Tinkering Belles with Tamara Robertson

Tinkering Belles - Emma - Great Race Edition

• Tamara Robertson • Season 3 • Episode 34

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Do you love welding, road rally racing, engineering design and general Maker Shop Talk? 

If so, join Tamara Robertson (Mythbusters, Seekers of Science) as she revs up the fun in this all new mini-season dedicated to the Hemming's Great Race and the amazing team of Trailblazing Creators assembled by Riley's Rebuilds!

As a shout-out to Race Sponsor RPM Foundation, this episode kicks off with a Tech Talk about Speedometers before Tamara sits down with future Engineer, Trailblazer and Maker Extraordinaire Emma ( @EmmasForgottenFalcon )!

Topics they cover include (but are surely not limited to):

- Speedometers 

- Fast and the Furios

- Engineering

- Welding

- Navigation

- The Hemming's Great Race

- Riley of Riley's Rebuilds

- The Jessi Combs Foundation

- Representation in Motorsports

- Vintage Cars 

- Shoutout to Edelbrock

- Being a Creator

- Older Generation Friends

.. and so much more

As we dig into Season 3's 34th episode of Tinkering Belles you're surely not going to want to miss it!

So join in on Tamara's adventure as a Maker as she works to amplify the BAMF Females Behind the Builds one interview at a time! 
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If you enjoyed the show join in on the Maker adventure with Tamara and her guests on the Tinkering Belles Instagram page.

You can follow Emma's adventures here, here, and here: 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/emmasforgottenfalcon/

Music for this Episode was provided by Bill Trowell Music.  Visit BillTrowellMusic.com to hear more and to subscribe to Bill's Patreon, where he covers favorite showtunes, movie themes, classic rock and jazz, as well as requests from Patron's. 

Support the show

Tamara Robertson:

Greetings, shopmates, and welcome to Tinkering Belles, a show about DIY, design, and all things hands-on. The sky's the limit as we talk props, metalwork, cosplay, woodwork, leather, electronics, and so much more. I'm Tamara Robertson, your host, so strap on your tool belts because we're about to get into some skill sharing, y'all.

Tamara Robertson:

Today, I'm going to be joined by a maker who's sharpening her skills in mechanical engineering. I don't want to give away too much, but this maker's specialty in fabrication and welding has enabled her to get way further with her new stem powers. So if that doesn't make you want to stick around and hear more, then you might be at the wrong podcast.

Tamara Robertson:

But first, let's go ahead and have our TECH Talk of the day. So we're going to be talking all about the Hemming's Great Race, a vintage rally where precision and timing are everything. We're so incredibly grateful to our sponsors and partners like the RPM Foundation, who covered the entry fees for our 1966 Fairlane, supporting the inclusion of our high school navigators and helping foster the next generation of automotive talent. So let's back it up. Where did speedometers get their start?

Tamara Robertson:

The first mechanical speedometers were developed in the late 1800s, with the first U.S. patent being filed by Otto Schultz in 1902. By 1910, speedometers became standard equipment in most vehicles. Now, traditional speedometers work using a flexible spinning cable connected to the transmission, which drives a magnetic coupling that moves the needle, an elegant analog solution that dominated until digital systems emerged. And vintage vehicles like our 66 Fairlane, calibration can drift over time due to gear wear, tire size changes, or differential swaps, which makes accurate readings more of an art than a science. That's especially important in time-speed distance rallies like the Great Race, where the goal isn't to go fast, it's to arrive exactly on time. Even a fifth of a second variation can knock you out of top standings. Stopping and starting also play a huge role in how speed is managed. Vintage braking systems, manual transmissions, and throttle lag all affect your ability to hold a constant average speed, which is why navigators and working gauges are so critical. Well, that's it for our Tech Talk. As always, you can join in on the conversation with my maker friends and me on the Tinkering Bells Instagram and X pages. Just search for Belles Tinkering, hit follow, and share your DIY adventures together with us. Have a tool you want to learn about? Let me know, and it may be featured in a future episode. Tell us what you liked, what you hated, or possibly even what we missed.

Tamara Robertson:

So now we're going to be getting into the main event, and I'm so excited to introduce you to our next maker. So drum roll, please. Presenting Emma. Emma, thanks for joining me. How are you?

Emma:

I'm doing great. How are you, Tamara?

Tamara Robertson:

I'm doing good. So I like to start by letting everyone know where they can find you, follow you, and give them a little bit of a hint of what they'll see when they

Emma:

Yeah, so I really only do Instagram. You can find me at Emma's Forgotten Falcon, no spaces, periods, dashes. And I mostly just post day-to-day repairs, sometimes the occasional fun video, donuts, burnouts, whatever, and more in-depth pairs. So I think it was last year I completely rebuilt my engine. So it kind of really ranges on just what I'm doing.

Tamara Robertson:

Donuts, definitely going there for that. I think you should have done some in the fair lane for sure. Yeah. So... We got to meet on the race, which we'll get into a little bit later. But as a superhero scientist, I love origin stories. So I was wondering, can you share with the audience your gearhead origin story? .

Emma:

So whenever I was maybe 14, I think me and my dad were driving, you know, like super in the countryside. And where I live, if people have a car for sale, they'll park it up near the road and put a for sale sign. So we saw, I think it was maybe a 60s, 70s Jeep, a Willie's Jeep on the side of the road. And I told him, I was like, man, I think that I would really like to have something like that. So that kind of sparked the whole old car thing, even though I didn't get a Jeep. That just kind of led into all different kinds of things. I think at one point I wanted a Tarino, but he wouldn't let me have it because it's a big boat. And he thought, you know, you're going to be 16 years old. You're going to be driving around this massive boat. You're not going to know how to park it. So we finally decided on a Falcon and And, you know, my dad said, you get a classic car and I'll help you rebuild it. So that's exactly what I did.

Tamara Robertson:

The Grand Tarino - you wanting that vehicle and then our nickname and then your last statement for the day. Like, can you share with the audience the nickname that we received in the 66 Fairlane while we were at the Great Race?

Emma:

Yeah, we were called Vin Diesel because we took like a quarter mile at a time. That's okay, because by the end, we turned into Dom Toretto, you know?

Tamara Robertson:

And that was, like, literally the line that I put in our daily blog so that everyone would see it, because I thought that you just ended the day so perfectly with that.

Emma:

You just, you gotta stay positive, you know? It was hot outside, we were all hungry, but, you know, there's not a whole lot you can do about it. What's happened has happened.

Tamara Robertson:

Yeah, and so we got to meet on the Great Race, actually. We were, like, what, day... Five? When did we come in? I guess day four, day five?

Emma:

I think it was day five, yeah.

Tamara Robertson:

So had you heard about the great race prior to kind of the bat signal going up on the internet for us all to

Emma:

No, I had never heard of it. And anybody like friends and family that I had told, you know, I'm going on this great race. It's going to be awesome. Make sure to follow my Instagram to see what I'm doing. They never heard of it either.

Tamara Robertson:

You got... thrown very quickly into the hot seat of the great race because as the audience has been learning as the season has gone along, it's not a speed race, it's a precision race. So can you share with the audience a little bit about what that meant and what your role actually was with the team.

Emma:

Yeah. So I was the navigator for the last four days. And basically what that entails is every morning your car will have a position in the race. So say we're positioned 73 and our start time is eight o'clock. So position car number one, we'll leave at eight o'clock. We will leave at nine 13 and So once we leave the road, we'll do a calibration run and we can talk more about that later, but they will give you a direction sheet and it's got four columns. So it'll basically, it'll tell you like at this stop sign, turn right, you know, at this incoming corner sign, slow down to 30 miles an hour. So whenever we hit one of those, I'll tell the driver, split 35 with 30 so before that sign we're going 40 miles an hour at the sign we're going 35 after the sign we're going 30.

Tamara Robertson:

so the joke that we took the race a quarter mile at a time like vin diesel but a lot of what was going on for us that day was engine involved but after that we were actually able to go full speed so can you explain to the audience what our speedo was or speedometer was and why it became critical in our race.

Emma:

Yeah. So I'll just start from the very beginning install. So it's called a time wise and it is a, it's a speedometer specific towards the great race. So all it is is it's two magnets on the outer lip of your wheel on preferably the front driver's side. because there's potholes most of the time on the right. So you want to put it on the left. And then you have a sensor in the middle that is about three eighths of an inch apart from those magnets. So every time the wheel rotates, the magnets will trip that sensor. And that is how the Speedo can pick up that you're going 10 miles an hour or 50. And so once you get those magnets glued on and that Speedo in your car, you will take a chalk like a chalk marker or something, mark the bottom of the tire and the pavement. Yeah. And the concrete, you will roll your car so that the wheel turns five revolutions and then mark the bottom of the tire again with the concrete. So then you'll measure the distance in between that and whatever that distance is, say it's 513.7 inches. And it's really important that you measure it in inches. So that would be, five one three seven on the back of your speedo since there's four little cutouts on the back of the speedo you might have to insert a picture somewhere it's really it's really complicated to think about but there's four little circles that are cut out and they just go up to i think it's from zero to nine so you would turn the little arrow to five one three seven since it's measured in tenths of an inch and there's no decimal so once you have that kind of dialed in at the very beginning, right? Whenever you install this time-wise, not technically a speedometer. Every day before the race, you will go on a calibration run. So that calibration run is started normally at an exit sign or just something that you can easily locate. So whenever you get at that sign, you want to be going, say, 50 miles an hour, whatever they specify, and start your stopwatch whenever the wheels pass by the sign. So then there will be landmarks, say, like, this city exit in 10 miles. So then you'll click your stopwatch again, and the sheet will tell you exactly what time should have been elapsed whenever you go past that stop sign. So as you're hitting these signs, you're writing down these times. And at the very end of the calibration run, you can go, okay, that run took me 23 minutes, 14 seconds. It was supposed to take me 25 minutes, 16 seconds. So what you'll do is you'll take your actual time divided by your desired time. So that'll give you like, a 0.32 or something. And then you will multiply it by the factor on your time wise. So like we said earlier, 5137 would be already dialed in. So then you'd multiply it by that and change it to whatever that new number is.

Tamara Robertson:

And luckily you were able to like, Do that, those calculations, that math on the fly. And part of that is because you have another specialty. So I do a lot with shop science where I reconnect STEM and artisanal skills, but you naturally are actually bringing both of those to the race, to life in general, and to everything you're posting. So can you talk to the audience a little bit about your STEM Connect that you're pursuing

Emma:

Yes. So I'm a young lady in engineering. I'm a mechanical engineer. that will be graduating this coming May. So I have one year left. And I am also a certified welder. So that kind of ties in really nicely to the engineering part. You know, I know what the guys out in the field, what they're doing, everything they're thinking before I even tell them to do it. which I think is really important.

Tamara Robertson:

Yeah, it's very cool too, because you're able to bring both that hands-on fabrication side to it and then bring in that theoretical side of the engineering processing and what the materials and strengths are. Do you have kind of a line of sight of what you want to do once you graduate?

Emma:

So right now I am doing an internship with a general contracting firm. So that's, you know, construction, building, hospitals, big apartment buildings. sometimes municipal. But after college, if I like this general contracting thing, I'll stick with that. But if I don't, I'll go somewhere else. I'm just, whatever the world takes me.

Tamara Robertson:

I love that. My first engineering job was actually on a greenfield startup for a vaccines company. So designing the manufacturing facility and then the actual processing lines. And I tell young engineers all the time that if they have a chance to be on the ground with a facility build and the construction phase it's really a beautiful thing because you get to not only design that process and the actual building itself but then you have to actually live into it so you have to deal with did you put enough cabinets and did you put enough headspace and were you actually able to make the movements as well as you wanted so it's an incredible experience as you're going so i really i hope that you get some some fun hats as you're getting to do that

Emma:

so many hats so far

Tamara Robertson:

it's it's like a rotational program without being in a rotational program right

Emma:

exactly you know i've done so many different things in just the general contracting realm you know the paperwork the on-site i've done just about everything

Tamara Robertson:

That's that's incredible. There's that hands on experience. You really just no one can take that away from you. And again, just having that fabrication background that you have. and just kind of strengthen that. So that's really cool. We didn't get to talk a lot about engineering on the race. So it's neat to finally get to kind of visit that. So I kind of joked that the bat signal went up that called us all to the great race. And so Riley from Riley's Rebuilds was the one that kind of collected us all together on the internet. So I love to like talk to each of the racers about their Riley story. So how did you and Riley

Emma:

We had never met in person, but we had a mutual response So prior to her even reaching out to me for the race, Edelbrock kind of got the two of us together for my engine rebuild since I was, they did send me a carburetor and they kind of got us together. They were hoping to maybe get us to collab on like a carburetor, how to tune it. But she lived all the way in Florida. I live all the way in Missouri. You know how that works out. So mostly through Edelbrock. And then I think maybe a year or so after that, leading up to today, she just added me straight into the Rad Women Creator group chat. And, you know, that's how we kicked it off.

Tamara Robertson:

Yeah, I just ended up in that room, too. And I was like, I only know like one or two people here. This is great. Let's see what we're going to do next.

Emma:

It was definitely nerve wracking.

Tamara Robertson:

There was such a high flow of information at all times. So what did it mean to you to like, join this creators race, you know, to come out the middle of nowhere and just jump in a vehicle you've never seen, never touched and have to navigate? basically a herd of kittens that were running in all directions.

Emma:

Yeah. So, I mean, to me, it was a fun thing that I can go do, you know, that was my vacation this year, but I was mostly thinking about, you know, just the view on women and mechanics or engineering and STEM, you know, the more young women or just women in general, see other women out doing all of this stuff that Normally it's stereotypical for men. I think that it's just extremely uplifting to everybody. And, you know, nothing should be a man or a woman's job. So that's mostly what I was thinking about, just inclusion and showing the world that we can do everything you can do.

Tamara Robertson:

that mindset was perfect because we were following in the tread marks of Jessi Combs, right? So the Jessi Combs Foundation was our charity partner. And so they tend to utilize that phrase trailblazer, right? And so they talked a lot to us in the planning periods of this race about how each of the young women involved were blazing trails in their own right. So when you go out into the world, do you think of yourself as a trailblazer and what does that mean to you?

Emma:

I think I do. I think that trailblazing is just a word, but What it really means is doing something that's normally not being done or something that's difficult and hard that, you know, a lot of people look at and go, wow, that's going to take a lot of time or a lot of thought. But you do it anyways because that's either your drive or passion or it's just what you need to do. Sometimes I feel like I've been called to do this just for all the young women in my community. You know, I'm always... volunteering my time. We have a welding lab near us where I got my certification. So I'm always over there every summer for a week long program, just, you know, teaching kids, young adults all the time.

Tamara Robertson:

Amazing. Well, you should let me know when that program is. Send me the dates because I'll send you some bandanas. I'm sure the foundation would love for you to be able to continue rocking the dots well beyond the race. When you jumped into this journey with us, obviously every day we were learning. We were learning about the fair lane. We were learning about the race. We were learning about each other. Hindsight is always 20-20. So if you could go back to the young woman that you were before coming to the race, what's some advice that you would give yourself and in turn give to someone that's looking at doing something like the great race in the future

Emma:

Yeah, I would say just the easy ones is always pack a snack, always make sure you have plenty of water because, you know, you break down and it happened, it happened, only happened to me once, but happened to the other girls the day before me. you know, quite a bit. So make sure you have plenty of everything and just, you know, it gets really tense in that car. It really does. Just, you know, almost missing a turn or not knowing if you're still on the right track. Just everyone, you know, we need to relax and tense environments don't come from any good.

Tamara Robertson:

breathing through it right yes maybe not breathing breathing too deeply if you have an exhaust leak but you know breathing through it

Emma:

yeah that made it difficult for you guys in the back i felt really bad

Tamara Robertson:

yeah that was a fun adventure um we'll talk about that another day but okay so as you're you know looking towards kind of the welding side which obviously jesse was a welder i i'm a welder you're a welder like When little girls are out there thinking about potentially pursuing welding, what's some pointers you would give them? Where should they start?

Emma:

Just pick it up. Pick up a welder, MIG, stick. I wouldn't suggest working with TIG first, but pick it up, start playing around. You know, nothing that bad could happen. Obviously, wear all your PPE, be safe, but people make mistakes all the time. And it's not embarrassing at all. So just pick it up, start doing it, find friends. I've had so many friends that are retirement age, like 60 years old, and they are my best friends. And I don't know where I would be without them.

Tamara Robertson:

Is that because of the vintage car journey that you've been on, having these older friends? Is that where you've collected most of them?

Emma:

Yeah, just at car shows or people who live in my town that see me out often. Sometimes they'll, you know, I'll be getting groceries from Walmart and I'll be loading my groceries in the trunk of my Falcon and they'll walk up to me like, man, that's a really cool car, you know, and yeah. Friendships just happen. They happen naturally, especially at car shows. There's so many people who see just any sort of young person because there's not enough young people in this passion and they're just instantly amazed and they want to know you more.

Tamara Robertson:

Do you have any advice for young people that are thinking about getting into the vintage

Emma:

Take advice from anyone and everyone. Definitely the friends part and just don't give up. I think that it is so easy because it is expensive and it is hard. It's a lot of late nights, a lot of really frustrating moments, but just don't give up.

Tamara Robertson:

I like that. And the audience, for those of you that know the show, you know that I include in the show notes the pictures and links. And I have to tell you, you guys have got to check out the video of this one because Emma is sitting in front of her absolutely beautiful Falcon. And it's like, I want to go on a tour of it, but I'm trying to like stay focused, stay focused right now. So with regards to, you know, road rally racing, having experience being a navigator, Would you go back to being a navigator again?

Emma:

I definitely would. I think it was difficult for our group that there was most of the time a new driver every day. So you have to build that bond of trust extremely quickly because that is the most important thing on this race is just the trust between the driver and the navigator. Nothing else matters. You know, you could be the worst navigator, but if you don't have any trust with your driver anymore, you're not going to get anywhere. So that's definitely the biggest part for sure.

Tamara Robertson:

Absolutely. I think that, you know, that. for those of you that followed the journey online, you know, the Corvette with Joe and Riley, they had the same navigator, same racer every single day. And so they were able to really get to a place where they were finishing each other's sentences. They were very in tune communication wise versus we were switching drivers every lunch stop. So every half day was a new driver. And so for you all, you and Audrey as navigators, it was like learning how to re-communicate every, every, not even 12 hours, every four hours. Right. And each day. And so I can't even imagine, you know, communication is one of the easiest and hardest things for humans. Right. Being able to do that in a way where you are, you're in this race environment where, I mean, we had brakes overheating around hairpin turns and, you know, the car stopping every time it would go under fuel full load. So it, It's definitely one of those things that is not an easy task in the best conditions, let alone in the very fun fair lane conditions.

Emma:

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. And I think what I'm at a level of difficulty is because I kind of watched how you guys drove as drivers. So I would either wait longer or tell you very quickly when we're going to do a speed change, you know. Because as a navigator, you don't want to tell your driver everything. They only need to know what they're doing right now or coming up very quick. Otherwise, they're in their head thinking about, you know, oh, well, in a mile or about we're going to be coming up on a stop sign. Unless it's really important that the driver needs to know that, you know, you want them looking out for a certain road sign because it comes up quickly or around a sharp corner. I didn't tell you guys anything because, you know, if I told you that, that's all you would be thinking about. You wouldn't be going the speed that we should be going.

Tamara Robertson:

No, and that's so true. I mean, and each of us did have such a different driving style. Some of us would break very quickly, some longer. The Fairlane obviously has its own little realm of what it wants to do during Reiki. But that's like the cool part about being in a new old vehicle, right? Is getting to learn the vehicle. But none of us had the pretense to do that beforehand. We were all learning on the go. And I think it was part of the adventure and a very fun, fun little challenge that we all got to have. So as far as the creator race, each of us brought in kind of our own vibe and spin on how we wanted to share our journey. So what is your audience been experiencing and kind of their perspective of the race? What was the style you chose?

Emma:

Yeah, so I like just the daily vlog style, just kind of showing, you know, We started here, you know, we're at our gas stop right now, or we started here, we broke down 20 minutes later, which is what happened on the first day. Just really like what we do throughout the day to kind of give them a sense of what the great race really is. Because honestly, I don't think a whole lot of people know what it is. So I think a lot of people throughout all of our accounts got kind of educated on, okay, you know, I see what you guys do.

Tamara Robertson:

I definitely think that we each brought a different audience to the race. And to your point, you know, our differing perspectives and how we shared it helped them experience it in different ways. So I, I totally love that. The first day with the Fairlane that we experienced, we definitely, it was like baptism by fire, you know, getting to experience the, the breakdown model of the Fairlane, you know, like you said, a quarter mile at a time. and then getting the experience of putting her on the trailer and bringing her home that way and working on her all night. So it was definitely a really interesting first day. But after that, we had smooth sailing. The next day with the bridges and going through the West Virginia Hills was just absolutely stunning. If you had the opportunity to do it again next year, would you do it? Would you do it with Fairlane? That's the big question.

Emma:

I don't know. Well, I would do it with the Fairlane. But I think that we should switch it up a little bit. Or switch out the engine. That's a very big possibility.

Tamara Robertson:

Yeah. Make the Fairlane a little bit heavier. I do feel like we need to give the Fairlane maybe like summers on power tour or something. I feel like keeping the Fairlane as slow as we were. I was like, oh, this poor girl. She just wants to She wants to open up and go, you know? So maybe, maybe we balance out. We do the great race again with her, but we also do a power tour with her and let her like go full sprint for a little while.

Emma:

Oh yeah. Yeah. That sounds like alot of fun.

Tamara Robertson:

Yeah. I like that. So there's one question I ask every person that comes on the podcast and that is if you had a superpower, what would it be and why?

Emma:

I think that, I think I would like to read minds. That would be really interesting because, Um, I, I feel like it might hurt my feelings just because we are women in engineering and there will be some Debbie Downers, but I think that would be pretty cool. Reading minds.

Tamara Robertson:

That would be a cool one. I like that. Get the analytical side too, you know, but it's like, it's, you know, being content creators, we know there's some opinions we don't need to hear that come out anyways. And some, some that we do.

Emma:

It's just part of the job. You know, you kind of grow some thick skin and you know who you are. That's what I tell everybody. Everyone's always asking me, well, you know, on those bad days, do you get people who sometimes kind of mean it's like, yeah, you know, it's just part of it. It's okay, because I know who I am. So it don't bother me too much anymore.

Tamara Robertson:

Yeah, I love that. That is a superpower in itself, being able to stay true to yourself no matter what and kind of know your true

Emma:

Yeah, I think that's a skill that's widely been forgotten. I think everyone's kind of looking for validation, but nobody needs validation.

Tamara Robertson:

They just got to run their own race, right? Which is what we

Emma:

Yes, that was a big lesson in the Great race. Run your own race.

Tamara Robertson:

It really was. And it's something, especially, you know, we learning to be able to follow our direction so well, which we were doing so great. You know, we came down to, I don't know if you want to share it with a little bit, but we had, we had a racer that was telling us that we were, we were doing it wrong and we knew we were following it. Right. And ended up just being something as easy as, you know, one day, So one of the team members had a speedo that was off another day, speedometer that was off another day. We had to clock those up. Like all of those little things come into play, but every day we ran our own race and we stayed true to it. And I think that that just made it so that whether we got across the finish line with the car or not, we knew we had done what we needed to do. You know,

Emma:

I think after those days of breaking down, it just made crossing that finish line just so much sweeter. Yeah. Cause then it was almost like, you know, cause we spent up so late on so many nights. So it all just came together and it was like, wow, we did it.

Tamara Robertson:

It's so true.

Tamara Robertson:

So everyone, the Hemmings Great Race kicked off on June 21st in St. Paul, Minnesota, and we ran all the way until we hit the finish line in Irmo, South Carolina on the 29th. So follow our Instagrams to live the full adventure and all things creator race as we recap tackling this iconic vintage rally road race one mile at a time.

Tamara Robertson:

That's it for the Tinkering Bells. This episode is assembled and ready for delivery. Emma, this has been so awesome. Thank you so much.

Emma:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Tamara Robertson:

I want to thank you for choosing Tinkering Bells as your user's manual for all things maker on a biweekly basis. If you want to continue to hear more, don't forget to rate and review the show on your podcast app of choice, as well as sharing it with your friends. I look forward to seeing you next week. Until then, don't forget to keep making