Page 412 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

I was just so excited about the quality of workmanship Peterson did. It was absolutely amazing.
– Glen Ghilotti, owner, Team Ghilotti, 2017
says Spencer. “Near the end, Duane told me that he was going to send the next part of the job to Phil Robbins in Santa Rosa because the transmis- sions were an older, oddball design where you had to put the transmission gears into the frame itself. And you just don’t see that anymore. I told him, ‘Duane, you don’t know how happy I am to hear that,’ because originally, I thought we were going to complete the whole project in San Leandro. So when Duane said that, I was like, ‘Thank you! Se- riously, I can’t thank you enough.’ ”
PHASE TWO: SANTA ROSA
The challenge continued up in Santa Rosa. While Ghilotti was busy rebuilding the engines, Peterson shop tech Phil Robbins got to work on the two transmissions. Akin had dropped off six crates of
parts a month earlier.“When I started taking them apart, I could see we needed more pieces,” recalls Robbins, a thirty-year Peterson veteran (1988– 2018) and a whiz with older machines. “You can’t really tell what ratio they are until you take them apart. Then I could see the problem. One had more teeth than the other one. Back in the late 1940s and most of the ’50s, Cat offered a bunch of differ- ent gear ratios for different applications, and these were two different ratio transmissions.” Ultimate- ly, Robbins received three complete transmissions and took another trip back up to Akin’s place in Placerville for more gears. “I don’t know if Cat ever had the combination of ratios we’ve got. I just kept swapping them out until I got the gears to mesh in the right ratio for each gear in both trannies.”
Robbins was hand-picked to complete the Twin because of his extensive knowledge of older ma- chines. “This was a very detailed project, and we couldn’t have done it without Phil,” says Duane Sr. “He had the knowledge and experience and passion for working on the older stuff because he worked out of Willits for years. He really took to this project just like we thought he would. And
Duane Doyle Sr. with Glen Ghilotti at Peterson’s main shop in San Leandro
410 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG