Intro

[DC Smith]

Well, 
 I guess I can give a little back ground on myself...

 I have been "mechanically inclined" all of my life. I used to take
clocks and other stuff apart that my grandmother had laying around as a
small boy. She was really impressed when I got some clock she loved
working again for her at ~age 6. :)
 I joined the Army in 1972 and worked as a track and wheeled vehicle
mechanic (they use this term "mechanic" loosely in the military). After
my honorable discharge in 1975, I went to college under the GI bill with
Auto Mechanics as a major. I worked in a few shops, but didn't really
care for the work and being greasy all the time. I ended up working in a
plastics extrusion plant that made PVC pipe, in the maint department,
till the late 70's. When the plant closed down ~1979, I moved to St.
Louis, where my sister lived at the time. Here I got some totally dead
end jobs, until I got into Cable Television. (which is a dead end job in
itself) I did Cable Television for ~10 years, between St. Louis and
Atlanta. I usually made good money at CATV and was mostly into the
construction/splicing/activation/balancing end of things, with 2 bucket
trucks and a bunch of assorted equipment. When the dog eat dog pricing
structure of CATV construction got to where I was having trouble keeping
my trucks paid up along with the million dollars worth of liability
insurance, I sold everything and moved back to St. Louis. Since my wife
was originally from St. Louis, I figure the 20-40K cut in pay about made
up for the drop in my phone bill. <grin>
 Upon returning to St. Louis from Atlanta, I went back to school at age
37 and got a AOSEE degree in electronics. Electronics was something that
always had fascinated me, but it is just too complicated to learn on my
own. (at least for me)
 I presently work at FlightSafety Boeing in St. Louis as a flight
simulator technician. We have 9 simulators at my location. All are full
motion, FAA approved, and are run by either a Vax 11/780's,
Concurrent's, or PDP 11/55's mainframe computers. These things are huge
and the closest thing to a real jet or turbo prop you can get. We train
airline/ commuter pilots. (scary, I'm drivin!) :^) I am trying to get
into ground school here for the different aircraft, but it's not a big
priority, since I really don't care to get a pilots license. I do know
how to fly a 727 and a DC 9 (kinda) thank god for auto pilot. :^) I
preflight the sims, prior to the crews getting in, every morning, so I
need to know how to fly, besides how to fix a mainframe computer. I
really don't believe how incredibly complicated the simulators actually
are. I get into everything at work.
 Well, with my life long love of cars and going fast, and always
building/ fixing my own cars, (and trucks) I ran across a wrecked
non-intercooled 1984 Buick T-Type one day. I bought this car and
returned it to it's totally stock pristine condition, it deserved to be
in.
 Since this car is no where near being "collectible" (not a matching
number anywhere) I decided to just make it fast. I have since changed it
to the later 86/7 turbo regal intercooled setup (pretty much stock
stuff) and it's an animal on the street.
 I am on a few lists, to include gnttype, and I run down a lot of 7148
ecm's in the bone yards for Buick list members, that for reasons
unknown, don't have the access to them, that I have.
 One thing I have always wanted to do, is to make the 7148 ecm
programmable, kinda like a DFI. I do feel that the stock GN computer is
capable of much more than people give it credit for. The biggest problem
for me, is making changes to the program at the drag strip and the slow
data stream for data logging. I am also looking at making a 7749 (syty)
ECM work in a GN. I don't know if this really is a good move, but the
lack of a MAF sensor and a faster data stream, makes it attractive to
me. I would need it to work off of a 3 bar sensor too, since I would
like to crank about 30 lbs of boost through this 6 cyl motor some day.

 Well, enough of my sunday morning ramblings. I could go on and on,
since many details were left out, but this gives the list a little
insight to where I'm at.


 Take care.

***********************************************************************
Dan Smith      84 Regal   12.13 at 112     GSCA# 1459
St.Charles, Missouri                
mailto:dcsmith at gnttype.org
http://www.tetranet.net/users/morepoweral
***********************************************************************