|
|---|
|
Chapter 18 Steel, Politics and Piston Liners Book: The Indomitable Tin Goose Subtitle: The True Story of Preston Tucker and His Car Author: Charles T. Pearson Publisher: Abelard-Schuman Year: 1960 |
18 STEEL, POLITICS AND PISTON LINERS
MANY PEOPLE at the plant thought Tucker was crazy, trying to get his own source for steel before production lines were even set up. Some thought he had delusions of grandeur, trying to build an empire on what was still a shoestring, compared with the capital and resources of even the smallest independent.
But he wasn't as crazy as many believed and he wasn't entirely visionary. His efforts to get his own steel plant, like his purchase of Aircooled Motors, were not only to insure a controlled source of supply, but also to strengthen the company with separate sources of income.
The first try for steel failed, even though Tucker was high bidder, with his offer of $2,751,000 well over the “fair value” of $2,500,000 set for the plant by War Assets. The plant was a government-owned blast furnace at Granite City, Illinois, operated by Koppers Company, Inc., under lease. Bidders were Tucker, the Fulton Iron Company of Cleveland and a new company, Missouri-Illinois Furnaces of Granite City, organized only the week before with half its stock owned by Koppers.
All the bids were rejected, but with the rejection WAA announced that the plant had been sold to the new company fronting for Koppers for $3,255,000. What happened was that WAA boosted “fair value” of the plant without notice either to Tucker or Fulton Iron, which automatically disqualified their bids, and sold the plant to the Koppers firm for $5,000 over the new fair value figure.
Petition for an injunction to prevent sale of the plant to Koppers interests was dismissed by the U.S. Court of Appeals, on grounds that the government, in the person of WAA, had not consented to be sued. Associate Justice Bennett Champ Clark, who wrote the opinion, said:
“The transactions in the case are surrounded by a pervasive and most offensive odor of skulduggery. It is perfectly evident to anyone who takes the trouble to examine the record that the adjusting of the 'fair value' by the appellee (WAA) could only result in insuring that the Koppers interests secured this property.”
Undaunted, Tucker was ready with another bid when WAA announced that a blast furnace and coke plant at Cleveland would be disposed of “as early as possible” through negotiations. If he missed here Tucker would be out in the cold, because it was the last government-owned steel plant.
Again Tucker was high bidder, over Republic Steel. He had the money, too, but again both bids were rejected, this time as “inadequate.” When Tucker tried to find out how he could become adequate WAA slipped in a new hooker: he would have to come up with proof that he could get all the materials he needed, not only to operate the steel plant but to build automobiles as well.
This was a far bigger deal than the one in Granite City, rated the world's largest blast furnace and reportedly earning as high as a million dollars a month. Tucker almost knocked himself out getting options on ore, coal and limestone, and firm commitments on lake boats to haul the ore. Altogether he estimated they spent close to a quarter of a million dollars, not including $100,000 “earnest money” tendered with the first bid.
During negotiations a group of big wheels from WAA came to the Chicago plant to check progress, and minor employes melted into the background as the WAA men stalked through the plant and offices with grim faces, a small but impressive parade headed by Jess Larson, administrator. Actually they were just a bunch of guys working for the government in Washington, but to Tucker people they personified the Last Judgment.
And about this time Senator Ferguson jumped down Tucker's throat again with a new investigation, charging WAA with “gross mismanagement” in its disposal of war properties, including certain dealings with Kaiser-Frazer. Charges against K-F were innocuous and the company brushed them off casually. Tucker was Ferguson's real target, and in the end he was the one who was really hurt. Within three months after Ferguson's new attack started, and nine months after the beginning of negotiations, the plant was leased to Kaiser, with an option to buy, for less than either Tucker or Republic had offered. Tucker's only printable comment was that “War Assets must have got itself confused with the maternity and child welfare departments.”
The search for an engine, and the resulting purchase of Aircooled Motors, was more successful. Even before the fight for steel was well under way, Tucker and his board had agreed on at least one point: that the “589” engine still needed too much development work for an automobile that had to be ready within months. The same was true of the double torque converters. Even if they could be worked out, there wasn't time to wait for them now.
There were several possibilities. The Jacobs Aircraft Engine Company at Pottstown, Pennsylvania, had advertised a liquid-cooled six-cylinder opposed light aircraft engine that looked pretty close to what Tucker wanted. But on investigation he found that the engine wasn't even in production, and to develop a design Tucker could use he would almost have to start over. A $100,000 development contract with Jacobs was canceled after innumerable delays, as was a similar contract with the Hoffman Motor Development Company at Detroit.
When efforts to get an engine developed outside failed, Tucker stepped in and set up his own program, and if the board didn't want to approve they could resign. He sent his own men to his Ypsilanti plant where they were put on the payroll, and gave his own shop a contract to develop an engine. There, he said, they could work without interference and red tape, away from the endless bickering and controversy which had developed in Chicago. In Ypsilanti they could buy what they needed without waiting days or weeks for approval and purchase orders.
Heading the project were Eddie Offutt, then in the experimental department in Chicago, and Dan Leabu, who had been working with Offutt. With them went Tucker's oldest son, Preston, Jr., who had left an engineering course at the University of Michigan to work with his father.
“Pres called Eddie and me, and said you guys come back with an engine in three months or we fold up,” Leabu said.
Offutt took the men he wanted from Chicago. They hired two draftsmen in Ypsilanti and another from Detroit, and started to work in the big building behind Tucker's house. Offutt and Leabu were transferred to the Ypsilanti payroll January 12, and they delivered the first engine to Chicago March 6, just fifty-five days later.
G. A. (Andy) Anderson, Tucker's pilot on the Beechcraft, had been urging him to investigate the Franklin engine, which he said was one of the best and most reliable power plants in use on smaller aircraft. Tucker had been thinking along the same lines, so when the Ypsilanti project started they bought four Franklin six-cylinder opposed air-cooled engines from the Bell Aircraft Corporation at Niagara Falls, where they put the engines in helicopters for agricultural use.
All Offutt's crew had to work with were the engines and assembly drawings, which didn't include dimensions. So they took an engine completely apart and measured it, working with micrometers, surface plates and height gauges. When they had their own detailed drawings, Offutt started redesigning the engine to meet specifications he and Tucker had agreed on: an aluminum crank-case, blocks and heads; water cooling; 7-to-1 compression ratio; better than 150 horsepower and cruising speed at 1750 revolutions per minute, around 80 to 90 miles an hour. The original engine was 335 cubic inches, rated at approximately 178 horsepower at 3000 rpm. At 4250 rpm it should have delivered around 300 horsepower, comparable to present engines.
They had to change the blocks and heads for liquid cooling, add a flywheel and bell housing for attaching the transmission, and add an oil pan, since in the helicopter the engine operated in a vertical position.
The men worked in shifts, often around the clock. As fast as Offutt approved various parts, the prints were rushed to pattern shops, and as soon as patterns were ready they went directly to foundries for castings. The first manifolds were cut and welded from heavy sheet iron by Herman Ringling, who had shaped the body of the Tin Goose. Some machining was done in the shop about a block away, which was still equipped for production and tool work. Jobs that could be done faster outside were farmed out.
Part by part they went through the entire engine, and about the only features that remained of the original Franklin were the dimensions, the crank-case, crank-shaft, connecting rods and pistons. Tucker wanted to use as many of the original parts as possible, but comparatively few were adapted to the new design.
Converting to liquid cooling called for addition of a water pump, and the camshaft was changed for better idling, which wasn't important in aircraft. Some of the timing gears were replaced with fiber to reduce noise. A standard automobile generator and starter were added, and by the time they got through it wasn't a Franklin engine any more. But it was still an engine whose performance had been proved with countless thousands of hours of flying time under almost any weather conditions that could be imagined.
Before the first castings for the blocks had cooled off Leabu hauled them from the foundry in a pickup and set them in a jig mill, and when they were ready he brought them back to put in cylinder liners. They already had the liners, a standard size of alloyed steel from Thompson Products. After weeks of hard, almost continuous work the end of the job was in sight, and they decided not to stop until they finished it.
They turned Mrs. Tucker's kitchen into a heat treat department with Mrs. Tucker furnishing the oven, though she didn't know it at the time. They set up a progressive assembly line starting on the back steps, and popped the first two blocks into the oven of the electric stove. It took about three hours to get them up to between 500 and 600 degrees, which was as high as the oven would go. As soon as they were heated through they were set on burners on top of the stove to keep them hot, and two more blocks were stuck in the oven and the blocks outside moved up a step.
Equipment for installing the liners was all ready and consisted chiefly of two large cans, of the kind fruit comes in for restaurants. The larger of the two cans was set on the floor and the smaller one placed inside of it. Then the sleeves were placed one at a time in the smaller inside can, covered with naphtha to keep them from frosting so they would slide into the blocks easily. To cool them, liquid oxygen was poured into the space between the cans from a thermos-like jug.
One at a time the blocks were set on the kitchen floor on bricks, to keep them level and not burn holes in the linoleum. Then one of the men, wearing asbestos gloves, took a liner and slid it into the cylinder opening in the block. Heat had expanded the hole in the block and cold contracted the liner, but it had to be put in fast before it started to expand again.
While the liner expanded it made a shrill humming sound until it was locked in place, and if it went in crooked the only way to get it out was to break it with a hammer, knock out the pieces and start over. On the first block they only lost one liner.
Within eleven hours after the first blocks were put in the oven, the first engine was together and ready for test. In a garage space in the front of the building the engine was set on a makeshift stand, with a garden hose connected to the water inlet on the block and a five-gallon can of gasoline hung over-head, connected to the carburetor with a length of rubber tubing. A flexible tube running under the garage door carried off the exhaust. It was still winter in Ypsilanti.
After a few adjustments the engine took off. It was a climax, but everybody was too tired to celebrate. They let it run about five minutes, yanked off the gasoline and water connections and the flexible exhaust tube, and threw the engine in the back of a pickup. Offutt and Leabu took off for Chicago, and Tucker had an engine—and with the engine were patterns and temporary tooling for making at least another hundred.
The only one who lost in the whole deal was Mrs. Tucker, whose stove was ruined. Where they had set the blocks on the top burners, the whole top of the stove sagged in the middle. Preston Junior thought it was only fair that his mother get a new stove out of it, so he added the price to the bill which went to the board of directors for approval. One of them took a second look.
“What the hell kind of a business are we in?” he demanded.
Preston Junior explained what had happened. The board approved the item unanimously, but Tucker wouldn't let it go through.
“If this gets out people aren't going to understand,” he said. “The auditors are going to make an issue of it and before we're through some stockholder will be yelling his head off. I'lI buy the damn stove myself.”
On March 21 Tucker announced the purchase of Aircooled Motors, which built the Franklin engine, from Republic Aviation Corporation for $1,800,000. He had accomplished a double purpose, the same which had motivated him in going after the steel plants: he had a controlled source of supply and a separate source of income for the corporation.
Tucker faced a lot of bitter opposition inside the corporation when he bought Aircooled and was criticized severely outside, but the years since have vindicated his judgment. Aircooled Motors has made an average net profit of half a million dollars a year after taxes, and the plant's present minimum value is estimated at $3,500,000.
With preliminary design and temporary tooling complete, Offutt and his men went back to Ypsilanti and finished three more engines, and after the corporation bought Aircooled, further refinement and testing were transferred there.
The bill to Tucker Corporation for the job was $114,215, which was comparable to the amounts asked for development by other companies. But there was a difference, more important than the price. This time they got an engine—not one engine but four, with patterns and tooling—and they got it fast, in less than two months.
No one ever claimed the engine was perfect for the automobile. Work was being done constantly to improve its performance. Engines in some of the cars were a bit temperamental but they performed, and there are people driving Tuckers today who will put the Tucker engine against new V-8's for all-around performance and reliability. Most of the troubles seemed to be in carburetion and timing, and both could be solved long before cars were in quantity production.
When they first tested the new engine in Chicago it looked for a while as if Offutt and his crew had goofed. The engine was running hot and nobody could understand why, until one of the engineers from Aircooled took a closer look.
In the rush to test the engine before leaving Ypsilanti, somebody had put the fan on backwards.