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Inside The Judge’s Notebook At A Classic Car Show · In Wheel Time Podcast

• 0:07
  Mike Marrs: From the Texas Gulf Coast, Michael Mars here with In Wheel Time.
• 0:11
  Mike Marrs: We are out at the Back to the Pass car show today.
• 0:14
  Mike Marrs: And joining us now is Ed Thurian.
• 0:18
  Mike Marrs: Yes, sir.
• 0:19
  Mike Marrs: With uh the judging crew.
• 0:20
  Mike Marrs: The judging crew.
• 0:22
  Mike Marrs: Yes.
• 0:22
  Mike Marrs: So it's a beautiful day out here.
• 0:24
  Mike Marrs: Uh uh to me it'd be great to be out here walking around.
• 0:26
  Mike Marrs: You get to look up and close at the cars and uh a little bit differently than whenever I kind of walk through here.
• 0:32
  Mike Marrs: So so let's talk about judging at a car show like this, real quick.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: I absolutely love judging cars.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: Pull that pull this microphone up just a little bit closer.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: I absolutely love judging cars.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: I get to, first of all, like you said, I get to see every car up and close.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: Plus, I get to talk to every owner of the car, which really makes it nice.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: The history on these cars and what these individuals have done personally, occurrences in their life that make them love the cars.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh is really nice to hear all the background stories along with the restorations and why they have them.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the other part of it is it keeps people in the sport and going because you're able to compliment them or help them in some of the deficiencies of the cars that would help bring them up to the next standard.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I went to judging school, believe it or not.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the International Thunderbird Club is where I went to my first judging school.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and there's amazing criteria, let me tell you, it's like the Corvette boys.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: They tear those cars apart and take them down the nitty-gritty.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: When that's super, super judging.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: Then you get down to what I've learned is uh when you go to a show, I judge according to what the show wants.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: Some have classes, some don't have classes, some have to minimize the classes, which squeezes how you judge the cars.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: Example, I had to do um a show at a car show, a big one, about two months ago.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and the way the classes were set up, I had a 63 Corvette NCRS winter car against a 1958 Restro Mod.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, tough job.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: How do you do that?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you kind of have to look at the cars for the quality of build, okay?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: While the 63 might be rare and have unique parts and the restoration perfect, right?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: The 58 is very similar.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: The amount of artwork that went into creating the paint and all of the materials and all the other stuff to do it kind of complemented.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I looked at the paint as how good was the paint on the Corvette on the 63?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: How good was the paint on the Restro Mod?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it had to do the same thing with the interiors.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: While that 63 was a stock interior, it still fit, right?
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: The cushions have to be put on right, your seams have to line up all those up.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I had to look at the 58 the same way.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: So it makes difficulty, but fun.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I enjoy the crowd on it.
• 2:48
  Mike Marrs: So how did you what is your background to bring you into it at that level?
• 2:52
  Mike Marrs: I mean, that's that's getting pretty serious there.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, um, I dad was a car lover, so I ended up loving cars, and especially Mopars.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: I kind of preferenced those.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then when I started, I started in a car dealership in 1968, which was a Dodge car dealership in Elmhurst, Illinois, and uh worked there for about a year and then ended up getting let go because the economy was horrible, and went across the street and went to work for the Chrysler store until I got out of college.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then from there I went to work for Chrysler Corporation.
• 3:23
  Mike Marrs: Ah, slipped right in there.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Daimler Chrysler, FCA.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't make it to Stellantis.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: I retired before then, thank God.
• 3:31
  Mike Marrs: Yeah, I was gonna say, I'm not sure you missed anything.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm glad I did miss that part of it.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, but in saying that, no, I I I truly love cars.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: I probably restored over 50 cars personally.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: I have a rotisserie, I do them all myself, painting all wow.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh upholstery, if it's sewing, I don't do it.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: But putting covers on all the rest I will.
• 3:50
  Mike Marrs: So so do you do that like as a uh for I guess what you would consider living a day job, or do you just kind of take projects on that you like?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, we'll start with two things.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: Way back when I had to pay for college, my parents couldn't pay for it.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: So at the dealership, they have what they call a wholesale line, which is where all the cars they don't sell on their used car lot go.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: I knew I could afford any car that was on that line because they were terrible.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd buy one of those cars, fix it up, and sell it, and that would pay for a semester of school.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I did that twice a year and they kept paying for it.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: Carry on through life, got married.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't have a lot of money when we got married.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: My wife wanted a new bedroom set.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: How much do you need?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: Bought a couple of cars, fix them up.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: Here's the money.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: So my love for cars kept going through that.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: Plus, work every day was with cars, and as I got older and could afford cars for me, I started restoring cars for me.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I've done everything from naturally a lot of crisis products because I love them, but I've done Ford's, I've done Jaguars, I've done Mercedes, I've done Aston Martin's.
• 4:55
  Mike Marrs: So you kind of it's not like just anybody brings everything to you.
• 4:58
  Mike Marrs: You kind of get to pick a little bit, it sounds like well.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: I belong to quite a few car clubs.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: So anybody that wants advice or whatever else, I will be more than happy to advise them.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: This last car that I did is a very, very good friend.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a Mopar, so they asked me, would I mind doing it?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: And most of my cars have won.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: I've had five cars win different concourse events.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: I've won Autorama, I've won Keels and Wheels.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: Pretty much the car I have currently was also on my classic car, too.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: Dennis Gage did it.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: He's done two of my cars on his show.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so that last one, I was gonna bring it today, but it got pushed out of the garage because of Adelio's car.
• 5:43
  Mike Marrs: Is that the one you were talking about?
• 5:44
  Mike Marrs: I am, yeah.
• 5:45
  Mike Marrs: So let's so let's talk about her car because I met her, I don't know, three or four years ago out at uh another event across town.
• 5:52
  Mike Marrs: Uh Tailpipes and Tacos.
• 5:55
  Mike Marrs: Okay.
• 5:55
  Mike Marrs: She showed up and and uh we had a chance to talk to her about her car, and then we would see her pretty regularly.
• 6:01
  Mike Marrs: We were doing that show real regularly.
• 6:02
  Mike Marrs: So uh so let's let's talk about her car and what happened to it.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, she um loved that car as you well know if you know her.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: It was what she kind of grew up in high school.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: Her mother had one similar, so when she got to the point where she could play with a car, she bought that car.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um as in all the old cars back up to about well, with Chrysler 70, but a lot of them learned prior to that, they ran direct from the battery to the amp gauge.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: So the amp gauge became a fuse.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: And if the amp gauge didn't burn, it took out the whole car.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what happened with hers.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um the wiring got old, a little bit corroded at the bulkhead, caused a lot of amperage, it lit it, went on fire, and burned the car up.
• 6:43
  Mike Marrs: Now it was in a shop.
• 6:44
  Mike Marrs: It wasn't your shop, was it?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: No, it was in an aircraft hangar with two other aircraft.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: And thank God somebody was there when it lit, and they were able to call the fire department because the car engulfed totally.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: So when the fire department got there, new thing, young people, new firemen, didn't know how to open the hood.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: So they busted out the vent window, couldn't get in the car that way.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: They broke out the driver's window, couldn't they got in, found out there wasn't inside hood release.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: So what they did, they took their saws off, cut through the fenders and the hood, and peeled the hood forward when all it was is one little latch in the front.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: So they ruined the hood, ruined the fenders, and let the fire go on much longer.
• 7:20
  Mike Marrs: A lot longer than it should, yeah.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: But the good thing is the two airplanes didn't go down, so that's a good thing.
• 7:25
  Mike Marrs: Yeah, I saw some pictures of it.
• 7:27
  Mike Marrs: Uh she sent me some pictures right after it happened.
• 7:29
  Mike Marrs: Uh and I asked her, I said, what they used the jaws of life.
• 7:33
  Mike Marrs: I mean, what were they doing?
• 7:34
  Mike Marrs: And she said they that's she explained they actually cut into it with a saw.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's cool.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: They said they learned something from it, though.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: They learned how simple a foot latch is on an old car.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess there's some good coming from it.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but I've been working on that car, believe it or not, it's at the house right now um almost a year.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it originally I thought it would only be a couple month project because it was supposed to be pull the engine in trans, clean up the engine compartment, you know, put the wiring harnesses back together on that, and put it in, pull the dash out, put a new dash wiring harness in it, but it kind of grew.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we got it out.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: I pulled the intake off because it had burned up and pooled plastic on it from in there, and looked at the camshaft and I go, this thing really needs to go through.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: So then we had to go through the end.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: Then we went through the transmission.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: Then we put total new front suspension under it, and we went to disc brakes, and then we up.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: She had an aftermarket AC, even though it was a factory AC, somebody had converted under the hood.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: So she wanted to go back to all original, so we went back totally original under the hoods, and uh the dash is all done.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: So the car right now is I'm all the chrome's back on, the paint work is done.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's it I was hoping to make it for the chauffeur, um, but that car has fought me.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: I've never had a car fight me like this car fights me.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: I go two steps forward and three back, everything.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then parts now are they're just crappy.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this Chinese part stuff is horrible.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you put a new part on.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: Example, put a starter on hers.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Summit, a good, you know, they're they're perfect because updated to a smaller starter.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: Put it on, it lasted six months.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: The restoration, it quit.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: Now, thank God it's got a year warranty on it, but there it is, it quit.
• 9:15
  Mike Marrs: Yeah, but then you gotta take it all off.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: I gotta take it off.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: Then the neutral safety switch just went out on the thing, it started leaking.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I had to get another new switch.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's got a new one from Classic Industries because there's not many vendors anymore.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: No, and it's a bad switch.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm fighting that.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: So hopefully I'll have it finished for her for next week.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: There's another car show next week, which is where I'm trying to go.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: So all week I will be finishing and working on her car.
• 9:39
  Mike Marrs: Which I should be able to enjoy because she's working so hard out here, she wouldn't have much.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, she's she's learned a lot because she's come and helped every day on that car.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: So she's great at cleaning her own parts up and things like that.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: Then I need to clean bead blasting, all of the trivial stuff that really helps me.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: Very time consuming, yeah, very time-consuming things.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, so I was talking to her, and she goes, you know, well, the car's fought me.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's everything's beautiful.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm happy with that.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it'll be a far better car than what it was because everything is pretty well done.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I drove it about 30 miles without it.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: It it did very well.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm I'm very pleased with the car.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: She learned how what it takes to do.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: We should have done a rotisserie.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: Think it back on it now.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: I have a rotisserie and I do all mine.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: I should have just rotisseried the car and been done with it.
• 10:20
  Mike Marrs: Yeah, but like you say, you didn't think it would be bad involved.
• 10:23
  Mike Marrs: It was just gonna be eh, yeah.
• 10:24
  Mike Marrs: We're gonna clean it up.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, clean it up, be done with it, move on.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: But nope, it fought me.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: So hopefully it won't fight me out the door here soon.
• 10:32
  Mike Marrs: Uh hopefully, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:34
  Mike Marrs: Very good, very good.
• 10:35
  Mike Marrs: So, so what do you drive?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I have a plethora of cars.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh um again, diversity.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: I have to be brand loyal, so I drive a creep channel, a Jeep Grand Cherokee.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's a nice car, though.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: I love those cars.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I just bought a 26.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: I get corporate, so I uh it's pretty easy the way I can do a car, and knowing most of the dealer body in town are very good to me, also.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: So my trades go pretty easy.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I bought one of the new Hurricane 4s, which have gotten a lot of bad publicity.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I don't believe that.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: I've had the car now for almost 6,000 miles, and I find it to be superior to the 3-6, which was a great motor.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: It was great motor.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 11:17
  Mike Marrs: They used it in everything for years.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: Even Maserati used it, they put twin turbos on it.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, uh great, great motor.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: I read about the pad wrapping, I go, I can't be.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: They did have some initial problem with spark plugs.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: And if they broke, they would take a motor out.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Seriously.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this you gotta consider you got a two-liter motor putting out 340 horsepower and 370 pounds of foot torque.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lot.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's why these people go, well, the 3-6 was faster.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: I go, no, you got turbo leg.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: I understand the turbo leg.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's what frustrates most people.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: But learning how to drive the car, no, I love it.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: The up end, once it gets scooting, I use sport mode a lot because it's four-wheel drive.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, sport mode, that helps a lot with shift points.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so no, I uh all the bad, I went, I don't I don't get this.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Too much stuff breeds on the internet.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, one person has a bad experience and then all of a sudden you don't hear about the good.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: But if you go to any brand out there, I don't care who it is, go to Ford, go to GM, look at all the crud on the you know, Chevrolet Motors and Cadillac motors and blowing up and that you know General Motors knew about this forever.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Manufacturers don't they don't do that on purpose.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: I can guarantee you working for one.
• 12:26
  Mike Marrs: No, they don't, but you know, things happen and things happen.
• 12:29
  Mike Marrs: And and even my brand.
• 12:36
  Mike Marrs: I love it.
• 12:37
  Mike Marrs: The only problem I had with it so far is is really and truly is uh the EBS module went out.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, and you can't get them.
• 12:44
  Mike Marrs: Can't get it.
• 12:45
  Mike Marrs: I mean, it it took the dealer, it took he found one, I think it was almost 15 months.
• 12:50
  Mike Marrs: He found one that somebody had on a shelf someplace.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: There's a company in California that is redoing them now.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: There was one in Houston, but they're no longer.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um we are trying to find a vendor for it.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, corporate I have still corporate friends.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the problem is that you know they get older.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: We only produce parts for probably maybe five years, depending upon the product of the lifespan, right?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: So keeping an outside vendor, unless the outside vendor can make money on it, they're not going to reproduce them.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm surprised somebody hasn't done the modules yet because the demand is pretty huge.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of those.
• 13:23
  Mike Marrs: There's a lot of people out there on the internet looking for them.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's not just that one.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's other modules on the car too, the same thing.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: But that's the biggest one.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: But otherwise, no.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'll tell you what, our RAM trucks, if you look at them, have been superior.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: Very, very superior.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: We've done, you know, since we started with the swap down with the swoop vendors and took the market in 93 with those, we've kept command very well.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: We could have done better, probably.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Our marketing department could have done a little bit better, and we could have maybe beat Ford and beat Gemlin Motors a little bit.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: But you know what?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: We sold a lot of Dodge trucks, made a lot of money for the company, and still have a good reputation.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: Our new ones are still gorgeous.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: I still think we have the best interiors of anybody.
• 14:02
  Mike Marrs: Absolutely on the interior.
• 14:03
  Mike Marrs: Now, Ford's made a lot of progress in the last few years with their interiors, but uh definitely I I remember uh I'm a member of the Texas Auto Riders Association and they do their truck rodeo.
• 14:12
  Mike Marrs: Yeah.
• 14:13
  Mike Marrs: So uh several years ago, there was a hardcore Ford guy who was there and he was going on about how great the Fords were.
• 14:20
  Mike Marrs: So, you know, let's go ram, let's go ride in the ram truck.
• 14:24
  Mike Marrs: And uh I got to ride with him, well, this is okay, that's okay.
• 14:29
  Mike Marrs: And uh, but he really finally got out and looked underneath at the rear suspension because it rode so much.
• 14:35
  Mike Marrs: You finally admitted how much better it rode than his Ford.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 14:38
  Mike Marrs: Uh he still drives Ford, but still, I mean, it was just he was it was eye-opening to him to see that Ram had that kind of thing.
• 14:46
  Mike Marrs: So, yeah, great trucks, great trucks.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thank you.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: You're welcome.
• 14:55
  Mike Marrs: All right, it um the other thing I was going to ask you.
• 14:59
  Mike Marrs: Uh did you get to spend any time up at Chelsea at the track of the city?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: I I spent a lot of time, as I call it, I was a field engineer, so a lot of my time was spent here in Houston.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: We have a railhead way back when when I started, the railhead was there, right?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we could look at initial quality of all cars coming out of all plants from Mexico, Canada, uh, anything built in the States.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: They all came there, right?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because they got distributed to the dealer.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I could go through and look at them initially off.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: Plus, I could do comparison because there's Chevrolets there, there's Fords there.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: So a great place for me to just wander around and look at quality of all products.
• 15:32
  Mike Marrs: Yeah, check them all out.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: The only one was on top was Toyota because Toyota's got their own, which is bigger than all of us across the street.
• 15:38
  Mike Marrs: Yeah.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then we have a very large dealer body here too, so I could go look at initial quality and what was breaking in the dealerships and report that back.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: So point being is I had we call I got to go to Detroit a lot, all expense paid vacations, right?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't have to live there.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: So we call it.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: I did my time there, but I was lucky because I got to live here, so I just flew up there on Mondays and came home on Fridays and did a lot of my time up there for that.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: So, but yeah, uh our proving up in Chelsea were phenomenal.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, the whole technology center, when you look at the idea of it, was phenomenal.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: Iacoca had a phenomenal thing when they opened that thing up.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Did you have you been to the technology center?
• 16:16
  Mike Marrs: Uh no, I haven't.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: Second largest building in the country next to the Pentagon.
• 16:20
  Mike Marrs: Really?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: All the floors are configured to where you can change anything interior-wise at any point you want.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: The floors will come up, all plumbing, all electrical can be changed.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: All hallways are set up for cars to drive up and down them.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: So the whole building somebody was thinking anything.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, we have a full-size wind tunnel, which the other manufacturers were borrowing from us because they didn't have a full size when a lot of the race teams would come in and use our full size.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: We had a full mini plant there, so we could build a small plant after we designed it on computers.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: Build a small plant, actually run a product through to see if it was going to work and what happened.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: So it helped a lot on the quality stuff.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then our we had a little proving ground right there too, which was really nice.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I loved going in the basements because that's the engineering aspect.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: In the old days, we had bras, as you remember, the peel-off bras, really.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: So to uh camouflage the cars, when we had them outside, they did it.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, as a corporate, I could get into certain places, so whenever I could, I'd sneak in another room and start peeling bras off to see what was there.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: And then go in the trans labs to see what was going on with the transmissions, what new stuff we were coming up with.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Same thing in the engines.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: We had rooms of 40 dyno rooms where you're running motors in different configurations, so wide open throttle stabs, whatever.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: Bulletproof class, because when the motors blew, some of them were grenade.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: All the floors were made with drains to pick up everything from it.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: I always love to go just see what was getting done in all of the labs and walk around.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: Couldn't get in the styling dome without God.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: And if then if you could get in, then you had to surrender everything and do a strip and search before they'd let you in there.
• 17:54
  Mike Marrs: So that's the big dome.
• 17:56
  Mike Marrs: I went there one time.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, sorry.
• 18:01
  Mike Marrs: Yeah, I did.
• 18:02
  Mike Marrs: Now that you mentioned that I did that.
• 18:04
  Mike Marrs: Cameras, phones, everything, you know.
• 18:07
  Mike Marrs: It's like that.
• 18:08
  Mike Marrs: So we went in there.
• 18:09
  Mike Marrs: I'm trying to remember what it was.
• 18:11
  Mike Marrs: I think it was some of the commercial vans because they were talking about the new front ends would all come off in case it got wrecked and things like that.
• 18:16
  Mike Marrs: And we were there, I don't know, 30, 45 minutes, and we were rough, we were nicely escorted.
• 18:23
  Mike Marrs: Let me show you the way out of here.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: You don't want to play with corporate security.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Those guys are wicked.
• 18:28
  Mike Marrs: Yeah, they were pretty serious, you know.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: But but the neat thing, people don't realize like colors of cars.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: We're doing that five years prior.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: Materials were inside.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: We're getting with vendors, and we're and that's the technology center had all the vendors there too.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: So we didn't have to go anywhere else.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: They could come up from downstairs, Bosch, or whoever we were dealing with.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: We want to do this.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: What do you got?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: What can you do for us?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: What price point can you come in at?
• 18:48
  Mike Marrs: Uh-huh.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: Same thing with materials.
• 18:49
  Mike Marrs: So you get the contract negotiations, everything's going to be.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Everything's going on at the same time.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: There, and and then any changes are in there in the computer system.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: Say safety's got priority.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: So as the car is being designed after it comes out of the guy's making it pretty.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: As we're going down through it, I make a change structurally here because I have to for safety.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that added six ounces to the car.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: Now you go downwind and tell climate control, you got to get rid of three ounces.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody else, you got to get rid of three ounces.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: Now they got to go back to the vendor or redesign stuff to get rid of three ounces.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: So it's that trivial, but it's pretty cool when you watch it getting done.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: Pretty cool.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: Same thing with paint.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: We're buying so much paint in the industry does, right?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: Think about the whole industry is buying how many gallons of paint, right?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: So we got to go to those vendors and say, we're going to build 300,000 vehicles, and of that 300,000, we want 100,000 red of this color.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: Can you create the paint course?
• 19:40
  Mike Marrs: Color code.
• 19:41
  Mike Marrs: Yeah.
• 19:42
  Mike Marrs: Yeah.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we're not because Ford's producing more red trucks than you are, so we can't supply you with that much, so we can only give you this much paint.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: So then you go to a different vendor and try and pick up from a different vendor.
• 19:53
  Mike Marrs: Right, right, and hope that the codes match.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, that part you can do.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: We're kind of specifying some of that stuff.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: But that's where the complication of complexity of build is another big one.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: The old days, uh, I believe we had 300,000 different ways you could build a grand Cherokee in 1993.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: So when you talk about quality, how do you do that?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's why some of our quality issues are getting.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: We had so many options for you to build the car color dash configurations here, options here, here, there, that trying to keep quality consistent, that's where the Japanese always beat us.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: We've got three basic models, these parts go on them.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: You got two different colors' interiors, you know, a Toyota builds a truck and a minivan on the same line right behind each other.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: We couldn't do that.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: Our plants weren't capable of it.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: So then we had to redo all of our plants where they're able to build anything that was in demand at the time.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: So rather than have just one plant be able to build just truck, all the plants were capable of at any time of point changing to where we could build for more product of what the market was selling.
• 20:50
  Mike Marrs: I can see that that'd be pretty fascinating.
• 20:51
  Mike Marrs: I got to go through the Toyota plant in San Antonio one time.
• 20:55
  Mike Marrs: And you know, they had the robots and they would bring the parts around and all that stuff.
• 20:58
  Mike Marrs: And I thought, you know, who thinks of things like this to to make this work?
• 21:03
  Mike Marrs: You know, it just uh it's just seriously impressive.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: I I if anybody's never seen it, if you can go to a plant and watch a car get built, to me that's the coolest thing.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: From the starting of all of the welding where the sheet metal company, if you've been to a stamping plant, have you been to that?
• 21:16
  Mike Marrs: I haven't done that.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: If you go to like our normal Illinois plant where we used to build Belvedere and some other things, there was a stamping plant, uh fascia injection plant.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: So they would also do the fascias.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: So we they would do the IP panels there too.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: All instrument panels were built and constructed there and put together because a lot of that stuff is is just in time.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: So as the cars come down the assembly line, the interior group down the street, the company we're using, is building the seats for that car.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: So they meet that car at just the right time.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's amazing to think of that.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: So you because example, we had um a quality problem we thought with Dana Rearends and Jeep Grand Cherisk, because they would sing.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: And we tried to get away with calling the customers a little bit, they were happy.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they're singing, they're happy, right?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: Because we could Find nothing wrong in teardown.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't work.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: They were just loud singing rear ends.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: So then we kind of blamed Dana for it.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well then Dana spent a lot of money trying to help us, you know, cure the problem.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it ended up being it wasn't all vehicles.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: That was the problem.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you could you didn't have a thing you could narrow in on.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: My God, it's every vehicle we build or anything else.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: So what it came down to being is the way we stacked those rear axles prior to them being built on the cars.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: So um so what happened is the ones on the bottom, they would bow the axle housing just a little bit to where it put enough on the axles where it would sink.
• 22:33
  Mike Marrs: Just from the weight of the ones above it.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: So we're able to fix that.
• 22:40
  Mike Marrs: Well, I can see how you fix it, but they're going trying to figure out that that's what it was.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that was my job, but a lot of it in the field was to find those things, right?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we had a problem.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: I shouldn't err all our problems.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: A long time ago.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: All manufacturers have that.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: We we came out with a new transmission for our diesels, which are you know, the uh cum and steals are fantastic.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, we so we came out with that.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Texas is a big truck market.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: Not the biggest, believe it or not, but a big truck market.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, California is a bigger truck market than Texas.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: Small duty and everything else, that's why.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: Heavy duty, we take it on, right?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: So we had a lot of 3500 series dualies, which everybody loved those trucks.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: So when we came out with the new configuration, they hit here first.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: They front loaded Texas.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, um, I started getting a call from a dealer telling me this truck left, it's not even 50 miles, and I'm towing it back, and the transmission is total.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: So then we kind of go through, and all of a sudden, I've got this is before Thanksgiving, or like a week before Thanksgiving.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta understand unions and us, we kind of close down for the holidays, period.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: That doesn't matter when the thing comes, it's it.
• 23:49
  Mike Marrs: Right.
• 23:49
  Mike Marrs: End of the year.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I've now got five brand new vehicles within 50 miles that have been reported to me, cratered.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I've gone and looked at them, and I mean they're they're total catastrophes because you lost the cooling to the trans.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I call up and try and put a place hold stop sell on all these vehicles.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I called the Mike Engineering, I said, listen, we need to a stop sell.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: He goes, What bullcrap head?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have anybody wiping a bomb at you.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: You got five trucks.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: I go, we got front loaded.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: We're the first ones to get them.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: You don't know it yet.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, well, we didn't have that problem in testing.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I go, no, I've done those.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: We do one lap of America, so we put over a million miles on.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: But my point is this we can do a million miles, have no problems, give it to a customer.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: Boom.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: I said, why don't we just give them to customers, let them figure it out for us first, because we'll find more problems.
• 24:30
  Mike Marrs: So you don't drive like a customer.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: No, we don't.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: We you know, so so anyhow, ended up they I I didn't get the answer I wanted, so I called one of the VPs and said, we don't need this crap going on.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: So he put stop cell on.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, then I got in trouble for going over here.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: It was worth it because what happened is the vendor who gave there's a drain back so that the converter doesn't drain down after shut off.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: It was a little plastic ball in there.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: Guess what?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: It swelled up in transmission fluid.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: So you shut the cooler off to the transmission 100%.
• 25:01
  Mike Marrs: Things you don't think about.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, no, that's where the pre-production stuff we got was fine.
• 25:06
  Mike Marrs: Right.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: But then when we actually said, okay, we're gonna start needing these, build them for production, they didn't give us the quality we wanted.
• 25:13
  Mike Marrs: Oh, okay.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: And that happens a lot.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of it, you know, we can we design cars, we drive them.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: We uh it's amazing what really happens before.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: I drove a lot of pre-production cars, different drivetrains in them.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: You'd never know.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: It looked like a normal car, but it was a new drivetrain just to see what so I've got all my laptops and we're finding all the stuff that's going on.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: No problems, or maybe we did have problems and we corrected them.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: But then we go into mass production.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, then the plant builds them.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: You could have problems at the plant, right?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: Or you could all of a sudden have a vendor problem because they started producing too many of them in their quality.
• 25:41
  Mike Marrs: Their quality goes down.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, so a lot of people don't understand cars, and it's not just us, it's the whole car.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: It could be Toyota has them, Honda has them, everybody has them.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's just one thing consumers aren't real sympathetic about, right?
• 25:54
  Mike Marrs: That's no lie.
• 25:55
  Mike Marrs: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:55
  Mike Marrs: Particularly my my new 3500 that I just bought drops me 50 miles from the dealer.
• 26:00
  Mike Marrs: That that's yeah, that was that was that was very job.
• 26:03
  Mike Marrs: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: But thank God we minimized the amount of those that happened.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: So it was good.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: We took care of the people that did.
• 26:08
  Mike Marrs: Me.
• 26:09
  Mike Marrs: Well, Ed, thank you so much for taking the time.
• 26:12
  Mike Marrs: Thank you.
• 26:12
  Mike Marrs: I've been fascinating for talking to you, and I really appreciate it.
• 26:15
  Mike Marrs: And uh hopefully uh you get a daily card done pretty soon.
• 26:19
  Mike Marrs: Oh, yeah.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: Hopefully this week.
• 26:20
  Mike Marrs: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 26:21
  Mike Marrs: Okay.
• 26:22
  Mike Marrs: Well, I gotta I gotta catch up with Debbie here before she gets runs off.
• 26:25
  Mike Marrs: But thank you again, sir.
• 26:26
  Mike Marrs: We really appreciate it.
• 26:28
  Mike Marrs: And uh you have a great day today.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: You too.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's a beautiful day.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: It is.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: We couldn't ask for better weather.
• 26:33
  Mike Marrs: Thank you.
• 26:34
  Mike Marrs: Thank you, sir.
• 26:35
  Mike Marrs: All right.
• 26:37
  Mike Marrs: From the Texas Gulf Coast, you're within wheel time.
• 26:41
  Mike Marrs: We're out at the Back to the Past car show.
• 26:44
  Mike Marrs: We're waiting on Debbie looking for Debbie.
• 26:49
  Mike Marrs: She's got to get her back up here.
• 26:54
  Mike Marrs: We're gonna run a quick commercial here while we're getting situated, getting Debbie in here, get her situated.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: I need to sit right here.
• 27:01
  Mike Marrs: Uh you can set it either one up, ma'am.
• 27:10
  Mike Marrs: Having trouble reading my stuff here.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Get your chair, man.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's that time again.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: Fire up those engines.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_03: Heroes and hot rides is rolling into Bastro for Veterans Day weekend.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: Friday night, cruise downtown.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: Saturday, 400 of the coolest rides in Texas take over Main Street.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: Honor our veterans, enjoy local food and shopping, and help support local charities and scholarships.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: Presented by Craig's Jewelry and over 200 local sponsors, November 13th and 14th, downtown Bastro.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: Don't miss it.
• 27:45
  Mike Marrs: It's Back to the Past.
• 27:47
  Mike Marrs: Cruise Back in Time Saturday, October the 17th for the SBISD Alumni Association's annual Back to the Past Car Show.
• 27:54
  Mike Marrs: It's the classic cars, trucks, motorcycles, and more as automotive history comes alive at the Cornerstone Academy, 9016 West View Drive in Houston.
• 28:03
  Mike Marrs: Bring the family, check out the rides, and enjoy a great day celebrating the vehicles that we remember and the memories that go with them.
• 28:10
  Mike Marrs: That's Saturday, October the 17th, Back to the Past, 9016 Westview Drive in Houston.
• 28:16
  Mike Marrs: Happy to hear that.
• 28:17
  Mike Marrs: Cars, trucks, SUVs, motorsports, road trips, and the people who make the automotive world interesting.
• 28:23
  Mike Marrs: In wheeltime is changing and we're expanding.
• 28:26
  Mike Marrs: We're bringing you more automotive stories, more interviews, more destinations, and more of what you may have missed.
• 28:32
  Mike Marrs: From Texas to the automotive world beyond, in wheel time is your place for automotive talk without the politics or the nonsense.
• 28:39
  Mike Marrs: Join us for the next generation of In Wheel Time Cars, trucks, and the people who love them.