Quote:
Originally Posted by Adger Smith
First time I talked to Jere was in the mid 70's when I built my first flow bench. He was extremely helpful.
Fast forward to 1989 and I was building a Dyno cell. I called and he remembered me. He really helped with the design of the cell. (kept me from making mistakes) I got a large envelope with hand written notes and suggestions from him. He even drew up some dyno specific headers for the most common engines I ran. I guess we just clicked. He was always helpful. The last set of headers I got from him were for one of my best friends SBC Monza...were heck to put on, but worked well. The set of headers he did for my D/Gas Vette back in the mid 70's were the best on the car. I never found any headers that went down track as quick as his set did. I have often wondered how many guys like me there were scattered around the country that he helped out.
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Adger,
There were a few. Jere helped several really fast guys, and made them even faster. I know he helped Holroyd, Wikle, Lynch, and a host of others. Like I said, Jere, Bill, and WJ, did not, (and in the case of WJ,do not) suffer fools gladly. But if you asked good questions, listened, paid attention, and did as they suggested, you could count on getting help and going faster.
Jere probably had more dyno data, and more information on dyno cells and equipment, than anyone in the country. That's actually how I became friends with Jere. Clark and Darrell had been helping me, so had Keith. Clark told me to get a set of headers from Jere for Kevin's car. I called Jere, and the questions began. After about 20 minutes of discussing the car and engine, he asked me how much dyno testing we had, and what the data looked like. I told him I had about 20 hours, and a ton of pulls. Next question was "how good was the data?" I immediately said "well, the cell is not ideal, and I'm not a great operator, I think my data only repeats within 2%-4% at best." He immediately said "you're the first SOB I ever asked that question who didn't tell me his dyno repeated to 1%". We set about ordering the headers, and Jere began calling me weekly, asked me to buy a recorder to record our conversations as he did. We talked very often until his health got really bad, and then I hated to call and bother him. He actually asked Kevin and me to buy the header company, but we were at NitroPlate at the time and Kevin felt it would not be a good idea.