(22) Design draftsman’s job (2/6).

    One of the electrical engineers, Clem Rogers, was my friend. We met outside our work by playing tennis opposite each other in the same competition. When, eventually, we came across each other at work we just exchanged a wink. His section was about 2 or 3 tables away from my desk. There were some 5 engineers in his section: a radio engineer, switch engineer, instrumentation, lamps and wiring; the wiring engineer happened to be my friend.

    Before my friend became wiring engineer, he worked in the seating section. The previous wiring engineer (Henry Valis) having died the post was given to my friend, who until then had absolutely nothing in common with electricity, and surely no interest in it either. He was not a graduated engineer, he was promoted to his seats from being a draftsman previously. Unlike myself he did not like electricity, he liked his seats. His electrical duties he used to discharge by using the method described above, in line with the GM tradition and custom: take wiring from the previous model, install it in the mock-up of the new model, and chop, hack and pull to shape.

To be frank, my knowledge of electrics, especially its automotive variety, did not extend much farther: in my youth I assembled a couple of crystal radios from kits, and, as a conscript in the air force, I worked as an electrical mechanic for some two years. Later, as air traffic controller, I dabbled in design of radar installations.

    I decided to look at the electricity a bit deeper. From a technical bookshop I bought an electrical handbook for American marines and read it from cover to cover. And I began to apply my newly-acquired knowledge to study the electrical system of cars I was working on – and began to discover some interesting things…

    In the handbook I discovered formulas that were vaguely familiar to me from my high school days: Law of Ohm, of Kirchhoff, description of batteries, electric motors, alternators, and so on. I found which of the engineers is in charge of these components in our cars. To my surprise – no one in particular. For instance, batteries and alternators belonged to the engine engineer, who was merely interested in their shape, mass and method of installation in the engine bay; the same with the instrumentation engineer, wiring engineer, front end engineer where the lamps are installed, etc. There was not one engineer in charge of electrical performance, electrical parameters, electrical compatibility – not one! If, for instance, the alternators began to fail, the first thing to do was to blame the supplier. If the supplier suggested a different brand, or a larger alternator, the suggestion was accepted, the alternators were installed and if they stopped failing the matter was forgotten. Nobody was interested why the alternators failed in the first place. If a fuse failed it was replaced by a larger fuse. That the larger fuse may necessitate thicker wires, for instance, has never been considered. And that was the situation with all electrical components. Being still a mechanical design draftsman I began to toy with electrical calculations of situations I encountered in the cars I was working on. My results were often, if not always, different from reality: here the wires were too thick or too thin; the alternator was (usually) too weak; the fuses were too large/small; earth returns were poorly constructed (the abominable holes in the sheet metal + self-tapping screws), and so on and so on.

For my calculations I was using electrical system of the vehicle called LH Torana for which I “designed” its wiring not a long time previously: 

    The car had several variants. Basic model had four-cylinder 1.9 litre engine, with carburettor, and four-gear manual transmission; three-gear automatic transmission, six cylinder and eight-cylinder engines were also available.