PERA Annual Marketing and Technical Conference.
I drove over for this deal and added another PB (personal best) to my ET (estimated time) DO (drive over). Winona to Ypsilanti in 8 hours and 45 minutes……beat it by 28 minutes versus the last time I did that drive……………………. Wooo-Hooooooo!
I got there in time Monday to have dinner with Jim Becker of Kalitta Motorsports. The race shop happens to be right across the street from the Marriott where I was staying. Jim Becker is a great guy, very talented engine builder, and I really enjoyed spending some time there at Kalitta Motorsports surrounded by all that Kalitta go fast history.
Anyway I am here to talk about the PERA Marketing and Technical Conference. We were treated to some of the best PERA tours I have ever been on. We started out playing a game of golf in a “best ball” scramble type of format.……….special thank to Jerry Hendrix of Melling for being patient enough to actually help me with my golf game………….best round I ever had! Also special thanks to Matt McGraw and Rick Dickerson for just putting up with my errant approach to this game. Some would say I’m an all around golfer because I’m all around the golf course. But I get a great cost per swing.
Wednesday morning took us on a bus ride to Melling Manufacturing. Mark Melling met us all there and then we got to see how Melling manufactures oil pumps. Who would have thought there would be so much state of the art manufacturing for oil pumps? I now have a little more appreciation for the heart of our engines after taking the Melling tour. From there we were off to the MAHLE Piston Ring Facility in St. Johns, Michigan. I can’t say this enough………………if you ever get a chance to see how piston rings are manufactured …………you must see it to believe it. Lots and lots of machines using some very creative tooling to machine piston rings one at a time. I think they said they have over 500,000 piston rings in queue each and every day.
Thursday brought us a working breakfast presentation on the history of the Internet and Social Media delivered by Arthur Talbot. We received a great presentation on the in’s an out’s of the GM Duramax Engines from Roy Berndt of LQK Remanufacturing. Then it was off to DART Machinery for another tour. But this was no regular tour. When we got to DART, Ted Keating showed us not only how, but why they do the things they do. When it comes to making cast iron or aluminum blocks and cylinder heads, this is the place where go fast engines are born for sure. We got done at DART in time to take in the Henry Ford Museum. I have never been to this museum but now I know why some people have yearly passes for this place. I think I could have spent 3 days looking and learning about Henry and his many accomplishments. We even had dinner at the Eagle Tavern that was a throw back into the time of the mid 1800s………great food for sure. Big thanks to the McGraw family and AER Manufacturing for treating us all to a very unique dinner.
Friday the group was off the Roush Industries for a behind-the-scenes look at their custom engine shop and many other areas not normally open to anyone but Roush employees. I hope all of you got as much out of this year’s conference as I did. It was great to see everyone again and I look forward to hearing you on the Webinars as well as see you on the trade show circuit later this year.
In closing, I must say Nancie Boland does an outstanding job organizing these events and she deserves a big pat on the back for a job well done! Thank you Nancie!
See ya on the web!