When I write this, it is just about seventy years ago I heard high speed spark and diesel engines spring to life for the first time after being overhauled in our familyowned shop, and I got hooked forever ... To hear the bark in the exhaust and see shafts and flywheels whirling, it was fascinating for a four-year-old boy ... Done by my dad, my uncles and the employees in the shop. This startup was done outside under the tin roof ... on a concrete floor. Inside, several engines, all in pieces ...: There were stacks of parts and pieces - new and old - that were readied and next assembled, .timed, adjusted etc., to become a live unit that could power a boat, a car, a truck, a compressor, an alternator/generator, a pump, a tractor, a crane, a bulldozer, a motorcycle. I wasn't that old when I could identify many different diesel engines in trucks and buses by sound ... I did not see them, only hear them: It's a Volvo, Leyland, Perkins; it's a Mercedes, it's a Deutz, it's a Scania. They all