Tuesday, December 17, 2013

The Doug Nash Transmission Story


                                    The Doug Nash Transmission Story
                                                          1984
                                                    A true story
                                Written 2013 and revised 02/04/2016
                                                  Howard Yasgar

In 1984 I was fortunate enough to have  bought a new Chevrolet Corvette.
Several years earlier, I had owned a 1978, Centennial model with a four speed manual transmission, so in 1984, when I had the opportunity to buy another Corvette, I was anxious to find a model with a four speed manual transmission.
I called around to the various Chevrolet dealers, in the Miami area.
Most all of the dealers that had Corvettes in stock only had cars with automatic transmissions.
Now, my wife Katherine wasn’t too happy about my wanting to get a standard shift
Transmission, because her job required her to wear high heeled shoes, and having to use a standard shift clutch with high heels, was not going to make it easy for her to drive the car.
I eventually found a dealer in Fort Lauderdale that actually had a 1984 silver Corvette with a four speed transmission, and it was on their showroom floor and ready to go.
We drove to Fort Lauderdale, and there it was, it was a real beauty, it had a silver exterior and silver interior, and it had a four speed transmission.
The salesman told us that 1984 model was a transition year for Corvette and this was the year that Chevrolet was trying out several new types of technology.
He said that the car had all printed circuits in the dashboard, and it had a new fuel injection system, as well as an electronic ignition system and a four speed Dough Nash manual transmission with overdrive.
I knew buying a car in a year that Chevrolet was changing all their technology was a pretty risky thing to do, as you never knew if they had really worked all the bugs.
But the car was so beautiful and it was under warranty, so I bought it.
The very first week that we had the car, we went out for supper to a South Miami   restaurant, and I was fortunate enough to get a parking space right by the restaurants front door.
About half way through the meal we heard an annoying car alarm going off outside of the restaurant, and it became apparent that no one was shutting it off.
I could see all the patrons including us, getting pretty irritated about the noise.
It wasn’t until a waitress opened up the restaurants front door to look outside that we realized it was our car making all the noise.
I got up and I went out and sat in the driver’s seat, and I started pushing every button but the alarm wouldn’t shut off.
It was embarrassing, and I was frustrated so I thought my only solution was to start the car up and drive it somewhere where the alarm wouldn’t bother anyone.
Turns out, that was the trick, as soon as I put the key in the ignition and turned it, the alarm shut off, and that was our first surprise.      
A few weeks later we were down in the Florida Keys, having a drink or two at the Holiday Isle restaurant, hotel and bar complex at Islamorada.
We had already had few Rum Runners at the outdoor bar and we decided to try their barbecue restaurant called “Ripps Ribs”.
It was a big mistake as their food turned out to be the greasiest stuff I had ever eaten.
Our new Corvette was parked right outside, so, after eating, we got in the car. I was intending on driving to our condo at Executive Bay that was a few miles up U.S. 1.
Suddenly I felt very sick, so I opened my door and threw up all of my Ripps Ribs on the pavement.
As soon as I had recovered from that, I went to start the car.
Well that brand new Corvette just wouldn’t start.
As lousy as I felt, I thought, that’s no problem, since I’m a pretty good mechanic and I should, be able to quickly diagnose and fix the problem.
So I opened my driver’s side door to get out of the car, but I couldn’t get out because  that was where I had thrown up.
Luckily I had a Miami Herald newspaper in the car, I always knew the Miami Herald was good for something, so I spread it out on the ground over the mess.
I got out of the car and opened the Corvette’s hood.
I was looking for something I was familiar with like a carburetor or a distributor or any kind of linkage that I could jiggle around and adjust.
Well, this was the first time I had really looked closely at the new 350 cubic inch cross fire fuel injected engine.
There was absolutely nothing for me to jiggle.
For that matter there was nothing to see as the engine had a plastic shroud over it, and I couldn’t even figure out how to remove it.
I think that was my wakeup call, because at that moment I realized I would never be able to repair any late model car.
I looked and looked but  I didn’t even recognize anything on the engine.
We were fortunate to be able to hitch a ride to our condo, and in the morning I called the Chevrolet dealer.          
They were real nice about it, they said that Corvette had an extraordinary amount of electronic ignition problems on the 1984  models, but not to worry, it was all covered by my warranty.
The next day they came to the Keys and towed the vehicle away.
When we went to pick up the car, we were assured that the problem had been solved and they were right the car ran well for more than a year.
One day we were driving up US 1 to Miami and the car just stopped, so I coasted to the side of the road and onto the grass.
This time Katherine and I had to hitchhike home to Miami.
The car was again repaired under warranty, but now it was getting near the end of the warranty.
Once the Corvette was out of warranty, I started to get very nervous.
I had heard lots of horror stories about problems with all the 1984 Corvettes
I was told that if a dashboard gauge went bad, it couldn’t be fixed, because they were printed circuits. So the whole dashboard needed to be replaced at some astronomical cost.
Well, my worst fears came to pass about a year after the cars warranty ran out.
The four speed Doug Nash transmission, started to make a whining noise and the faster I went, the louder it got.
I called the customer service representative at our local Chevrolet agency and he said the only way they would fix the car was by changing the entire transmission for only $2400.00 plus the labor to do it was an additional $2400.00.
Well, I was a pretty good mechanic, and I certainly wasn’t going to pay anyone $5000.00 to replace my transmission.
At the time I was in the automotive electrical parts rebuilding business, so I knew the Doug Nash transmission could probably be rebuilt by someone in the transmission rebuilding business in Miami.
So I started making  calls around town.
A week later, after I had heard all the crazy prices that various transmission people wanted, I decided that I would attempt to repair it myself in my own shop.
I had  a local gas station remove the transmission for me.
Once removed they brought the whole transmission over to my shop, and I looked the situation over.
The first thing I saw was the name “Doug Nash”, and I wondered what the hell did someone like Doug Nash, a drag racer from the 1960’s  have to do with my four speed overdrive Corvette transmission.
I then concluded the transmission was a strange looking thing, and with the overdrive unit attached to the back of it, it didn’t look like any manual transmission that I had ever seen before.
Next, me and my 25 mechanics, (Automotive electrical mechanics) looked at the transmission for two days before I got the nerve to do anything.
By then I had received technical advice in both English and Spanish from everyone.
The one thing everyone agreed on was they never saw anything like it before, and who the hell was Doug Nash, they knew he wasn’t a Cuban.
I knew that the smart thing to do would be to get a shop manual on the transmission and read it before I did anything, but I was a big boy and I didn’t do it.
It just didn’t look all that complicated. So I just started disassembling it, like you would disassemble any other transmission.
It turned out very easy, as soon as we separated the overdrive unit from the main transmission, I found the culprit. It was a very thin roller bearing. The bearing was burnt blue, so I was sure it was the source of the noise.
I got on the phone and called several Miami bearing suppliers. Finally at an aircraft bearing supplier I found one for $185.00 ea.
I told them that the bearing was for a car transmission not an airplane, I wasn’t going to pay $185.00.
I went to my office to think about my next move. Since I already had the transmission mostly all disassembled, so I thought, I might just as well take apart the overdrive unit to see if there were any other bearings that were bad.
It would be terrible if I put the whole overdrive transmission back together, only to find out there was another bad bearing in it, so better to be safe than sorry.
This is the part when I really should have read a Doug Nash transmission manual first, I don’t remember exactly what happened, but the next thing I knew I had big springs and shims popping out and flying all over the place.
There were pieces flying everywhere. Some shims and springs rolled under shelving  and machinery we had in the shop.
Several of my mechanics were watching me, and I could tell by looking at their faces, they all thought that this was the end, I was never putting this Doug Nash transmission back together again.
I have to admit I was a little depressed, but all was not lost, I knew that I could call this Doug Nash guy up, whoever the hell he was, and I could order a repair manual from him.
So I went and found the telephone number for Doug Nash Engineering, which was not an easy task, as we didn’t have Google back then.
I called, and very nice fellow answered the phone.
Yes, he said, this was the Doug Nash Engineering Company, and yes this was the very factory where they had produced the 4+3 overdrive transmission for the 1984 Chevrolet Corvette.
I don’t remember exactly where the fellow said he was located I think it was Brentwood Tennessee.
Anyway, he was very patient with me and listened to my entire tale of woe, as I explained my entire situation to him, and then I asked him if I could buy a transmission shop manual.
The fellow calmly said to me, “Sir, I am standing behind my desk in two inches of water and there is no roof on our building”.
No roof on the building? I said. “That’s right he said, our company was hit by a tornado and it took the roof off the building”.
I was stunned, does that mean you are out of the transmission business, and I am out of luck, I asked?
“Yes and No, he said, we sold our whole transmission business to Richmond Gear Co, perhaps you can call them, because they already came here and got all our stuff”.
He then told me the phone number of Richmond gear and told me who the guy was to ask for.
I called the Richmond Gear Company, and by luck got the right guy first call
“Yes he said, we bought out Doug Nash Transmission, Company, but, we also bought out six other companies at the same time”.
He said, “Richmond gear was on an acquisition binge and they were buying out other companies right and left”.
“He said Richmond gear had bought out so many companies that he never even had the time to inventory anything, and everything from all the different companies was just lying in big piles on the warehouse floor”.
“He also said it would take a miracle to find anything”, so I was ready to cry, and I told him I needed that miracle.
The fellow obviously saw I was pretty distraught, and “He said he would go to the Doug Nash parts pile in the morning and look to see if any shop manuals or bearings were laying around anywhere”.
The next afternoon he called me back. “No, there were no shop manuals, but he said he saw a complete transmission and overdrive unit laying there at the foot of the pile, and it was the exact part number that I needed”. I asked him how much he wanted for it, and I was waiting for him to give me some astronomical price like $5000.00.
“He said, how about $375.00”.
I almost fell off my chair. Please ship it COD I today I said.
Well, he did ship it and he also put an extra ball bearing in the package at no charge. The next week, my friend at the corner gas station installed the transmission and the car ran fine.
After driving the car around a while, to make sure the transmission worked, I decided to store it for the evening in the fenced in yard of one of our warehouses. The yard had a six foot concrete wall with concertina wire all along the top.
The next day, when I went to get the car, I found that someone had attempted to break into it.
They broke the windshield, and then tried to remove the Bose radio with a tire iron. The car was a mess with all the broken glass and damage they had done to the dashboard trying to get the radio out.
 (See the Crooked Chevrolet Dealer Story), to find out what happened.








          
             
                                             

The Richard’s Dad and the Cigar Story


                                           The Richard’s Dad and the Cigar story
                                                                     1965
                                       A true story as related by my friend Richard
                                      Witten 12/3/2013 and rewritten 1/29/ 2019
                                                              Howard Yasgar


     This true short and humorous story was related to me in 1965 by one of my good friend, Richard.
     The story Richard told me was about  his dad and I felt that it was so funny that it was worth writing down for posterity.
     When my friend Richard was a teenager he worked part time in his father’s paint manufacturing facility in New York City.
     Because they lived in the suburbs, his dad would drive to work and home every day in their big four door Cadillac.
     At first, whenever Richard rode to work with his father, he sat up front in the passengers seat.
     Now, Richard’s dad smoked a big cigar, but most of the time, it wasn’t lit, he just chewed on it, then, occasionally he would press a button and his driver’s side window would go down. His dad would then turn his head to the left and spit out a big  wad of tobacco juice onto the highway, or onto the car next to them. 
      Every evening as they drove home from work, Richard’s father would be thinking about the paint manufacturing business and not paying much attention to his lousy driving.
       Other drivers would constantly be honking  their horn at him, some would actually drive up next to them screaming obscenities. Lots of people just pulled next to them throwing Richards father a bird. 
       But, Richard’s father was completely oblivious to it all, and he just drove along always chewing on his cigar.
       Richard became so embarrassed regarding his fathers driving, that he started riding in the back seat, he sat in the right rear, where he could slouch down where and no one would see him.
       As his paint manufacturing business grew, relatives started telling Richards father that his Cadillac was an outdated car. 
      They told him that  and people of means now drove Lincolns. They told him to get with the times and trade in his Cadillac for a Lincoln.
      Richard’s father did just that, he traded in his Cadillac for a brand new Lincoln.
      The first evening, as they drove home from work in the new Lincoln, Richard’s dad, like always, was weaving down the highway chewing on his cigar. 
      Richard was in the right rear seat of the new Lincoln all slouched down.
      When Richard’s dad was ready to spit out his tobacco juice, he went to press the button for his driver’s side window to go down. 
      Because the window control buttons were in a different place on the new Lincoln, his dad pressed the wrong button and Richards back seat, right rear window went down.
     His father, sitting in the drivers seat, turned to his left to the left and spit out a big wad of tobacco juice, only the window wasn’t down.            

The Haiti Generator Repair Story


                                           The Haiti Generator Repair Story
                                                               1971
                             This is a true story that happened to me in Haiti     
                               Written 12/20/2013 and Re-written 9/6/2016
                                                     Howard Yasgar

     Up until the  960’s all automobiles had a 6 or 12 volt DC Generator on them, they were used to  charge the cars battery.
     The generator with its pulley was usually mounted on the side of the engine,  and was connected to the engine by a fan belt.
     As the engine ran it turned the generator charging the cars battery.
     At the time this incident happened, I had a company in Miami that rebuilt automotive generators and sold them wholesale in Florida and for export.
     It was February 1971 when I was in Port Au Prince Haiti calling on customers.
     I had brought along one of my good friends, Paul Sherlock.
     Paul was one of my parts suppliers in Miami, and like me, he was very familiar with the rebuilding of automotive DC generators.
     You could say that both Paul and I were both pretty much professionals in the rebuilding of automotive DC generators.
     So when this story happened neither of us could believe what was going on,  and if we weren’t actually there to see it all happen I still wouldn’t believe it.

    Most of my Haitian customers were located in the city of Port Au Prince, so Paul and I were staying at the convenient Castle Haiti Hotel, and we were using my usual cab driver Toni Richmond.
     I had known Toni Richmond for quite a few years, he drove a 1956 black dodge automobile that was now beginning to show its age.
    On this particular morning, as we were having breakfast at the hotel, Toni appeared to be very nervous, so I asked him what was going on?   
    Toni was constantly looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching us and he then removed an official ballot from his shirt pocket.
     Toni said there was an election going on that day.
     I found out later that is wasn’t really an election as we know it, it was what was later called a plebiscite.
     At the time Haiti was run by a dictator Dr. Francois Duvalier, also was also called Papa Doc.
     Papa Doc, was running a sham election that day to appoint his son Jean Claude to succeed him as president of Haiti for life.  
    We didn’t know it at the time, but we were in Haiti the very day that Papa Doc had chosen to hold his plebiscite.
    When Toni drove downtown, we could see that the Haitian army was already trucking in hundreds of peasants from the countryside, they were  all waving small black and red Haitian flags.
     Papa Doc wanted this fake election to look legitimate to everyone, because he later reported that 99 percent of the population of Haiti had voted yes for his son to succeed him.
     There were just too many people in Port Au Prince that day, so I asked Toni to drop us off to at one of my customer’s store, and I told him he should come by and pick us up later, after he had finished voting.
    The particular customer I wanted to see that morning was a fellow named Hermon Francoise.
    Hermon came to Miami twice a year to buy used automobile starters and generators, he then shipped to Haiti as scrap metal.
    Once he had the used starters and generators in Haiti, he washed them in kerosene and then sold them as rebuilt.
    After Toni had voted, he came by and picked us up, he was excited and said that there was something going on that he wanted to show us.
    Toni then drove to the Haitian palace.
    It was difficult to do as the streets were swarming with people in town for the election.
    When we got to the palace, I could see  a long row of foreign news cameras were all set up on the lawn to film the event.
    Toni, slowly edged his way past the palace gates and started blowing his horn, the people must have thought we were some kind of foreign dignitaries and they began getting out of our way.
    Eventually Toni drove almost all the way up to within a few hundred yards of the palace.  
    We weren’t there for more than five minutes when I saw a short black fellow with grey hair and glasses, stepped out on the balcony and waved to everyone, I couldn’t believe it, it was Papa Doc himself.
    A moment later his son Jean Claude appeared, he was wearing a suit that seemed to twinkle in the bright sun.
    It was hot day and I was standing next to the passenger side door of Toni’s car.
    I looked up and I could  swear Papa Doc was waving to me, so I waved back.
    Within a few minutes, both the father and son stepped back inside the palace and the balcony doors closed behind them.
    Right away the crowds started to dissipate, and Toni started up the Dodge to leave.
    Were probably half way to the palace gates when I smelled rubber burning.
    I knew what the smell was right away, it was the smell of a cars fan belt burning, and
smoke and steam started coming out from under the cars hood.
    Toni saw the smoke and stopped the car.
    I said, shut off your motor, your fan belt is burning.
    We all got out of the car and Toni opened the hood, and just like I had said it was a burnt fanbelt.
    Toni reached in to the engine compartment and pulled out pieces of the shredded fan belt.
    When I saw him doing that, I reached in and tried turning the cars generator pulley, it was hot, and it didn’t turn at all.
    The diagnosis was simple, the ball bearing in the generator had gone bad, and that caused the generator’s armature to freeze up. Once the generator armature stopped turning, the fan belt instantly burned up.
    Once the engines fan belt burnt, it  caused the engines water pump to stop working and that overheated the radiator.
    I had seen this same problem many times before.
    I knew, that if I were in Miami, a good used, or rebuilt generator for Toni’s 1956 Dodge, could be bought in any junkyard for about $10.00, Chrysler product generators  were plentiful.
    So because of that, I wasn’t too concerned about Toni’s problem.
    Unfortunately I had forgotten for the moment that we were in a place like Haiti.
    After sitting there a few minutes while waiting for Toni’s car to cool down, Toni said he had a good friend up the street who was an automobile electrician.
    I told Toni,  we should be able to drive there once the car had cooled down a little.
    Toni was right, his friends shop was close by.
    However, I could see that the first problem was that the electricians shop was not actually a shop, They had a bench set up in an alleyway between two buildings.
    The work bench had some rusty tools on it, but other than that, the shop was just an empty space between two buildings.
    Behind the bench were two fellows who appeared to be taking a nap.
    Tony walked over to them, they woke up immediately and they all shook hands.
    We watched as Toni explained our problem to them.
     It didn’t take a mental giant to see the generator was seized up, but I could see Toni was talking to them like he was an expert on the subject.
    I walked over to the workbench, there was a broken butcher’s knife, a rusty pair of pliers and a medium sized beat up flat bladed Craftsman screwdriver with a chipped handle, they also had a carpenters hammer, but there was no test equipment of any kind in sight.
    Within a matter of  minutes, using only the rusty pliers the guys managed to remove the still hot generator.
    They placed the generator on the bench and disassembled it, again using only the pair of pliers and the screwdriver.
    With the generators burned out armature held in a rag, one of the men disappeared, but soon reappeared with the pulley removed off it.
    Using the hammer they removed the generators front plate from the armature and took out the ball bearing.
    The ball bearing was blue and several of the steel  balls were melted, it was what had caused the problem in the first place.
    I recognized the ball bearing was the most popular #203 bearing used in most all automobile generators.
    In Miami, I stocked hundreds of them, made in Japan, my cost was .35 cents each.
    By now several young boys were hanging around, and Toni was in a discussion with the mechanics regarding the ball bearing.
    They were talking in Patois, so I didn’t know what was being said, but I wanted something to get going.
     I took out a dollar bill and gave it to one of the kids who seemed to speak some English, and I told him to go find a new ball bearing.    
    Both Paul and I knew the generator rebuilding business, so we just assumed these guys also knew what they were doing.
    We had thought they would quickly find some good used parts or a good used generator and fix Toni’s car.
    Paul and I walked across the street to sit in  the shade.
    After about fifteen minutes passed, and we saw that no one had gone anywhere to look for anything, so we walked over to the car.
    Toni was laying in his cars driver’s seat taking a nap, so then we walked over to the mechanics bench.
    We were both absolutely stunned at what they were doing.
    They had removed all the burnt out copper wire from the generator armature, and they were attempting to replace the burnt wire with used copper wire they were peeling off a used 220 volt electric motor that they had sitting under their work bench.
    Paul and I both knew what was possible to be done to repair a generator and we knew what was not possible to be done.
    These guys were attempting the impossible, the used wire they were using wasn’t even close to the right size.
    When I saw this, I didn’t know what to say, I had never seen a more crazy idea in my life.
    However we  knew these guys were Toni’s friends, and I didn’t want to get into the middle of a confrontation with them.
    So for a moment Paul and I just stood there speechless.
    As we both stood there, the young boy returned with what was supposed to be the new ball bearing, and he handed it to me.
    Not only was it the wrong size bearing but it was burned out as well.
    It was a transmission bearing with a snap ring in it. not even similar to the generator bearing.
    I asked him where my dollar was, he said he paid a dollar for the bearing.
    Now realizing these guys were never going to fix Toni’s generator, Paul
and I sat down to discuss what we were going to do next.
    I knew at this point I had to say something to stop Toni’s friends from going any further and wasting any more of all of our valuable time.
    It was obvious that we would soon kill the entire afternoon waiting here with no hope of ever getting Toni’s car running again.
    Finally, I couldn’t take it any more, and I said to Toni, please stop these guys now.
    I said that Paul and I, will walk down the street to my friends store, and  buy a good used generator.
    Paul and I  then walked down the street to Hermon’s store to buy a good used Dodge generator.
    Once we were at Hermon’s store, we explained the generator problem to him, and he
said he had plenty of good Dodge generators, but he was sorry that he couldn’t sell us one.
    I was stunned, and I asked him how come he wouldn’t he sell me one.  He said it was because I knew how little he paid for the generators in Miami.
    So what I said.
    He said, “Haiti is a small country, and if I sell you a generator cheap, your cabdriver Toni Richmond will tell everyone in Port Au Prince the price, and  the whole city would soon know about it, and it would destroy my business.
    I said, Listen Hermon, give me a generator for free, and I will give you ten of them to replace it, next time you are in Miami.
    He thought about it a moment, and then he gave us a good used Dodge generator for free.
    Paul and I walked all the way back to Toni’s car, carrying the used generator on my shoulder.
    Toni was leaning against his car and he was smiling.
    We could hear  the car was running. The two electricians were nowhere to be seen.
     Paul and I knew they could never have fixed Toni’s generator, so what could they possibly have done?
     I opened the hood of Toni’s car, and to this day I can’t believe what I saw.
     Someone had found a used  Ford generator somewhere, and mounted it on Toni’s Dodge car, but because the generator was off a Ford, it didn’t fit the car right, they had wedged a big rock between the generator and the engine to hold it on tightly.