Networking and Principles

After serving a Mission for the Church I attended BYU to pick up 18 Credits of Spanish by taking a single class in Spanish. While there, at the end of first semester a friend of mine referred me to his boss, the owner of a small construction company as a mechanic. Mr. Nelsen was not too sure if he needed me because he did need someone who could pull their weight so he gave me a test. The test was to rebuild the carburetor of his one year old pickup because it has lost some pickup. The carburetor was a quadra-jet which were notorious for being difficult to overhaul, in fact I had tried to overhaul the same carburetor on my friends Chevy car a year before and was unsuccessfully, we ended up trading it in for a factory rebuilt which cost about $60 dollars where the kit was $10. I could not really tell Mr. Nelson that his carburetor was difficult to overhaul so I started. I opened the overhaul kit box and reviewed the instructions and then took the carburetor apart and put the parts in the carburetor cleaner. While they were soaking, I cleaned the face of inlet manifold. Then I cleaned the parts as thoroughly as possible rinsing in gas and blowing off with high pressure air. I most carefully reassembled the carburetor. After I installed it, the engine started with only a little cranking. Then, thinking of what else may have contributed to the loss of power, I asked for a timing light and checked the service manual for the timing setting specification of the engine. The manual said 9 degrees of advanced timing. I hooked the timing light and started the engine. It was at the factory setting of 9 degrees but I had learned from my dune buggy racing experience that at an elevation of 5,000 feet the atmospheric pressure was a little low and advancing the timing 3 degrees rotation on the crankshaft resulted in better power, so I loosened the distributor hold down and carefully rotated the distributor until the timing light showed 12 degrees advanced. I cleaned my tools up and back away from the pickup. The shop Foreman Larry sent for Mr. Nelson. He came out in a minute and without even saying anything took off in the pickup for a test drive. Needless to say, I was nervous and had my fingers crossed. My friend Mel came by and said, don't worry, I am sure you did a good job. Twenty minutes latter the white pickup returned with a smiling owner. He said, If I am not mistaken this truck has more pickup than when it was new, Dwight, you are hired. When can you start.

The moral of the story is that often you need a reference to get an opportunity but you still have to deliver.

Latter that summer the L.C. Nelson Construction was constructing a parking lot and restrooms on one of the highways going up the mountains near Salt Lake City. One day, one of the dump trucks turned over because as the dumping portion of the truck raised the center of gravity of the truck as it was backed up in a perpendicular manner to the highway and on a 30 or 40 degree slope, it tipped over breaking the bed from the truck and breaking the bed loose and the engine mounts. The evaluation resulted in the need to transport the dump by trailer back to the shop. I was in the shop servicing a pickup when the call came in to bring the ford truck with the low boy trailer to the job site to get the rolled over dump truck and if I would bring it up. I left driving the relatively small truck, a single drive axle with a Cat V8 a five speed transmission and a two speed differential. Soon I was starting up the small two lane highway heading up the mountain to the job site. The truck engine began to lose RPM as it started up the hill. I clutched and shifted down which worked for a while but as we went further the RPM slowly dropped again, again I shifted down. This repeated again before I reached the site, I ended up in third gear direct on the differential. Mr. Nelson and I wenched the up righted but damaged truck onto the low boy. We chained it down well and I set off down the mountain. I decided that since I came up in 3rd direct I should start the next gear down of 3rd under. I shifted the differential to under and slowly started down the hill. I never pushed on the throttle but the rpm was soon at the rated speed of 3,500. This made me nervous so I pushed on the brakes to keep it from over speeding with the intent of shifting down another gear. As I pushed the truck did not respond and before I knew the engine was at 4,000 rpm, 500 rpm above the rated speed. I thought of taking the transmission out of gear and forcing it to a lower gear but remembered that once out of gear the their would be no possibility of putting it in gear and the truck would accelerate with out any resistance. I resisted this temptation and left it in gear concentrating on keeping the truck on the road and praying that I would not come up on slower moving traffic in my lane and on coming traffic in the other as on one side was steep mountain side and on the other steep slope downward. Any vehicle run of the road on either side had little hope of coming to a stop safely for the major portion of the road. I honked the horn repeatedly to warn up coming vehicles. The speed was still picking up and I was forced to pass a slower moving car and barely made it back on my side of the road before hitting an on coming car. The slope of the mountain had not decrease at all and the rpm was past 4,500 and approaching 5,000 which was the end of the gage. Just then there was a loud "Clunk" under the hood and I subconsciously pushed in the clutch pedal. When I let it out, the drive axle tires began braking. I was able to pull the vehicle over and off the road. Seconds later, Mr. Nelsons pickup pulled in front of the truck and stopped. He jumped out and asked if I was O.K. I told him I was. I told him how I had heard a loud "Clunk" and clutched the transmission and the drive axle tires were then locked up. When we lifted the hood the fan had broken off and caused the clunk. Latter we learned the oil pump had failed and the bearings had extruded like butter and then the engine froze up. It cost a couple of thousand dollars to fix the engine where had I wrecked the vehicle it would have cost a lot more and if some one would have been hurt or killed it would have been much worse. Had I not reviewed this circumstance before hand and had the standard established to keep the transmission in gear, the results could have been much worse. The lesson reiterated here is that for critical situations, the possibility must be reviewed before hand, the correct response identified and the standard of behavior internalized.

Clinkers

As a young boy in a small town in southern Utah in the fifties I had the opportunity to help the family by taking the clinkers out. I was the second oldest in a family of 5 children, I had an older sister, Rhea, and three younger brothers: Howard, Larry and Kendall. A common method of heating a home in the Rocky Mountains was using coal fired furnaces, which we used. A byproduct of the burning coal was melted byproducts and contaminants which ended as clinkers. They were removed from the furnace by my father and put in a galvanized bucket. When the bucket was filled, usually once or twice a week, it was carried from the basement to the back porch. I was given the job to carry the loaded bucket from the back porch to the driveway, where I scattered the clinkers and the cars that parked there would break them up. I remember how difficult this task was as the bucket of clinkers weighed more than I did. It was so heavy and difficult to keep off the ground that I soon learned to be creative in how I carried the bucket. The wire handle on the bucket, the height of the bucket, and my height resulted in a situation that if my arm was fully extended the bucket would be on the ground with 3 or 4 inches to spare. If I bent my arms and held the weight of the bucket with my biceps, I was only able to go three or four steps before my arms gave out and I was forced to take a rest. I soon learned that if I spun around with the bucket while walking toward the drive way I could make much more distance with each try than holding the load with my biceps. So this became my pattern. I would take the bucket off the porch with a swinging motion and spin and walk to the corner of the house. I would then set it down, as it was difficult to make the left hand turn while spinning and still keeping your direction. I would take a rest and then start the spinning and walking toward the drive way. This was about 50 feet and would usually take two tries. After the second year and a little growth I could make the last run in one try. I always remember that I was glad for this chore because it made me feel like I contributed to the benefit of the family and my Mom would usually thank me for doing it. This was my first chore as a boy that I remember.