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Chapter 12 The Tin Goose Book: The Indomitable Tin Goose Subtitle: The True Story of Preston Tucker and His Car Author: Charles T. Pearson Publisher: Abelard-Schuman Year: 1960 |
12 THE TIN GOOSE
BY THE TIME the new body was well along, with every new part making it look more like an automobile, the franchise program was going strong and there was money in the bank for the first time since the corporation started.
Rockelman announced that more than one hundred dealers had been signed in twenty-one states, including thirty-six in Illinois and eighteen in North Carolina. Garavito was back in business at 39 Pearl Street in New York's financial district, and had negotiations in the works for Mexico, Central and South America and parts of Europe, Asia and Africa.
The wonderful Tin Goose was about to be born.
And high time, too, because the body needed a chassis to hold it up. Nobody knows how the name “Tin Goose” got started, but it was used affectionally by the boys working on it. The first Tri-Motor airplane, built for Ford by Bill Stout, also was called the Tin Goose.
If Tucker thought he had troubles before, he soon realized that they were just a workout. His new troubles were engineers.
There is something about teaching a man to operate a slide rule that gives him a God complex, with overtones of Einstein. Even when the answer is off a few decimals one way or the other, as frequently happens, the slide rule superman will brush it off with lofty disdain: what's a decimal, after all? I got the answer without using a pencil and paper like ordinary people, didn't I?
Within the broad classification of mechanical engineers there are various sub-species, which can be divided roughly into two groups: Monkey Wrench Engineers, who drive their wives to despair because with no warning at all they turn up greasy and unpresentable, and Paper Engineers, who are clean and neat and look like the models in Esquire magazine.
The monkey wrench boys have an unquenchable curiosity to find out if their ideas will actually work, and can be found nights and week-ends smeared with grease from eyebrows to shoelaces, completely happy. If their nails look grimy when company drops in, to hell with the company. Paper engineers don't give a damn if they never find out whether their ideas are any good or not. Their philosophy is let the jerks with money work on it.
At the Tucker plant the monkey wrench engineers were probably outnumbered two to one. The stable of prima donnas in the engineering department made Rudolph Bing's divas look like a kindergesang in Milwaukee. With a few exceptions, each engineer believed the rest were a lot of dopes and if Tucker just listened to him, he'd have an automobile.
Tucker had some screwy ideas just as Henry Kaiser did and, like Kaiser, he insisted that his engineers try to work them out. Basically his approach was the same as in any big company, in which standard practice is to toss a lot of engineers in the pot, keep it stirred up and hope something useful comes out.
Naturally, a few engineers did know their business, and these few finally built one hell of an automobile, in spite of red tape and the endless procession of expects that cluttered up the drafting rooms. But that was after the Tin Goose. The job now was to translate Tucker's ideas into displacement and horsepower, gears and bearings, and castings and forgings.
Tucker's overall design was basically sound, and the controversy at the time over front versus rear-engine placement was silly, as has been proved by countless thousands of highly successful rear-engine cars and buses operating today. The main obstacle to any manufacturer's switching to rear engine was the cost of a complete retooling job, running easily into millions of dollars. Tucker said conventional American automobiles were “front heavy,” that front wheels had to carry most of the braking load, and the rear end didn't have enough weight for traction. Chrysler backed up his arguments on brakes when it put heavy double-cylinder brakes on its front wheels.
Tucker's arguments for a rear engine were chiefly (1) combining power and weight where the power is applied, which is at the rear wheels except in front-drive cars; (2) better braking due to the shift of weight to the front when brakes are applied, and (3) a flat passenger compartment without a tunnel for the driveshaft, or a big bulge where the transmission sticks out. Drivers of Tucker cars today will endorse all three claims with enthusiasm. When you give a Tucker too much throttle on a standing start, they say, you may shear an axle but you won't hear the screech of tires shedding rubber as in some of the latest super-powered jobs out af Detroit. Arguments against the rear engine were chiefly not enough weight in front, for steering, and cutting down on luggage space. The most important advantage of placing the engine in front is that it fits between the front wheels, where the space is so narrow (to allow room for the wheels to turn) that it isn't much good for anything else anyway. This also is an advantage of a straight, or “V” engine; it fits easily between the front wheels, where a flat or opposed engine might be crowded. As to lugguge space, one writer commented: “It's debatable whether We need the vast and echoing caverns that mark many current cars.”
Volkswagen, Porsche and Renault beat the weight problem by placing the front floor board and foot pedals between the wheels, moving the weight of passengers forward. VW has a large luggage compartment behind the rear seat, but it's awkward to reach. There have been many highly successful rear-engine cars, all foreign until the Corvair; others include the Czech Tatra and certain models of Isotta-Fraschini, Mercedes-Benz and Fiat, in addition to thousands of rear-engine buses on American highways today.
Design of the engine was likewise basically sound. Tucker wanted low rpm with high torque, and he decided a big engine was the answer. The first engine (in the Tin Goose), later called a “monstrosity,” was 5 x 5: five-inch bore and five-inch stroke, with 589 cubic inches displacement, which gave it the name “589.” Size of the engine alone didn't make it a monstrosity, nor did its potential power. It was a flat, or opposed engine that fit easily into a space 48 inches long, 24 inches wide and 17 inches high, complete with accessories.
Tucker was shooting for 150 horsepower which the engine would have delivered at 1,800 rpm. At the speed of modern engines it should have delivered around 300 horsepower, which perhaps made it a monstrosity in 1947 but isn't at all out of line with present auto power plants. At the slower engine speed it should have run 200,000 miles without a valve or ring job.
In the overall design, the one important feature that engineers couldn't beat was the double torque drive directly to the rear wheels. Tucker's plan called for placing the engine transversely between the wheels, with ends of the crankshaft coupled directly to the wheels, with variable pitch torque converters which would have vanes that could be swung across center to get reverse without gears.
This, said Tucker, would eliminate the transmission and differential. While this feature was a complete fiasco, it wasn't quite as fantastic as many charged at the time. One company in Detroit was reported recently to be testing two torque converters geared to the driveshaft to turn the rear wheels, which of course would eliminate the differential. Parsons, Tucker's vice president in charge of engineering, says the next logical step for Buick's variable pitch turbine is to turn the blades still farther and get reverse-without gears, as Tucker planned it.
Responsibility for publicizing and trying to incorporate this feature was chiefly Tucker's, as he continued to insist on it long after engineers found that there wasn't room enough for more than a single converter on each side, and that one converter big enough to do the job would be larger than the wheels. One irreverent suggestion left the engineers fuming—that they forget about the rear wheels and just put tires on the torque converters.
One more publicized feature was sound in theory, but ahead of its time. This was the business of spraying cylinder walls of the aluminum block with bronze, which Tucker said would have close to the same coefficient of expansion as the aluminum pistons and make closer tolerances possible. They tried it but the results weren't at all happy. Later Porsche chrome-plated aluminum cylinder walls with essentially the same result, and Porsche today has almost a monopoly in speed and endurance runs in its class.
About the only criticism of the body was that it had 600 pounds of solder, which was possible but unlikely. Plenty of solder was used, for the same reason they used an Oldsmobile body for a seat buck when they started building the model—it saved time and got the job done.
All this work was done under terrific pressure to get the job done fast. Not enough test equipment had been set up to go at it scientifically, and even if there had been there wasn't time to give it the standard research treatment that any new design needs. Tucker needed an automobile, and fast.
Much has been written about the “589” engine, and it may have been potentially all that was claimed for it. But for Tucker's purpose it had too many imperfections and by the time the World Premiere was scheduled it was too late to change.
Final responsibility for failure of the engine-to-wheels torque converters was Tucker's, for it was he who insisted on this feature in the prototype. But for mechanical details of the engine and suspension he relied on his engineers, who had told him in effect: “Here's an engine with fuel injection that will do the job, and here's the suspension.” Tucker said O.K., let's make 'em.
Misplaced decimals may have been responsible for major defects in the first engine and suspension. It could have been that the job was rushed too fast, or mistakes were made in machining or assembly. Whatever the cause, the failure of various self-styled experts to get results, and the constant bickering and red tape in higher levels of the engineering and production departments, influenced the course of the corporation from that time on.
Tucker began to rely more and more on his own judgment in making decisions, and to concentrate important engineering work under small groups of monkey wrench engineers, under conditions in which they could work without having to get a purchase order and seven carbons every time they needed a stove bolt.
Thus the Tin Goose was born in an atmosphere of trial and error, hoopla and hurry-up. It was a stubborn child. It did not live up to its parents' expectations. But it showed flashes of genius as well as temperament, and to Tucker, it was a step in the right direction.