December?
Wow, that's a long time. Too long.
I had a chat with Lloyd Butfoy last week. He was just finishing up the rebuild of an existing ZF that had been sent to him in October.
He told me that he had just closed a deal on new premises, a few miles from his existing too-small shop. He'll be located very close to McLeod clutches. He's supposed to start moving this week and hopes to be up and running very quickly. The new place has much more room, and once established there, he plans to move the whole new transaxle assembly operation from its current (inadequate) location in Texas, and it will all be under one roof at last. Oliver in Texas will still be supervising the manufacturing of the parts; they will then all be shipped to California where Lloyd will perform and oversee all the actual labor. There haven't been any problems noted with the work coming out of Texas, other than the fact that they are SO slow.
Lloyd has, until now, been exclusively working on rebuilding existing gearboxes, i.e. Pantera gearboxes (some of which he's converted for GT40 use). He thinks that he is going to shift his personal focus to the new units, and get some help from mutual friends in the Pantera business to take on the used gearbox rebuilding program. There are several Pantera specialists in the LA area and they're all buddies, so one of them is going to split time between his own business and Lloyd's, in order to accelerate gearbox production.
Which, by the way, needs a LOT of acceleration!!!!
