[Fot] My favorite memory of Jack...

[Larry Young]

I hesitate to tell this story, because it resulted from a screwup by 
Jack.  But what the heck, we all know he was a great mechanic, but 
everyone makes mistakes. I know I make my share. My son Tom remarked, 
"See dad, even a guru can make a mistake." This was the only time I ever 
got to wrench directly with Jack.

This occurred during our weekend at Hallett in 2006.  Jack broke a valve 
on the very first day.  We had the rocker cover off and he tapped one 
rocker with a hammer and the valve stem flew up in the air.  Next step 
was to pull the head.  We noticed that he had accidentally reversed the 
front two cylinder liners, so the chamfer on the edge of the liner was 
in the wrong place.  The intake valves were smacking the top of the 
liner.  He mulled over the situation and I offered to loan him a spare 
head that I had at home (in Tulsa).  We took the car back to my garage 
rather than work at the track.  We ground a chamfer on the liners where 
is was supposed to be, mocked everything up and checked to make sure the 
valves had plenty of clearance. Put my head on and he was good to go.  
It was fun to work with him.  There was also several FoT over that 
evening which was great fun.  Unfortunately, our fix to Jack's engine 
didn't last.  I think the valve pounding on the liner had transmitted a 
lot of force to the camshaft and the gear for the distributor and oil 
pump. The camshaft failed the next day.  We got a chance to work again 
in my garage on Saturday night to replace a split cylinder liner in my 
engine.  Jack was smart and turned in early (after all the guy was 70 
and had heart problems).  Bob Kramer and Tony Drews hung with me until 
we got it done just in time to watch the clock change from 2am to 3am 
daylight savings time.  We were successful with the fix, but still had a 
persistent miss the next day.  What the heck, at least we had a chance 
to compete on Sunday.  I will always remember pulling that all nighter 
working in the garage with friends.

The mental image of Jack and Tony that I will never forget is seeing a 
red and blue TR4 head to tail as they went screaming around Blackhawk 
farms in 2006.
Larry Young


Tony Drews wrote:
> One of the things we'll be doing at the visitation is having folks 
> write down a favorite memory of Jack.  It occurs to me that many of 
> you can't attend but would like to participate in this portion of his 
> celebration.  You may even find it cathartic (I find that reading and 
> responding to the messages about him is cathartic for me).
>
> If you'd like, reply to me with your favorite memory of Jack.  I'll 
> make sure that the whole family gets to read all of these.  If you 
> feel the desire, you can cc the FOT list, but that's not necessary.
>
>