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C&T started out in 1951 on
Moorpark near Woodman in Sherman Oaks, CA by Don Clark and Clem
Tebo. The first strokers they did were metal sprayed. They broke
a few owing to the fact they weren't very strong. I started welding
cranks for them in 1956. Joe Armstrong was the crank grinder,
which was a separate business from C&T. It was interesting
working there and I ended up with my own department making header
flange and motor mount kits. A lot of interesting people worked
there while I was there. Made a lot of good friends, some are
still alive.
Having passed the test for gas
welding aircraft frames, I thought I was a pretty good welder
but hadn't done much arc welding. When I asked Don Clark for
a job, all he had was welding cranks. Decided I could probably
do that It turns out that there is more to it than just welding.
The motion of rotating the crank toward you and away from you
while the journal is going up and down and around is harder to
do than it would seem. We were using Marquette rod at the time,
which, if you have arc welded you, know it is a difficult rod
to use. Anyway while Don was giving me instructions on how to
do the job, he was also teaching me how to arc weld at the same
time but didn't know that. Later on he told me that he had gone
through about 30 certified welders that couldn't do the job,
because of the coordination problem. It seems walking and chewing
gum is handy to know. I could do about 4 crankshafts a day. By
the time I got to the 4th journal the crank was plenty hot and
not too pleasant to be around. I would weld one up like I thought
it should be, give it to Joe Armstrong for a rough grind and
then take it back to touch up where I had missed and grind down
some slag inclusions. The longer strokes were easier to weld
because you could see where the buildup should be. The shorter
strokes required welding farther around the journal and a more
even buildup. Sounds easy but it wasn't. When wire feed Welders
came along, things got a lot easier but by then I had moved on
down the road.
The really hard part of the job
was straightening before finish grinding. The average person
could do about 2 crankshafts before they quit the job and went
away. You had to put it between centers in an old lathe, transfer
it to a hydraulic press with a pair of V blocks, press it to
where you thought it should be, then back between centers to
see if you had done the right thing. The welded cranks bend along
4 separate planes so it takes awhile to get on to where to bend.
There was a guy names Lester
doing the straightening, I came around in his shop to see if
he was dragging his butt by the end of the day. Here he was doing
arm curls with a Chrysler crank after working 8 hours. I asked
him how he could do that; he said he loved the job because he
didn't have to pay to go to the gym anymore. He has to get the
mains within 300Oth after the rough journal grind because the
cranks were supposed to go out 10 under on the mains. Went back
to Joe for the finish grind then back to Lester to drill the
oil holes. Another, not easy, job. You had to drill from the
outside of the finished journal and hit the oil passage which
now is on 2 angles because of lengthening where the journal surface
was. He missed quite a few of them and I had to drill them out
bigger and then weld them up again. All in all, I think we made
a pretty good product The hardest cranks to do were Destrokers.
Fortunately not many people wanted them. Just a few round track
and Bonneville guys. Starting off it was hard to get the rod
to the inside of the journal and get good penetration in the
fillet. You had to put a bend in the rod and half the time when
you got near the bend the flux would fall off and you had to
start over with a new rod, The straightening procedure was a
lot different, because putting the weld near the center of the
crank made it a lot stronger, thus it wouldn't bend in the hydraulic
press. What you had to do was use an 8-X rivet gun and beat the
hell out of the weld to counteract the shrinkage of the weld.
This was a two-man job. Usually good for pinched fingers and
burned knuckles. Also took a lot of millwork to get rid of some
of the counterweight. The most interesting destroker we built
while I was there was a Dodge D 500 engine to go into Clem's
sprint car. Clem decided full floating bearings and '54 Ford
Truck rods would be the hot setup. He claimed the rods were made
from 4340 steel. I think it was destroked to get into CRA sprint
car class. I'm not sure about that. The engine looked like a
354 on the outside but was considerably different inside. I think
the car only ran a couple times like that. I think I remember
the driver didn't like the torque of the short rods and the sudden
RPM of the destroker. Time I saw it as Ascot, it picked up both
front wheels down the straightaway. Clem ran it at Riverside
at a Sprint car road race and I think he parked it after that.
Don't know what happened to the engine. When the car was restored,
it was back to an Ardun.
I hired Dave Zeuschel at C&T
to do flame cutting along with Mel Scoville. I found out later
that Dave was only 15 years old with I hired him. It didn't occur
to me that he needed a work permit, but his folks didn't say
anything and neither did anyone else. I knew Dave from having
done a hood for the '32 drag coup of the club he was in. When
I went off on my own to do dragsters, Dave took over my job at
C&T. By then we had hired a couple welders and Dave supervised
that area. The C&T sponsorship came about from just being
there. He built the first blown Chrysler in his garage. Mel Scoville
may have helped him plan it out.
Prudhomme had bought Ivo's one
motor Buick and I had previously installed Mel Scoville's blown
Chrysler in Ivo's car so all the stuff was laying around for
the driveline, hence, the Zeuschel Prudhomme car. It ran pretty
good on gas. Dave decided to build a fuel motor and suggested
I build a new car for that motor. I did and that was the ZPF
car.
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