Page 409 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

The Twin’s partners: (L-R) Glen Ghilotti, Ed Akin, Glen’s two ACMOC buddies, and Duane Doyle Sr. in San Leandro main shop in 2015
PHASE ONE: PETERSON IN SAN LEANDRO
The Twin D8 was also the first of the two histor- ical rebuilds at Peterson, along with the Quads. It came into the San Leandro shop in 2013 in piec- es—literally pallet-loads of boxes of parts. As shop foreman, it was Ron Spencer’s job to put the gi- ant jigsaw puzzle together. “Initially, I thought it was an original Twin because of how everyone was talking about it. But once I started working on it, I was like, “Wait a minute. These things have never been together. There’s no way!” Shortly after that, Duane Sr. came out into the shop, and I asked him about it. And he said, ‘No, no, no. These were never assembled as a Twin D8. These are two separate D8s that we’re going to make into a Twin D8.’ And I thought, Oh my gosh! That’s even worse!”
After stripping the two vintage D8s down to the bare frame, Spencer’s crew sandblasted everything and got to work. They completely disassembled
both final drives, redid the bearings, and rebuilt them. “We had a real hard time on the final drives because the parts were so old. A lot of the housing pieces were missing, so we had to make some of those parts. Then one of the dead axles was badly damaged, so we got another one from Ed Akin, but it wasn’t in real good shape either. Then getting that all back in the correct position and lined up
(L-R) Ed Akin discusses progress with Ron Spencer and Duane Sr. in 2015
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