(31) Working as a contract engineer (5/8).

    I finished at Mitsubishi in January, 1993. After a few weeks at home I received a 'phone call from Peter H., whom I met on a few occasions at meetings with suppliers for Mitsubishi; Peter used to turn up at these meetings representing some trucking company. On the 'phone I was told that he heard I was free from Mitsubishi, and would I be interested in a job as a design draftsman for KW truck where he was Chief Electrical Engineer. Having nothing else lined up I agreed. At the previous meetings I called him Professor, for everybody else was addressing him so. At KW, to my astonishment, I discovered that the nickname – as I took it to be – was true to form: on the nameplate above his desk was his full name, Prof. Dr. Eng. Peter H. Wow! I stopped calling him professor and restricted myself to the more common way of addressing him as Peter.

I started there as a draftsman in April, 1993. For work they had new computers whose brand name now escape me. Their system was somewhat different from those I used before and it took me a day or two to understand their tricks.

    The factory manufactured large trucks, mostly designed to pull trailers, one, two, up to four trailers, sometime even more. Size of these trucks can be guessed at by the size of their engines – diesels, with 8 to about 20 litres of displacement. At the time of my start Kenworth was doing away with the mechanically injected engines, and began to use engines with electronic fuel injections. That EFI system was even a bit more complicated than the one I was used to from my work on passenger vehicles previously.

    Alongside my work I could not help myself looking at these trucks from my electrical point of view. The first glance was rather surprising! I always start with the evaluation of alternator and battery sizes. A quick calculation of electrical current requirement at the common high-electrical-demand continuous operating conditions (engine working, air conditioning working, external lamps turned on, a couple of trailers behind, etc.) gave me a figure well in excess of 200 Amps. electrical current requirement. Alternators on these trucks were able to deliver between 60 and 160 Amps. electrical current maximum! A quiet inquiry with the Service Department revealed that the electrical components suffering from greatest number of failures are – alternators and batteries! Hardly surprising, for alternators fail when they are subjected to continuous demand above their rated capacity, with the battery failures following closely behind.

    Inquiring with Peter’s sidekick, a young electrical engineer N. C., confirmed to me what I suspected: that in a motor vehicle the main electrical power supplier is the battery, with the alternator serving as a battery charger only! It happens to be exactly the other way round, but I thanked him for the information, being but a general draftsman...

    As the time went by I discovered quite a number of dubious electrical things until I decided (for myself) that the electrical system in the company is in fairly incompetent hands and decided to seek contract somewhere else. As it happened, Toyota was looking for someone to assist their electrical engineer with the design of the electrical system for the car being prepared for production, and I accepted the job.

    KW people expressed disappointment: „Don’t you like it here? “. As a matter of fact I didn’t, and we parted ways amicably.

    At my new place the local electrical engineer Trevor J. quietly confided in me that he is not extremely keen on the electrical system, and could I concentrate on that while he would be doing the administrative side, that is parts list, releases, contact with the local Japanese engineers and such: nothing could be more pleasing to me than that!

I spent two periods of very pleasant time, working on two successive models of Camry:

                                      The white Toyota Camry was also marketed as GM Apollo.

    Trevor J. turned out to be a very pleasant friend and a colleague, and we managed to steer both models through all the phases of design, development and testing to a successful start of production. Very successful, except for one minor blemish: the first of the two models, the white one pictured above, had quite a few electrical problems at the start of the production. Very few – if any – were caused by our design. Majority were caused by faults in manufacture, mainly in the manufacture of wiring harnesses. In my judgment at the time, the parts, hundreds of different parts, were manufactured and tested individually by their manufacturers. The problems arose when parts from different factories were assembled together in a vehicle. We both humbly accepted the opprobrium heaped on us by the management (despite of the fact that only a tiny minority of electrical problems were our fault), and decided to invent some sort of testing of the electrical system prior to the start of production.

    With the second model our roles, Trevor’s and mine, were separated officially, and I was to a large extent on my own. Parallel with my main work I began to design some sort of electrical system testing.

    For testing I asked for a large table to be installed in the engineering department’s  storeroom. On the table I put as many standard car components as I was able: battery, engine bay electrical components, instrument panel, door locks and window motors, radios, headlamps and tail lamps, etc. All these components I connected together with wiring harnesses as they were being made available from pre-production runs. And then I started creating various situations...

    Electrically speaking, the car was not one, but several hundred of slightly different vehicles. For starters, the car came with two different engines, four- and a six-cylinder one; manual and automatic transmission; several different air conditioning systems; a number of electric windows options, door locks options and alarm system options; several different radio and speakers arrangements, to name but few. When I connected (on paper) all these different arrangements I ended up with several hundreds of tests. Despite having one colleague (radio engineer Bill W.) on hand to assist the task was beyond me. I asked for some assistance from the testing department, but was given (for some 5 weeks only) two university students, on leave from their 4th year of electrical engineering.

    Of the two, Carmen turned up to be like supercharged dragon at work: understood the task at the first glance, was ready to start interconnecting and testing almost immediately, and even, after a couple of weeks started coming up with improvements and most welcome simplifications – mind, I myself was still only wrestling with the job... Fernando (both of their parent were of Spanish origin) was a bit slower, but the three of us managed to „de-bug“ the electrical system so that the start of production happened without a hitch. Thank you, Carmen, thank you Fernando...

    I still had a few weeks of work at Toyota left on my desk when I received a surprising telephone call from Kevin D., Human Resources Manager at KW: „Charles, how much longer are you planning to stay at Toyota?“. I told him that it could be a month or two. „O. K., can you start as an electrical engineer here at KW, when you finish? “. After agreeing on the conditions and on the salary I promised to give him a ring.

    Three weeks later my desk at Toyota was clear, I reported back to Kevin, and a few days later on Monday, I reported to Gary H., the Chief Engineer at KW. He took me to the „Professor’s“ table, wished me good luck and went back to his glass office. Turning to Peter’s assistant, the electrical engineer N. C., I asked about Peter: „He left last Friday“, was the surprising answer. And what am I supposed to do, I asked? „The same as Peter, and I now have batteries and brakes“, answered N. C.

    And that was the start of my 5-years long carrier at KW...

(30) Working as a contract engineer (4/8).­­­­­

    For Nissan on their Pulsar/Astra electrical system I worked from outside, usually from a nearby office that belonged to my friends, or even from home. In my work I had nearly absolute freedom; meetings with Nissan engineers (usually Greg Hall & Ian Stanley) took place only every few weeks, or whenever I needed. My drawings were accepted almost without a word; a few little changes required were due to changes in Nissan components, or to facilitate future manufacture.

    Mitsubishi was different. They did not accept my Macintosh, nor any drawings produced thereon. They insisted on my using the drawings produced in Japan, and on changing them in pencil for revisions back in Japan.

    At the time Mitsubishi was preparing a car for export to the U. S., there were already a few prototypes undergoing tests, and my initial brief was to make sure the electrical system is without faults, for “you know how the Americans are keen on taking things to courts". The car’s American name was Diamante:

     The one pictured here stands in the second-hand car yard somewhere in America, it is about 18 years old, and still looks quite handsome for its age. I liked driving some of the prototypes, back in 1991. Its every electrical component found itself in my hands at least a hundred times…

    The car had 3-litre petrol EFI engine, four-speed automatic gearbox, and it is a front wheels drive. It had everything a compatible car of that vintage had: air conditioning, bags, theft-prevention measures, eight speakers with an additional volume-booster…

    The time allocated to me for electrical check was fairly short, some three months; I knew what to do, except I didn’t have a suitable method and had to start from the scratch.

    The main problem was with the flow of information in the Mitsubishi company. At my disposal were drawings of the electrical system, produced in Japan for all the subsidiaries around the world. The drawings contained all the components required for the same model in every country where the car was intended to be manufactured. My first job was to reduce the drawings by elimination of the components not required in the intended marked, in my case the U. S. Also I had to add to these drawings components that were not known when the drawing were being made. Marked-up copies of these drawings – some 20 of them - were then made more presentable by a draftsman and sent to Japan for corrections.

    Soon after faxes began to arrive from Japan questioning the changes. The faxes were in Japanese, translated in our office by a translator who was not familiar with the electrical terms in them. My replies were equally inelegantly translated into Japanese by her, and sent back to Japan.

    In that merry-go-round of faxes  the correct method of behaving towards the Japanese colleagues was explained to me: (allegedly) for the Japanese the word “no” in discussions is offensive. The correct method of argument is “your distinguished suggestion is correct, would you be so kind as to consider this or that as well?”. The answer from Japan to our proposal – if it ever came! – was always in the form that “the drawing so-and-so-was changed to such-and-such and we request that you change your design accordingly”. Reply in the form “thank you for your suggestion and returned herewith is the revised drawing” was not known by Mitsubishi in Japan.

    In the meantime the time was slowly running out, local suppliers were clamouring for signed production drawings, and I was wrestling with my job of checking the electrical system.

    As is the way of life in all automotive companies a new manager arrived in the electrical department. His first act was to call meeting of the department (some 6 engineers and about 10 draftsmen) to enquire how often we should call such meetings. He received no reply from us; we were not in need to have meetings, we needed a manager who would understand our work – Steve L. was not that kind of manager. I discovered it within days when I asked him for discussion about some 150 items I compiled to date during my checking of the electrical system. I was told that he is not an electrical expert (he was nothing electrical, that is), but that in a few days he is going to present himself at Mitsubishi in Japan where he could put my questions on the table.

    He went, he came back, and after a couple of days I knocked on the glass window of his office. What I heard was what I was half-expecting: he did not feel competent to discuss such deeply technical details, and what is actually wrong with them? I explained to him, as gingerly as I was able, that about one third of the items may cause short circuit, even fire, if not corrected; another third are cost saving measures, and the last third are simply drafting errors. Since I refused to sign those drawings which contained the short circuit causing items he signed them off himself…

    As an employee I used to suffer deeply from such deliberate acts; as a contractor it was only my cynicism which received a boost – if you want your car to be imperfect, who am I to argue!

    The volume production began and the car export took place with all the faults and unnecessary additional costs. Many years later I read in the press that Mitsubishi worldwide was for many years concealing problems with their cars - what a surprise...

    In the meantime new markets opened for the car, this time in Europe, and, as a result, instead of the initial 3-4 months I remained at Mitsubishi for nearly two years. I was working on models for various European countries, such as Great Britain (r. h. drive plus headlamps adjustments), Swiss (heated front seats), Swedish (daytime headlamps), German (same as Swedish except without daytime headlamps), etc., etc.

    While working on these cars, overseeing testing and revisions, I was perfecting my method of electrical system testing, which proved to be fairly handy in some of my future contracts.

(29) Working as a contract engineer (3/8).­­­­­

    TD2000 was a replica of the British sports car MGTD, with a few modern features added. The engine was Nissan 2000cc, with Electronic Fuel Injection, gear box is 5-gear manual (an automatic gearbox was also planned), rear wheels drive. The chassis was ladder-type, made of steel, body is plastic, leather seats, instruments modern with „retro“ type dials.

    The idea was born in the company called Marshall Cars in Sydney, N. S. W. Initially the car had carburetted engine, for volume production an EFI engine was selected. My job was to design the electrical system and to keep an eye on it during all phases of design, development and  production. After a few prototypes the project was acquired by another company, Geelong Agricultural in the state of Victoria. Again, after a few prototypes the project was bought by another company called Australian Classic Cars; it eventually ended up being owned by the Gasons in Ararat, Vic... . I was involved with all the various prototypes.

    Early in 1987 the great number of individual electrical components in the small space behind instrument panel forced a decision to integrate most of the components in one „black box“. The design fell to my lap, despite my virtually zero experience with either electronics or printed circuits design. With the assistance of several small companies the design was completed in about two months‘ time. As I was unable to find a manufacturer I decided to try it myself. I set up a small assembly workshop in our neighbour’s garage, and produced some 20 of „black boxes“ for the first prototypes. Most of these were „cobbled up“ from a variety of experimental parts, but most of them functioned correctly. At the end of prototype run I received a Purchase Order to produce 400 of the „black boxes“ for the anticipated production of TD2000 during the next 12 months, with some 1000 units expected to be produced annually thereafter. The Purchase Order marked the beginning of frantic activity: I had to secure supply of components from several small companies by issuing my Purchase Orders for them. I was planning to assemble the modules in my neighbour’s garage, at least initially, but I was casting around for a suitable workshop for rent. Also, I had to spend some $50,000 in purchasing of components I needed for the assembly, components such as enclosures, wiring and connectors assembly and such.

    During months of this frantic activity I failed to notice dark clouds gathering above the world’s economy; admittedly, a friendly bank manager urged me to be cautious, but I paid little notice to his fairly nebulous remarks – the lure of our first $million was too strong...

The first lightning of the ensuing financial storm hit me just at the time when I was ready to start volume production: the Purchase Order for delivery of the 400 modules was cancelled! And at the same time Machine Dynamics (an industrial robots manufacturer), where I was still managing their electrical design and assembly department, declared itself bankrupt.

    The activity which started a few months earlier in one direction, that of starting the production, repeated itself in the opposite direction – how to stop it. I had to cancel the number of Purchase Orders I issued to my suppliers; had to stop the still ongoing design of details of production; had to dismantle the little workshop in the neighbour’s garage; had to pay those few people who worked for me on subcontract at the Machine Dynamics; and had to dispose of the number of components already purchased – most of them sold at a huge loss (the time of financial crisis is ideal for buying, not for selling!)...

    As for myself, I lost my income from Machine Dynamics and was at the bottom financially – and without work! I applied for Unemployment Benefit, the meagre sum of which represented but some 20% of my income to date, and started searching for new contract. The contract came in about two months‘ time in the form of offer to work as an electrical engineer for Mitsubishi Motors in Adelaide, which offer I gladly accepted.

    Looking back I realised that I should have paid much more attention to the economic climate in the country and the world, but I have my doubts whether I would have acted any differently – who in the world is able to predict the World’s Economy Crisis (except for those who are in the position to kick it off)?

(28) Working as a contract engineer (2/8).

The electrical system of Nissan Pulsar/GM Astra had several variants. Incidentally, the Pulsar label belonged to Nissan, the Astra one to General Motors. The basic body shapes were sedan and coupe. Each of them was with, or without, the air conditioning, each with manual or automatic gearbox, each with two or four radio speakers, two or four headlamps, etc.

As soon as my work was finished (I was working from home, coming for meeting at the Nissan headquarters but once every couple of weeks), I received a telephone call from a company I never heard of before, a company called Machine Dynamics (later also Automation Dynamics). A voice was enquiring whether I would be able to design electrical system for a series of robots. My answer was „Of course I am able!“...

    The robots I knew till then were those I read about in the science-fiction literature: metallic human-like machines with a disjointed kind of movements.

    A couple of days after the telephone conversation I went to see the company, where I was taken for a tour of the factory by their boss by the name of Wheeler (or Whelan, not sure any longer). What I saw there was beyond my imagination at the time: the „robots“ were spider-like contraptions, each a couple of metres tall, moving on rails several metres above ground, each with pincer-like claws at the end of their arms. It was beyond my imagination, indeed, but I behaved as if I was working with similar machines every day.

   „What do you think?“, asked the boss. I told him that I would like to spend a day or two in their engineering department before submitting my proposal, and he agreed.

    As soon as I was free of Nissan, which was in only a few weeks, I went to sit down with one of Machine Dynamics engineers and listened to the general overview, and later next to their chief draftsman to observe his work and see how far in the contract  they were. Their contract was to produce several dozens of robots for manipulation of automotive components at Ford Motor Company.

    During that time I inspected the few robots they had at various stage of assembly, and perused a few their drawings. These were all produced by the traditional method of pencil, rulers, compasses; the graphic computers were still unheard of. Some computers were, of course, in the programmer’s office, the old IBM86 type; one of them had the first version of AutoCad installed, but it was not being used for anything.

    The robots were being designed and made for Ford Motor Company that was preparing two new vehicles for volume production. Thirty robots were destined for a sport car called SA30 (marketed as Ford Capri), and sixty robots were for assembly of Ford Falcon vehicle. Each robot was designed for a specific task, i.e. to lift, manipulate and hold in place for welding various parts of vehicles bodies.

    Each of the robots had between one and six moving arms (called axis in the trade). I regret to this day that I failed to take a photograph of at least one of them – picture is worth a thousand words...

    Each arm of these robots contained dozens of electrical components, such as motors, sensors, solenoids, and, of course, the interconnecting cables, with their own multitude of various components. Each robot had its own control panel the size of soft drinks vending machine The robots were powered from two different sources located within these controllers, 12VDC for general operation, and (about) 360AC (or DC, can’t remember) for some of the motors. And, finally, all the control panels were interconnected by cables buried in concrete channels under the factory floor. And that is the rough description of the electrical system I was required to submit my quote on.

    Their chief draftsman, an old Englishman called Norm C., unrolled for me several drawings, each containing one version of the entire electrical system. The drawings were at least a metre high, and several metres long, full of a multitude of closely-packed pencil lines. From the taped-on pieces of paper I was able to see that the initial drawing started with the paper size of about 1 x 1 metre, and additional paper sizes were being added in various directions as the draftsman was wrestling with the ever-increasing complexity of the job. Norm confided to me that it is all getting too much for him, and that he would like to leave it all and go back to the UK.

I went home, sketched from memory the most complicated robot on a piece o paper, and decided on my „computerised“ strategy. And I also decided to offer the Customer my services on the condition that I should be allowed to bring my own computer and printer to do the work.

I presumed (and later proved correct) that the electrical system of each of the control panel is similar; likewise, I presumed that the bases of each of the robots are electrically similar; and likewise with all their arms. Consequently I sketched their electrical systems on several drawings, one for the control panel, one for the base, one for the arm, with the electrical system as I imagined it to be – not exceedingly correct, but sufficient for the presentation. In the accompanying text I stressed that these drawing can be easily multiplied on the computer, and the copies modified to suit each of the panels/bases/arms.

    On presentation I was asked to demonstrate how such copying is made, and the resounding success of this presentation was the main factor for my winning the contract.

I spent some six or eight months in their design department, until all drawings were produced, inspected and approved by their chief engineer, an alert and intelligent little Englishman by the name Mike C. And I went home...

    For a few months I was working as a draftsman for a company called Flexdrive (or Collins, even Boeing, for they changed the name several times during my time there), designing and drafting a proposal for the Taiwanese navy vessel electrical system. They had a battery of IBM computers, with AutoCad software, and the job was relatively easy. However, the proposal was completed and I was sent home to wait for the reply from Taiwan (which never came in the end). I was not at home for more than a week when my old Machine Dynamics rang: your electrical system, Charles, is ready to be manufactured, and would I be interested in managing the manufacture, installation, testing and shipment to the Customer? Would I be ever!!!

    Apart from the stack of my drawings, which, after months of further development required substantial revisions, I was given an „aide“, young engineer straight from university of Paris by the name of Catherine ?, occasional help from several of the local software engineers, and a flock of electrical assemblers in the adjacent factory. There were about eight of them, men and women, permanent employees, but due to pressure from Ford we had to speed the production up, and at times I had up to about 25 operators, mostly contractors, to train, supervise and discipline (there were a couple of fistfights there during my time, mostly on the basis „I can solder joints better than you“, etc.).

    The contract lasted for about a year. During that time I kept updating my drawings in line with the changes requested by the Customer, supervised assembly of all the components, their testing and installation in the various parts of the robots, eventual disassembly, shipment and re-assembly of all the robots in the Ford factory; and, finally, instructing Ford operators on how to operate these strange new contraptions.

    During my time around these robots I was offered a new contract, this time back on cars, to design electrical system for a sports car called TD2000. Quote was not required, for the Customer, Marshall Car Company Pty Ltd, heard about me from Nissan, where they were getting an engine from for their new car. Just come, talk, and work from our office or from wherever, as long as you can deliver – most flattering and convenient arrangement.

    My work for Machine Dynamics ended quite ingloriously. Towards the end of 1987, or 1988, finalising delivery to Ford, and working on a proposal for new contract Machine Dynamics was hoping to win with another branch of Ford Motor Company, I did not receive my regular payment. A payment for myself and two electricians who were working through me as sub-contractors. The payment was behind some four or five weeks. Speaking to the chief accountant I discovered that the company had run out of money and is about to be declared bankrupt! It was days before Christmas, I had to pay off my two electricians from my own pocket, and spent a fairly miserable Christmas break at home. Over the next few months, while working on the TD2000, I attended a few creditor’s meeting, but did not get my Machine Dynamics money back – there were none left...

(27) Working as a contract engineer (1/8).

I left General Motors in 1984, planning to offer my electrical engineering services to car manufacturers. Apart from my abilities in the field of automotive electrical systems I advertised myself as (then newish in the field) „computerised operator“, brandishing sample drawings produced on my recently acquired Apple Macintosh, and printed on the Apple "dot-matrix" printer.

First few weeks of my freedom were devoted to playing with my computer. The programs I was planning to use were MacWrite, MacDraw and MacFile. Cute names, but the performance offered by them was serious and far superior to the General Motors‘ „mainframe“ Applicon computer; superior in their ability, and especially in their speed.

    I contacted several companies, but, to my surprise, my first contract came from a non-automotive company called Fred Small & Sons Pty Ltd. The company was preparing an automated line for testing of automotive engines for – General Motors, and they were looking for someone able to connect their computers with the engine's electrical system. The engine was one for the vehicle called JB Camira, for which I recently designed the entire electrical system while still working at General Motors.

    For design and production of drawings I was planning to use my computer, but they did not want to hear about it. Computers at the time were not being used by anybody as yet, and Fred Small insisted on the traditional methods of drafting using pencils, protractors, compasses and such. Money being money, I dug up my old drafting tools with no small dose of disgust and spend a nice few months in the Fred Smalls office. In the process I had to visit several times my old General Motors where I bumped into some of my old colleagues who expressed their envy at my courage to leave the secure employment in favour of contracting at my „advanced“ age of nearly 50.

When I was close to finish, I received a call from Nissan Automotive, a car manufacturer. The company was preparing for production a passenger vehicle under the name of Nissan Pulsar/Holden Astra, and would I be able to come and design the electrical system for the car. On answering in the positive I was asked to come and show them some material to demonstrate my ability, and also tell them about the time needed, and remuneration required.

For the demonstration I prepared a few sketches produced on my computer. Sketches were in the form of drawings (produced on my new „dot-matrix“ printer), showing the proposed electrical system (in the form of my electrical circuit, perfected while I was still at the GM), location of cables in the car, and rough calculations of battery/alternator performance.

    Nissan management, led by their Chief Engineer Peter Barber (an ex-GM engineer, with whom I had a few disagreements back at the GM, where he worked as a testing engineer and resented my "innovative" approach to his testing) and Chief of Design Ian Stanley, were looking incredulously at my sketches; the computer drafting being something that was only being debated by car companies at the time.

This is my first presentation drawing. This type of presentation of electrical system has not been used in the automotive industry of the time:

    Nissan answer came after few days – my offer was accepted in preference to a Yazaki*** proposal; system, timing, cost, all accepted, and when would I be able to start. I was beside myself with joy: My First Real Contract!

Much later I realised that I made my first – and greatest – mistake in my new carrier: prior to handing my proposal to the Customer I failed to perform the „due diligence“ - I failed to quietly inquire about the reasons for being asked to provide my services...

After Nissan made the decision to design and build the new car its management asked its own design department for quote – how long, how many operators, how much would the electrical design cost. The answer was about eleven months and up to ten operators. So, the management began casting around for a cheaper, and more importantly faster, option, and found me, with my answer: three months, and two operators! With that last number I cheated a bit, for I was planning to do the job entirely by myself. It annoys me to this day, for I could have quoted, say, six months and five operators, with money to match, and still could have won the contract.

The difference in time and number of operators required for the same job is a nice example of difference between classical manual and the new-fangled computerised design and drafting. In reality, the contract lasted a couple of months longer that my two months quoted initially, due to various changes requested by the customer. Still, I earned about 50% more than I would have earned at General Motors for a similar job and time. This contract helped me to establish a name which was of good use to me in hunting for future work.

Incidentally, a year after its release for production, the vehicle was branded as the "vehicle with the best electrical system" by the Royal Automotive Club of Victoria's survey.

The following is a typical drawing of the electric door locks system:

Next is the drawing of Main Wiring Harness for the same car:

*** Yazaki at the time was the largest automotive electrical components manufacturer in the world.