you’ll see I’ve convinced one of the “big kids” to tie that rope to his bicycle and tow me faster than I could otherwise pedal. From the damage to the front fender and the slight misalignment of the handlebars, I may have had a crash … or two.

In 1948, I spent 6 or 8 months (nobody can remember for sure) in bed with what was diagnosed then as rheumatic fever. That tiny house became even smaller as I fought for my life in what we later found out was radiation exposure, accidental or on purpose.  https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/human-radiation-experiments/ 

I remember the first time I went for a ride with the family after many months of confinement. I made myself carsick by looking from one side of the road and back to the other … not wanting to miss a thing.

We’d had enough of Atomic City, so we relocated to Dad’s hometown of Fillmore, Utah. Dad traded our 6-cylinder Ford sedan for a 1939 Lincoln Zephyr 4-door V12 limo, which I thought was a rocket ship! It had electric windows, electric push button (suicide) door openers, and one of my favorites, an electric radio antenna. When Dad returned from working out of town, he often found his car’s battery dead, and he knew who to blame.

Another favorite feature was the little red light in the speedometer housing that let the Captain know that the high beams were ON … and we were now transitioning to hyper drive! 

Han Solo and The Millennium Falcon surely stole their movie plot from my 6-year-old brain.

The Zephyr was designed by John Tjaarda (1897-1962) under the direction of Edsel B. Ford (1893-1943), who chose the name. I didn’t know that at the time, but I liked John’s work. His son, Tom Tjaarda (1934-2017), designed the Ford-powered Pantera in 1970.

The Zephyr had two jump seats that folded into the back of the front bench. You could carry four grown men in relative comfort in the rear compartment, and the drive shaft tunnel was just right for me to stand on in the back seat to see the dashboard. I loved the sound and vibration of that big V-12 . Much different than a six or even an 8 cylinder, it was somehow comforting.  Dad and I were both most relaxed and happy when we were on the road.

My grandfather was the same way.   https://mustangirs.com/blog/?s=ELMER+CARLING

To paraphrase Steve McQueen’s character in Le Mans, “Everything else is just waiting.”

In those days of high crowned, narrow two-lane roads, bias ply fabric tires, 6 – volt electrics, manual steering and brakes, driving was much more of an adventure than it is today.

By 1949, the railroads were using the incredible amount of money they’d made during the War to switch from steam to diesel locomotives, starting with the long interstate runs.  The diesels required about one tenth of the manpower to operate than steam did. Dad and a friend bought an unused depot building, had it sawn in half and delivered by flat truck to Fillmore. Dad bought a lot near my grandfather and had his half set on a concrete foundation. The building was full of enough railroad stuff, especially in the attic, to keep my 6-year-old brain humming. Buried in the fine dust that that is everywhere in the West, were old telegrams, brass watch fobs and other treasures.

We were close enough to the depot and the tracks that I could hear and feel every movement on the Fillmore branch line.  I especially loved it when one of the remaining steam engines would puff, whistle, clang and chug its way back and forth to pick up and drop off the day’s freight.

The weather in Richland and Fillmore were much alike, both high deserts with wind that seemed to never stop. It was appropriate that we drove a Zephyr (Zephuros is the Greek god of the west wind). Once I was old enough to drive, I found myself drawn to those same high, windy places.

My daughter Michelle seems to have those same wandering ways.  I’ve lost track of how many countries she’s visited, both by commercial and private jet. So far the Wind River Valley in Wyoming seems to be her favorite … and you may have me to blame for that.

Until next time.

Thanks for listening.

Dad

THE WAYWARD WIND by Gogi Grant 

Hello again friends. This month’s post is a whole lot more car-centric than the last few posts. We’ll start off with a Fantasy Piece about Ford buying Harley, then finish with a couple of links to a podcast my friend John Clor, Ford Performance Enthusiast Communications Manager did recently.

The recording is yours truly, who woke up the morning of the podcast with a sore throat.

The written piece is about the Original Venice Crew ( O.V.C. ) “Getting The Band Back Together.”

A recent headline on Facebook screamed “Elon Musk purchases 51% of Harley Davidson!”  Must be true ‘cause it’s on the web … right? Wow! Great news since I just finished restoring the 1953  Harley K Model I rode in high school. Now it’ll be worth a fortune!

The headline turned out not to be true (sadly) … but what if someone with deep pockets really did purchase Harley, whose stock price and profit outlook have been in the tank for years. My favorite bar stool conversation starter is, “What do you think will become of Harley?”

The C.E.O. of Ford, Jim Farley, is on the Harley board and a true gear head. Jim owns and races a real 427 Cobra. The Board has hired Artie Starrs from Topgolf Callaway Brands, where he served as CEO of Topgolf International. He was with Pizza Hut before that. MBA schools preach “A good manager can manage anything, shoe company, bike company, don’t matter.”  Those of you with long memories will remember that scripture from when AMF owned Harley. Didn’t work.

So let’s say Ford purchases my favorite bike manufacturer . There’s some history here.

Ford marketed a Harley-themed F-150 in 2000 and has offered Harley packages on the F-150 off & on since. Some are done at the factory, some by aftermarket “up fitters.”

Now that Ford owns Harley, let’s make riders feel welcome at the local Ford dealer. A special area, we’ll call it the CORRAL, where bike parking and Harley-themed apparel and merchandise will be available. Regular folks getting their Ford serviced can also visit the CORRAL while they wait. Any service over $xx.xx warrants a free Ford/Harley mug, kept full of your favorite hot or cold drink by that wholesome looking gal in the leather trimmed pants and braided leather top.  The purchase of any new Ford will get you a one-time coupon for xx% off on all apparel and merchandise! 

There are also new bikes you can sit on, and if you think you may want to purchase one, our service shuttle will be happy to whisk you over to the Harley dealer, along with a letter of introduction from the Ford credit desk.

If you buy a bike, you will receive a free subscription to the Harley Owners Group (HOG) magazine, which lists the many rallies you can attend, Sturgis and Daytona Beach being among the most famous. Hundreds of thousands of Harley owners attend one or more events each year. Loyalty is the word here.

To get there in comfort, check out the Harley-themed Ford Transit vans on our lot. Transit vans lead their market segment by a wide margin and solve at least two problems you may have when attending a rally. When ordered with the available Camper Package, and the HARLEY/STURGIS upgrade, where to stay and how to get you and your bike(s) there in safety and comfort problem is solved. Believe me, you’ll make a statement when you pull into your reserved camping spot towing your Harley(s) on a matching trailer. It all can be purchased, financed or leased right here at your Ford dealer

Two problems car companies have today:

1) How to build brand loyalty. No one is more loyal than a Harley owner.

The typical HARLEY owner is a little different. His average age is 49 (ouch) and rising. But his income is almost 3X the national average. There have been attempts to market a lower price bike to a younger audience that have just pissed off their traditional customers.  A quote attributed to Ferdinand Porsche may be in play here. “A low-price Porsche is a used Porsche.” My local Harley dealer has started to display some pristine used bikes in his show room. No reason why a guy buying a 10-year-old bike at half the price of new, which looks just like the used one, can’t become a service customer loyal to the brand. If Harley can team with Ford, whose F-150 pickup always tops the loyalty surveys and claims “The best-selling pickup 47 years straight.” it could be a match made in heaven.

2) How to break through the advertising clutter.

Anything Harley does make headlines. 500,000 to 700,000 riders converge on Sturgis every year. Daytona and Myrtle Beach see similar numbers and “Millions watch at home.”  That’s Super Bowl and World Series territory. Does “Sturgis brought to you by the Harley Davidson Division of Ford Motor Company” sound good to you?  The slightly bad boy image amplifies whatever message the ad department is pushing this quarter. 

Ford already uses the rebel image marketing the F-150 pickup, BUILT FORD TOUGH, FORD SUPER DUTY, and don’t forget the RAPTOR and the SHELBY SUPER SNAKE.

No problem with clutter here.

The Ford-Harley tie up could help build showroom traffic for both brands, tapping in to a common emotional thread. Solid American roots. Midwest Heritage. Milwaukee ‘un-Detroit … don’t get more “’Merican” than that.

Until next time, thanks for listening.

Duane

LINKS TO FORD PODCAST & MAGAZINE ARTICLE:

https://podbay.fm/p/mustang-owners-podcast/e/1745222400

The transportation unit in the Parkersburg, WV, Army Reserve got orders for Viet Nam, and our town rallied around them. Local businesses like welding shops and muffler shops fabricated bullet proof shielding for the unit’s vehicles.

As they packed up to leave, the colonel commanding the unit came down from Pittsburg to see them off, and made fun of their “Hillbilly armor.” He assured them it would all be removed once they were in country. “Unsafe, and all units under my command will be uniform.”

Didn’t go over well with the locals.

The brain dead Commander apparently didn’t realize that American soldiers have been building armored vehicles for themselves since before WWII. Half-inch steel plate can stop most small arms fire, and if no plate was available through formal channels, soldiers just switched to informal channels.

“Sure, what ‘cha got ta’ trade.”

Thus was born the Viet Nam 5-ton Gun Truck.  Nothing can stop the American fighting man.

As you can see in these pictures, at first a single 7.62 mm machine gun was thought to be plenty, then Twin Fifties were added, and finally Quad 50s.  “That otter do’er!” There were somewhere between 300 and 400 gun trucks in Viet Nam, all built on an “informal” basis.

With about 400 Quad 50 gun trucks running around Viet Nam, it must have gone something like this, ”Gee I dun’ know Sarge, that Quad gun wus sittin’ right here on the loadin’ dock last night. But dun’ worry, a new run is ordered and on its way.”

Conceived by the Navy in the late 1940’s and still in use, the Quad 50 was the last line of defense against Japanese kamikazes intent on ramming Navy ships. The Quad can rotate 360 degrees, elevate a little past vertical, and depress a little past horizontal. A Browning M2 Quad can fire between 1600 to 2200 rounds per minute. Each 50 caliber bullet is about 1/2 inch in diameter, weighs between 660 and 750 grains (about 1.6 ounces) travels about 2,000 miles per hour and can reach out and touch someone at 3,000 feet. That’s 10 football fields. The feeling in the Navy was “Let’s throw a ton a lead out there and maybe it’ll save our ass.”

 Exactly what was needed for the Gun Trucks.

 As the U.S. got further into the Viet Nam war, a technique (doctrine in mil-speak) of establishing fire bases (FB) on the highest hill in with a view of the surrounding valleys. When a patrol encountered the enemy, howitzer fire could be called in from the FB. Close air support (CAS of course) from helicopters or fixed wing aircraft, known as fast movers, could also be called in.

The best fast mover the U.S. had at the time was the F-105 THUNDER CHIEF. It was envisioned as a  Mach 2 fighter-bomber to drop nukes on Russia, then scoot safely back home.

For Viet Nam it was re-envisioned as the TRIPLE THREAT: nuclear bomber, conventional bomber, and CAS. fighter. Of the 833 F-105’s deployed, 382 were quickly lost.

Something about always fighting the last war.

The ground pounders renamed it the THUD, for the sound it made when it hit the ground. Yes, it was a TRIPLE THREAT all right. It’ll strafe you, it’ll bomb you, or it’ll fall on you. Something had to be done.

I had friends who had friends who were there, and for now we’ll assume the following tale to be somewhat true. 

Sitting around a fire pit bitching and drinking beer as usual, somebody said, ”Man, when we find Charley (enemy troops) choppers show up, stop in midair and throw shit while Charley throws shit back. It’s a shit show to see who dies first. When the fast movers show up, they unload all kinda shit on Charley for a few seconds, then go around to do it again. What we need is a fast mover that unloads tons a shit on Charley while movin’ fast in one place.”

Long silence.

Finally someone, whose name is lost to the mists of time, took a long puff and said, ”When I lived in South America we got our mail and supplies from a guy flying a Cessna that trailed a basket on a long rope. He would show up over our clearing, fly in a circle over us, and that basket would just stay in one place. We unloaded mail and supplies, and reloaded it with whatever we wanted to send out. He didn’t slow down, the engine note never changed, didn’t attract attention, and worked perfect.”

Hmm .. let’s try something.

The next morning the fire pit guys found a rickety old DC-3 that nobody wanted, took the side door off, bolted a “borrowed” Minigun that fired 2,000 rounds a minute on slow, and 6,000 a minute on high to the floor, then  loaded a shit ton  (military term) of 7.62 ammo–every 5th round a tracer–and took off to test the jungle theory.

It was AMAZING !

After a couple of practice turns (it’s known as a pylon turn in air racing) the DC-3 was moving over 100 miles per hour. Looking out the left cockpit window and keeping the wing tip spotted on what he wanted to hit, the pilot was able to keep that Minigun within a few feet of what he was aiming for – and  pour thousands of rounds onto it! From the ground the plane seemed to be flying an ELLIPSE, accelerating to a hundred miles per hour when crossing the viewers line of vision, then slowing almost to a stop when parallel to the line of sight. Almost IMPOSSIBLE to hit.

News like that don’t keep. Soon old DC-3s and their military version C-47 were firing 2 or even 3 Miniguns out the door and windows … and the war changed forever. Somehow the plane picked up the name PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON. Where did that name come from? Was it from a song popular at the time, from the trail of fire it spewed when firing at  night, or did it come from that puff of smoke the night it was conceived? Hard to say.

In the meantime … git yer self about a 1 inch steel nut, tie one end of a 36 inch boot lace to it, and practice “flying” that string and nut across the room. Pausing at a convenient spot, smoothly transition into a circle, being careful to keep the circle parallel to the floor, at a constant speed and as round as possible. You’ll see that nut come to a dead stop as you continue to circle.

Take your string/nut assembly to your favorite watering hole and tell your buddies you have a new magic trick. If there’s an engineer type in the room he’ll insist, “The laws of physics dictate, when you start that circle, centrifugal force make that nut hit you right in the …” 

Well OK. Care to bet a beer on that?

Great fun, and you may be able to drink for free all night long!

Many thanks to my friend of 50+ years, Rick Kopec. Search Google for:                    

                   THE REAL VIETNAM – RICHARD KOPEC

Until next time, thanks for listening.

Duane