Phil Bray’s High Speed Gearsets

Yesterday I received a phone call from Phil Bray, who believes that I have besmirched his reputation (his words) by what I have written on this Message Board (although he said that he has not read any of it and has based his conclusion on what he has heard from others). He also believes that I misled him about the quality of the mechanics who installed and then removed his gearset from my car, that their mechanical incompetence was the reason that the gearset did not work, that I should have posted all these happenings on this Message Board, and that I should give him back the $1600 that he had refunded to me for my labor costs. (Whew!!) If you are interested, you can read what has been said in the past by searching this Message Board with the name Phil Bray. In this post I’ll try, at least in summary form, to cover these topics. It is not my intent to either build Phil up or tear him down, but rather to eliminate misunderstandings and explain some of my actions. Unless you’re a regular reader of the Message Board and have a good memory, you probably won’t want to read any further unless you like being bored to tears. This next paragraph especially is a real beaut.

I have had a falling out with the father-son team who unsuccessfully tried to install the Phil Bray gearset in my 1932 Pierce-Arrow, and they are no longer working on my car. The reason for this is that they have twice removed and installed the transmission and freewheel units (the first time to rebuild the units and the second time to re-adjust the clutch because the company that rebuilt the clutch did not adjust it properly), and I still can’t back the car up when the dash lever on the car is in freewheel. From talking with other PAS members, it appears that the internal key that allows override of freewheel when the car is shifted into reverse was either not installed or was put in incorrectly when the units were rebuilt. Also, even though it was reconditioned, the cable that goes from the dash to the freewheel unit still binds enough that one has to pull very hard and repetitively on the dash lever to get the car out of freewheel. I have driven and can presently drive the car, but I also want to be able to reverse the car when the dash lever is in freewheel, and I want things to work “easily.” So the transmission and freewheel will have to come out one more time, and I want to find someone else to help me do this.

At one time before the transmission-freewheel problem, I told Phil Bray that I considered the father in the father-son team that worked on my car to be a mechanical genius. So if this father-son team is so good, and if the father is a mechanical genius, why did they overlook a bad clutch adjustment and leave out or incorrectly install an internal key, and why am I no longer using them as mechanics? Doesn’t this just prove that my gearset problems were caused by the mechanics and not by Phil Bray? Doesn’t this reflect on my own character in taking money from Phil Bray for mechanical work that was incompetently done?

Regarding the quality of the mechanics, others can have their own opinion. I retain mine. Even though he did not perfectly reassemble the transmission and freewheel units, I still consider the father to be a mechanical genius. And he is a Master Mechanic. And he did install a Gear Vendors overdrive unit in my car, which was no small task because the original torque arm and drive shaft installations had to be redesigned and rebuilt. He also rebuilt and repaired the guts of the steering column, rebuilt the engine, installed air conditioning, converted to a 12 volt electrical system with an alternator and electronic ignition (I know, some of this is blasphemy!), rebuilt basically from scratch the front seat adjustment mechanism, etc. For about 5 months, I went down every day that he worked on the car to note the progress, and I was very satisfied, and very favorably impressed, with his work. Even though I was not pleased with how he handled the transmission-freewheel rebuilds, I would highly recommend him for all the other repairs and rebuilds that he did. As far as I know, there is no other shop in Houston and probably in Texas that could have done the work that he did nearly as well as he did it. Every time I get in the car, I admire and appreciate all the excellently carried out modifications that he made to it. And I still think that in most car-related matters, he is a genius. Whether you are a genius or not, do you ever think back on some of routine things that you may have forgotten or screwed-up while doing your work? Even geniuses and surgeons make mistakes once in a while. In my mind, it’s the overall body of work that counts.

By the way, after he and his son had worked on the car for about five months and everything was complete except the transmission and freewheel, I was out of both patience and money (especially money, which adversely affected the patience), frankly not in a very good mood regarding the car, and suggested several times that I wanted Ed Linn in Michigan to finish the transmission work. I know that the father-son could have completed the job themselves, but I wasn’t sure how long it would take them and how much more it would cost, whereas I believed that Ed Linn could have finished the job in relatively short order. As you might guess, despite my best efforts at diplomacy, they felt that I was demeaning their abilities, and they were not happy with my suggestion, which helped precipitate the breakup.

I am not going to give Phil Bray back the $1600 dollars that he gave me for the labor in installing and removing his gears. In a 09/28/2009 letter from Phil to me in which he enclosed the check for $1600, he said “I borrowed two original gearsets to check the print specs. I found the specs to be incorrect to the originals.” I’m not positive what the translation is, but I took it to mean that the problem was on his end, and the $1600 check seemed to confirm this. In unsuccessfully installing and removing Phil Bray’s gearset and re-installing my original set, I incurred $2520 in labor costs alone. I have signed documentation to that effect. In our recent phone conversation, Phil Bray said that after lapping, the gearset is fine and that he expects to re-sell it. Since I believe that he has already successfully done this on a “twin” gearset purchased and returned by another PAS member, I hope and believe that he is correct. But contrary to his suggestions while my gearset installation was being attempted, I did not wish to add to my already very high costs by paying for shipping the set from Texas to Michigan and back, reinstalling it, and still – at that time – not having any guarantee what-so-ever that after all of this extra time and money, it would work properly. No way. I may be stupid, but I’m not crazy (or is it the other way around?).

From my own selfish standpoint, the real problem in all of this is that I was unlucky enough to get a gearset that on its initial installation did not work. And there is little doubt that it is not the mechanics’ fault that it did not work. Another PAS member and I ordered 3.85 gearsets from Phil Bray at the same time, and Ed Linn, who is the installer recommended by Phil Bray, was not able to successfully install the other gearset either.

From all that I have been able to gather, I believe that my experience is quite unusual, and that the vast majority of Phil Bray’s customers have had successful and satisfying outcomes. Given a choice, I would have preferred a Phil Bray gearset over a Gear Vendors overdrive unit, which on my car was considerably more expensive and complicated to install. For my application, the only advantage of the Gear Vendors unit is that it can give a final drive ratio of 3.62 to 1 instead of the Phil Bray ratio of 3.85 to 1. But of course, not being able to predict the future, I do the best I can at any given time, and in that respect, I have no regrets regarding what I chose to do.

I’m going to e-mail this post to Phil Bray, as he is not a PAS member and therefore has no online access to the Message Board. However, most of what I’ve said here and more I’ve already said directly to Phil, so I suspect that I won’t change his mind about our interactions.

If need be (and I hope it isn’t), I will answer to the best of my ability any questions arising from this post. But I’m really hoping that we can let this matter die a timely death and go onto more interesting topics. I really had better things to do with my time than write this post. But I would like to thank all three of you (whoever you may be) for reading this far. Just kidding. Probably nobody got this far.