Alan Smith
Managing Director of Hydra-Test Ltd. & Cottingham Engineering Ltd.
Co-Director of Hydra-Test USA LLC
Alan Smith began his career in the automatic transmission industry way back in 1978. His first full rebuild was completed on a Borg Warner model 35 and many more followed over a 30-year period at Midland Auto Transmissions. During this period, he was a co-owner of the business, but his true passion was always the technical side of the industry.
As the industry evolved from purely hydraulic to encompass electronics, he underwent intensive training to feed his thirst for knowledge. His friendship with the owner of Hydra-Test lead to a passion for valve body problem solving and a close working relationship developed. This culminated in Alan taking the reins after Bob’s retirement. In 2010 Alan stepped away from the transmission shop to develop Cottingham Engineering which included the integration of Hydra-Test.
One of the first machines ever produced by Hydra-Test
Over the years Alan has been a regular attendee at ATRA Expo and he was responsible for developing the Seal-e-Zee spray and Cone system and licensed the manufacture to Lubegard.
Some 44 years on and he is still regularly found in the workshop working at his role of ‘head of development’ creating new valve body test plates to keep Hydra-Test at the forefront of technology.
Tiaan Raubenheimer
Technical development & Sales support engineer
Tiaan was born in Cape Town, South Africa and came to the UK in 2003. He immediately began his career in the Automatic Transmission industry with Midland Automatics and Cottingham Engineering. In the early days he worked as a transmission rebuilder and then spent 10 years as head of development in our Torque converter rebuilding department. This overall experience proved valuable when he began to focus on Hydra-Test.
Tiaan covers all aspects of the company, from product development to after sales support. This includes visiting our customers all over the world imparting his knowledge to train them and support them throughout their Hydra-Test journey. Tiaan regularly helps customers day and night via an online ‘TeamViewer’ connection directly to our customers’ machine.
​
Tiaan can be contacted directly at tiaan@hydratest.co.uk