Working for Deltic

In the 2 years up to the millennium I worked as a team leader at Deltic Engineering in Manchester. We made machinery that produced car silencers and I was able to install some of it in Italy and India. I remember on one occasion building a machine for a company in Poland, which had entered into a partnership with an Italian Company, and the Italians arrived one day to have a look at progress. I understood that the Italians were the dog and the Poles were the tail.
One particular bit of equipment wasn’t working properly and the Italians arrived just as I was about to hit it hard with a sledgehammer. I waited until they were hidden by other machines before I did the deed and it had the necessary effect. When I demo’d it, it worked perfectly, for the first time, and when they left I couldn’t get it running again for a week. Phew!
Another problem was that we discovered it woul dn’t make the longest size silencer as it was too near the ground so we had to put 100mm packings under it. When it finally arrived in Poland and installed, the Italian guy was there and looked very puzzled, claiming it wasn’t that high in the factory and the mechanism was a bit awkward to get at. Fortunately our installation engineer went for the Oscar and persuaded him it was always like that and had to be for the longer lengths. Crazy or what? More post about Deltic later.

Bloody hell. Was forced out of bed at 6.30 this morning to look for the de-icer for my wife. Errr…for her car windscreen I think I mean. Its that time of year isn’t it, a long slippery slide to Xmas.