At one point during the car’s construction, we needed a big roll of gluey carbon fibre fabric in a big hurry. The Project Manager decided we should go fetch the roll we needed from the maker in Oklahoma, rather than having them quick-send it up to us—because reasons. I cannot remember and certainly cannot imagine what these reasons might have been. It couldn’t have been a balk at the expense of fast shipping for a heavy, bulky item; we had accounts with all the major shipping carriers, so we could’ve just whipped out one of the team credit cards and had the carbon fibre at our shop in a day or two, but instead three of us would go fetch it in a 30-hour round-trip drive.
The motor pool issued us an almost new ’98 Plymouth Voyager. I showed up at the shop at 7:20 on Tuesday morning, ready to go; we were meant to leave at 7:30. The first thing the Project Manager said to me when I stepped out of the car: “Daniel! You’re here! Great! What’s a 12 and a 31 mean?”. Eh? He gestured towards the Voyager and said “12 and 31! What’s a 12 and a 31?” Oh, that. I had taught him how to pull the trouble codes on his ’90 Spirit and I guess he’d done it on the van, now, because when he’d started it that morning the Check Engine light came on and wouldn’t go off. I was the closest we had to a resident Chryco tech (and I also hadn’t got enough sleep or had any coffee, back when I was severely addicted to the stuff, so this command performance didn’t improve my mood).
12: Start of codes, disregard. 31: open or short circuit to the canister purge solenoid. I reseated the purge solenoid plug and figured I’d reboot the computer; I disconnected the battery and used the 15 minutes to remove the el-strippo van’s FM-AM radio and replace it with the Infinity CD/Cassette deck from my Spirit R/T. Reconnected the battery: no more CEL, and after some gasping and skipping from the 3.0 as the computer relearned its purpose in life, everything was fine and we had selectable tunes, too. Ducky.
We finally left town at 10:30. Heather and/or Michelle had the idea to stop for lunch in Chicago so we could get actual, real Chicago pizza; resentment at the PM and teammates who’d sent us on this dumb errand made it seem like a good idea despite the urgent time pressure. Our maps and printed directions were equally but differently rotten (remember life before nav?), so we went much farther out of our way than we should have, but we did eventually make it to Uno’s. And then, gorked out of our gourds on gutbomb pizza, we decided it would be prudent not to tempt fate by getting back on the interstate until our food comas would lift. At least that’s how we rationalised heading over to American Science & Surplus . Am Sci & Surp is always worth it; we spent nearly two hours and many dollars there.
All in all we lost many hours eating pizza, buying schwag, and getting stuck in Chicagoland traffic, which ate up the time we ought to have used sleeping at a motel that night. So we drove in shifts all through the night, and finally pulled off the road around 4 in the morning for a failed attempt at some sleep. Couple hours later, back on the road we went, on a diet of C-rations (“C” for Convenience store, “C” for Crap, “C” for listening to every CD for the second or third time).
We made it to Tulsa at around 8:00 on Wednesday, but weren’t due to pick up our roll of thermal-curing carbon fibre until 9:00, so we stopped for breakfast. After a meal somewhat resembling eggs, grits, toast and Minute-Maid, down the road we went to Advanced Composites Group to pick up our very perishable carbon fibre, which they’d triple-packed: “We used regular ice packs instead of dry ice ’cause you’re carrying it in a passenger vehicle and we didn’t think you’d want it to fill up with CO2 while you’re trying to drive, so you’re going to have to scoot because regular ice isn’t as cold and the clock’s tickin’ on this stuff”. Nice of them to consider our oxygen requirements, but the triple-packed box was too big to fit crosswise in the cargo area of the Voyager. We had to remove the middle Easy Out Roller Seat (Stow-n-Go was still in the future) and put it sideways along the left side of the van, facing the box of carbon fibre along the right side.
So: three occupants in a van with two anchored seats with seat belts. The unsafety and illegality didn’t really faze us much, consistent with the nature of being in our early 20s, but while I had some experience driving precariously-loaded vehicles, Michelle did not. Inertia and centripetal force and suchlike really matter in a situation like that, so you have to do things like slow the eff down when going around tight curves and cresting little hillocks and otherwise like that. In the unanchored back seat, without any seat belt, I was mentally listing all the marvelous physics classes Michelle could maybe take if we made it back alive, the odds of which were worsening out loud as our nonexistent-and-trending-negative allotted time to complete the mission meant driving at 85-95 mph wherever it was even a little bit possible. The human brain does not finish wiring itself up until one’s mid-20s, and one of the last things to come online is the kind of long-term thinking that processes risks and consequences. Fortunately we didn’t lose that gamble that time, but.
I was pretty surly by about mid-Wednesday. Good thing Heather and Michelle were able to carry on intelligent and interesting conversation, otherwise I’d’ve gone insane. To make the best of a suboptimal situation I stripped off my shirt and kicked off my shoes, leaned back in the sideways bench seat, donned the big black cowboy hat I seem to have favoured back then to keep the sun out my eyes, and put my feet up on the carbon fibre box. To an outside observer it probably looked like I was naked; I got some surprised looks from inside other vehicles: shock from Gladys Kravitz types, curiosity from kids, smiles and waves from the occasional bearish type, and a full-on Warner Bros cartoon-spec aWHOOga! double-take from a dude on a Harley.
Me outside the Solar Car office, 1998
We stopped in Indiana for gasoline and fireworks (early 20s…), and I drove the final 350-mile leg of the trip. It got dark, and that van’s notoriously useless headlamps sure as hell didn’t help. Driving far beyond bedtime got very uncomfortable—eyes unable to focus, hands unsteady on the wheel. Then it got surreal, and then psychedelic as my mind started playing open-eyed dreams. I saw phantom cars pulling out in front of me, trees became trucks, road signs started saying things other than they said, lane markers became meaningless. I started seeing bridges and other cop hangouts that weren’t there, I lost depth perception, and I got this creepy feeling that the van was stationary while the road was moving underneath. The only thing that kept me behind the wheel was knowing that Heather and Michelle were in worse shape.
We finally pulled in at the shop around 2:00 AM on Thursday. The whole team were there waiting to start laying up the composites upon unloading the carbon fibre. We got no “thanks” from the PM, which prompted me to edit what I wanted to say to him down to “Y’know, if we simply report to the team right now what we’ll be doing tomorrow, we can go sleep instead of having the morning meeting at 7:00″. The PM’s insufferably cheery response was thoughtless and tonedeaf: “Oh-ho! But part of the point of that meeting is to get you awake so you can do what you’re doing!”. He was big on programs with names like “LeaderShape”.
Well, goshdangit, y’know, in my early 20s whenever I was really tired and peeved off, I was sometimes sort of extra likely to accidentally do clumsy things like kick the phone off the hook and turn off my pager and forget to set my alarm clock. So wouldn’t you just know it, I missed the dang ol’ 7:00 meeting, darnit. When I woke at 9:30, it was definitely the morning after the night before; my eyes looked like boiled lobsters and my throat felt like 40-grit.
What a great story, thanks for sharing! It can be a slightly disturbing sense of accomplishment when you stop a hare-brained scheme with a simple solution. Like, are you guys insane or I am completely misunderstanding this problem?
Glad you and the crew survived your driving while tired experience. I did it once. No longer twenty-two and sure it will be fine to push on, I pull over and have a kip.
Also, nice hat!
This is the kind of story that almost never gets told. Everyone loves to tell the “Lookie at how great we were when we did this amazing thing” story, but the “Zowee, but we had a lot to learn” stories usually go untold.
It is a belief of mine that during my lifetime there has been an overabundance of highly trained specialists and a shortage of smart, curious, self-taught guys with a lot of common sense. This is not just in engineering and manufacturing, but everywhere. The first group is necessary, of course, and important. But the second group brings something to the table that is not often-enough appreciated.
Well said. An excellent example of a self taught guy is Percy Spencer who only had an elementary school education. Wile working at Raytheon he made enormous improvements to magnetron tubes making them more efficient and easier to manufacture. All this was hugely important in WWII. He later invented the microwave oven. Pretty important contributions to society I say.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Spencer
https://rjl.home.xs4all.nl/Raytheon_histback.html
Another example is Frederick McKinley Jones, an African-American engineer and inventor in the early 20th century. He left school when he was teenager because he was very bored and didn’t like the strict structure at the school. He taught himself the mechanical engineering when working at various jobs and at the car repair garages.
Mr Jones was credited for developing the experimental snowmobile (with propeller attached to the rear like swamp boats), portable x-ray devices, improved refrigeration units for lorries and railroad cars, ticket dispensers for cinemas, improved sound track synchroniser, and so forth. He was largely responsible for the success of Thermo King and worked there until his death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_McKinley_Jones
It is rare to find a Wolverine with enough self-awareness to publish a sentence like “We had too much money, too much luxury, way too much sense of entitlement, not enough hunger, not enough incentive, and we were busily getting experience just after we needed it.” Most UMich grads carry their hubris into the real world and just beg to be brought down a peg or two by the rest of us in the same field. Thank you for this very entertaining read.
Y’welcome and thanks!
My experience with these type of teams in college was that the leader was often hand picked by the dean because they were high potential and fair haired. Those with common sense and technical skills were brought on as “hired help” and treated as such. A prelude for future lessons in the workforce.
I’m sure you’re often right. This time, though, it was very democratic: those who wanted to try for the Project Manager position made their case to the team, who then voted.
Another great story .
I bet many here have good learning stories to share, I certainly do, I’m amazed I’m still alive .
I remember those solar cars, was disappointed they didn’t change things like I thought they would .
More please .
-Nate
I am always fascinated about the different approaches of solving the engineering and mechanical problems, mostly thanks to my brother who has a strong knack of figuring out different approaches or solutions. He loves to talk about them with me. This article is just perfect for that and has lot of interesting detail!
I recalled the big news involving the solar car race challenge in the late 1990s, and I never knew that you were part of the UM team. It’s shame that the solar car race challenge hadn’t changed the world (yet).
“Yew cain’ jes’ stawp awf’n the road lack thet, wayvin’ thim ornge flaygs…they aspozeda be riyed flaygs, nawt ornge wuns!”
Being deaf, I appreciate the letter-for-letter transcription of accents, dialects, and likes, because it shows me clearly the regional pronouncations. Not to mention the accurate descriptions of sound that I can replicate in my mind like a person can read the sheet music and imagine the sound in the head. You have a gift for that, and I do hope to see more of that in the forthcoming articles! Thanks very much for that!
An enjoyable story, and fun to hear about the team’s efforts from the inside. I recall reading about this as it was happening, and I also recall seeing the car in person when it was exhibited at the Boston Museum of Science for quite a few years in the early oughts.
Daniel, I was worried that because you were going to be subbing for Paul for a few days, we (your loyal readers) would have to wait for further COALs from you – but here you are with several consecutive home runs!
Your statement that your team had too many resources handed to them too easily (“affluenza”) rings true – I recommend “Slide Rule”, Nevil Shute’s autobiography. “Nevil Shute” was Nevil Shute Norway’s pen name. Although an accomplished aeronautical engineer, he is best known for his novels, a few of which I consider outstanding.
The relevant part here is that young Shute was one of the engineers involved with the privately-built R100 airship, while a well-funded government team worked on the R101 in parallel. The R100 was successful (although the day of the dirigible was swiftly passing), but the greatly more expensive R101 was failure, crashing with the loss of all crew members.
This may be a simplification, as I haven’t read the book in about 35 years, and I’m not trying to be Ideology Boy here, as for most of my career I worked in telecom engineering at a public utility, and remain very proud of the work our team did under some significant constraints. (So in no way do I think that the issue is a public-private one, but rather that I think having constraints drives creativity and conscientious work – one is more likely to measure twice before cutting if one has a limited budget for wood.)
I’m impressed that your family came out to cheer you on – good on them, and good on you for leaving the project to be with your dad in his illness.
Given that solar cell efficiency is said to have increased greatly in recent years, I wonder whether solar cars are a bit closer to being viable.
In any case, please keep them coming!
I wasn’t on the teams, but had friends who were on the Mini Baja and Moonbuggy teams at Tennessee Tech during that time range. I can tell you they did not get support like you’re describing, though there were certainly gifts from automotives and suppliers in the region. I know most of those folks did have late nights but good times.
That’s a great history of what really happens. Love the twenty year old rationale for decisions.
Back in 1976 we built a steam car for the Australian government to deal with “oil crisis” .remember that.
After 2 years we delivered our composite chassis mid engine roadster with double acting compound piston engine. Only 2 batteries to worry about.
And I see your altered Valiant, there in the background!
Yes that’s the Val. Modded when I was 25 and knew a lot more….
I have a mid engined vw version of steam car now.
Daily driver ? Tesla 3 of course!
NZ-spec Valiant – photo taken during our year in Whangarei (2003/04).
What does the Hemi badge on the trunk signify? Surely not the 426 V8. Some sort of mod to the Slant Six?
Check out that aftermarket rear-window defroster – I was unsuccessful installing one similar in a 1970 Corolla.
That badge refers to the Aussie Hemi six, bigger than the slant six. 245 inches, 165/185hp in this iteration.
I’d forgotten about those aftermarket rear window demisters!
I just read the Wiki article on the Aussie Chrysler inline-6 “Hemi” – quite fascinating (given that I’m a bit of an engine nerd).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Hemi-6_Engine
I’d always assumed that the Aussie Valiants used the Slant Six or a variation thereof.
They did, until the 1970 “VG” models when the Hemi-6 came in. It was only put in cars for Australia and New Zealand; six-cylinder Valiants and related cars built in Australia for export elsewhere (e.g., to South Africa) had the 225 Slant-6 right up through the end in 1981.
The adhesive in that type of aftermarket rear defogger softened when heated. Mistake! Learned the hard way.
Hey, what adhesive shall we use for our defroster grid comprising resistive elements that produce heat when an electric current is passed through them?
I know! Let’s use an adhesive that will get soft when heated!
The vw version of steamer
Hemi means Australia/ Nz 6 cylinder from VG on. In 215 , 245 and 265 ci.
Much faster than old 225 and engine was lighter.
Hemi was a close description of head shape.
I have some video from the TV news of the 1990 Sunrayce. That year it ran from Florida to Detroit and the next to last stop was in my hometown near Lansing.
The UofM car was featured prominently as they were both local and leading the race.
Yep, I think the UM team won that first Sunrayce in 1990.
Anyone who stops in the fast lane of an interstate highway clearly isn’t very intelligent .
-Nate
Goes to show, it is a lot more fun to screw up with Other Peoples’ Money!!!!!
Regarding southern accents, I’m reluctant to throw stones, as I am always appalled when I hear a recording of my own Prairie Hoser voice. Never met a “g” at the end of a word I didn’t wanna drop, eh?
That said, I associate a southern accent with the fibre-optic folks in Georgia and the Carolinas – in my job there were regular phone calls back and forth between simple me and the resident geniuses at Corning, AFL, Alcatel, Draka, OFS, and so on. To me, a southern drawl is the voice of technical competence and authority.
Lots of southern-drawl competence portrayed in “For All Mankind”, a very good show centred round NASA in an alternate timeline.
Yes! Space geek that I (also) am, how could I forget the voices of mission control?
Thanks for the tip – I will check out “For All Mankind”! (Loved “From The Earth To The Moon”.)
Daniel, I finally watched the first episode of “For All Mankind” last night. Oh my oh my! It was written for me … just flipping brilliant.
All of the real history is firmly embedded in my memory banks, so to see this alternative history is absolutely fascinating to me.
Little things like “Senator Kennedy has cancelled his trip to Chappaquiddick!” – oh my, doesn’t history hinge on such things.
Thanks so much for the tip!
This was a thoroughly enjoyable read Daniel. Thanks for sharing! I really laughed at the rationalizing of the Chicago pizza detour on what was supposed to be a get there as quick as possible trip…