View Single Post
  #5  
Old 11-16-2018, 08:47 PM
RockHillWill RockHillWill is offline
MetalShaper of the Month Jan 2019
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 3,089
Default

It's been VERY hectic around here. Kent came early and Jimmy Matthews and I picked him up at the Charlotte airport and headed straight to the Rick Hendricks motorsport racing complex. They have over 600 employees and I bet we saw most of them. A gentleman named Ron Reedy that used to work for me has been at Hendricks for 23 years and is in charge of building the chassis and hanging the bodies on all four of the Hendricks race teams. They had all the cars ready for the championship season ending race in Homestead, Florida and our timing could not have been better. Normally, you are not able to take any pictures but Ron allowed us to take a few pics of the chassis & metal shop as there were currently no cars being worked on. This room houses six race car assembly plates and body hanging templates. Kent, Jimmy and I were given the tour of ALL buildings including their R&D building, motor machining and assembly and dyno rooms. It was estimated that at this time there were about 2,000 race motors being worked at this particular time. (That's correct-2,000). We also the main shop where all four race teams are housed. Of special interest was the visit to Rick Hendricks personal car collection. It is open to the public only two days a year and you have you be escorted. Ron was able to arrange for one of the tour guides to come and unlock the door to his entire collection and the three of us got a personal tour of not only the entire first floor of the collection but an invite to see the upstairs that had a giant collection of famous guitars, most of witch were autographed and many were housed two feet below a large glass floor. It made me nervous to walk on top of that glass with all the guitars underneath. Again, no pictures were allowed, but Jimmy Matthews had a friend that had built all the wooded display cases and Jimmy had seen them before. I did find a link to the museum:
http://www.hendrickperformance.com/

We ate lunch at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte and met with Dan Simone, the curator of the museum. I had previously arraigned a meeting with him to provide two additional items for display in the Dale Earnhardt, Sr. display. After several years they finally got my name spelled correctly. We had unlimited passes for the museum including the ability to drive the simulators and we took full advantage of that and drove over and over. Both Kent and Jimmy placed better than me in the final rundown, but I had the best excuses! You had to practice for the simulators on a series of computer displays before actually getting into the race cars, and I am certain that my training computer was in need of repair!!!

We have been extremely busy getting more machines and welding stations brought to the shop. We are set up today with four gas welding stations and determined early that one of my stations needed to have one of Kents acetylene filter added as it was determined that poor quality of acetylene was downgrading the appearance in the finished weld on the .060" 3003H14 that we were using. We have been hard at work today making paper patterns, layout cutting, et. al. that is part and parcel for some of the newer class attendees, but we all quickly got to work. In addition to the four gas welding stations, we have at our disposal two fabricated wheeling machines, two of Peters wheeling machines, a Mechammer, a power hammer and two power shrinkers and a P7, and a new Kent White power hammer. I only mention the equipment to share the fact that at one point today,every one of the machines was used in making aluminum panels in preparation for hopefully some gas welding tomorrow. Of particular interest to me was Kent's power hammer. I had earlier acquired one, and at the last Redneck Roundup Kent showed how quick it was to SHRINK metal using his machine. I was initially uncommitted, but today I watched first hand as Kent took a piece of flat .060" aluminum and shrunk a corner of a speedster grill panel into correct shape and increased the thickness by 25%, from .060" to .078" thick. He was able to set the machine to not only rapidly shrink the metal, but by using his custom pedal he was able to make single hits as well, and his choice of design and as yet un-released choice of upper and lower die material was an impressive display to witness. This machine has a #1/2, a #1, a #2 and a #5 air motor, but this work was done with the #2 motor installed. Kent was able to use a linear stretch die in the middle of a panel to raise the center while turning down the edges. Again, sorry for the lack of photos, but Kent has had all of us 'wide open', starting early and working late, every body with their own project.

CampClassWed 012.jpg

CampClassWed 013.jpg

CampClassWed 014.jpg

CampClassWed 015.jpg

CampClassWed 016.jpg

CampClassWed 017.jpg

CampClassWed 018.jpg

CampClassWed 022.jpg

KentClassFri 001.jpg

KentClassFri 002.jpg

KentClassFri 003.jpg

KentClassFri 004.jpg

KentClassFri 006.jpg

KentClassFri 007.jpg

KentClassFri 008.jpg
__________________
Will

Last edited by RockHillWill; 11-21-2018 at 06:34 AM.
Reply With Quote