Applying engineering expertise to bicycle renovations
Craig has been working for Bennett Engineering as John’s right-hand man for 8 years, and during this time he has learned an astounding amount. This hasn’t just been Engineering lessons, but also the intricacies of running a business.
Craig takes his passion home and over the last few years has completed some fantastic projects. We caught up with him to hear about these projects which included his first (and hopefully last) time being electrocuted by a spark plug.
Tackling something new
One of Craig’s more recent home projects came about as he wanted to do something slightly different The idea to restore two Raleigh Runabouts, both of which he found on eBay, appealed to him.
The project was to get the engines running and improve the appearance by sanding down the old paint and repainting them.
Luckily for Craig, he already had most of the tools he needed to restore the engine.
For Craig, this was the easiest part… to the hard work was hand sanding the frames, were he to do it again, a sand-blaster would be a necessity when removing the original paint from the bikes! Not only was it very time-consuming, the painstaking amount of manual effort that he had to put into it led him to think about this improvement area.
The final step was to paint the bike frames.
After 4 months of engine fixing, sanding and painting,
Craig loves engines, mechanics and stuff that runs on petrol so the Raleigh Runabouts were a great project but not his first experience with mechanics.
At college he restored a Go-Kart with two classmates. With a broken carburettor butterfly valve shaft to fix Craig learnt how to create a new one on a CNC lathe. Craig had his first experience in being electrocuted by a spark plug during this project! Fortunately, no one was harmed.
Craig often says: “Rather than let change drive you, you drive change.” So whilst our client didn’t ask us to reduce the design time from 100 hours to just 20 hours Craig is committed to making those types of changes and enjoys solving challenges that might not even be in project scope!
Craig is highly goal motivated and loves to keep on top of the numbers, both for Bennett Engineering and on client projects. It’s his passion to ensure everyone is getting the ROI necessary to make the business thrive and succeed, both Bennett’s and each and every client’s, that makes Craig a highly valued member of the team.
