Leaderboard

Anecdote: When Don was alive he was found by many to be somewhat...uh "Abrasive"... In fact in the old Z Car Magazine he had a column which was proudly "Curmudgeon" or something... I approached him at MSA back in the 90's as well, as someone pointed to him and said "he can recurve your distributor"... I went up and introduced myself and said so and so said you can recurve my distributor, what are we looking at for pricing and lead time? "$476, and when I get to it, you'll get it." And back he went to his conversation. "OK, fair enough" thought I... Poking back into the conversation I merely added "Do you have a card or something so I can call you later and make arrangements?" He seemed a bit shocked, but handed me a card and went back to his conversation paying me no more mind. So I called him two weeks later, told him who I was...we started talking about the build, what I wanted, yadda yadda yadda and somewhere in there I mentioned "I kick myself in the ass for ever selling my SUN Distributor Machine, for what I would have paid to ship it I could just do this myself and not wait..." Don asked quickly "You had your own Sun Machine? Why?" I explained we had one when I trained back in Michigan, that I got a deal on a surplus unit at a military disposal auction but sold it, a Sioux Valve Grinding Machine, and one of those old Sit on the Block Top Boring Bars back to another fellow bidder with a shop because I was hopelessly overweight on household baggage and was maximizing my weight on Datsun Parts and not machine tools which I convinced myself were plentiful in the USA... "So much for that stupid decision." Ended up talking to Don for about two hours and in the end he says "What did I tell you for the distributor recurve?" I said "$476" He just started laughing..."well, I was right again!" He apologized saying he gets approached all the time at car shows from guys with grand ideas but who just want everything for free. He says "I got a set of weights here, should be just what you need, give me your address and I can get them in the mail tomorrow." $20! Came in a heavy business envelope with three stamps on it. "DPE, Milpitas" was the return address. And he was right, they were spot on what I wanted them to do. In so many ways I watch this exact same scenario play out on internet boards to this day and think "Man, if I acted like these guys today, I'd have lost hours of free advice and discussion with a veritable L-Engine Genius!" I mean, once he determined your bonafides, he opened up quite a bit especially if you were not a competitior and understood his side of the business and people always ripping him off (which I understood all too well!) When we took over a distributor there in Milpitas and they made me interim service manager I was almost jumping out of my skin to go...all after work was 'see if I can get over to Don's' just to talk about nothing in particular. Just hang and hope for osmosis to kick in. It was a sad day when he passed on, we are all less without him.