While I was considering possible equations defining the LBCQ of
a given vehicle, I reflected on some of the events that have
increased the value of the second term of the equation for
me (that is, grease/knuckle). This reflection caused me to
remember the difficulty I've occasionally had explaining to
the straights -- er, non-Britcar-owning people -- that just
because the car is apart doesn't mean it's broken. This is a
corollary to the observation that just because I work on it
often doesn't mean it's unreliable. (In practice, as a matter
of fact, it's actually reliable because I work on it all the
time.)
Right now, as you may recall from earlier postings, I've got
the head off The Green Car, swapping in a new gasket. Now,
you on this list will probably know what I mean when I say
that the head has been weeping fairly steadily for the three
and a half years that I've had the car, but it hasn't been a
big deal. The car has started, run quite well, returned decent
fuel economy and given acceptable performance. The worst problems
I've observed apropos the suspicious head gasket have been a
tendency to use coolant during warm weather (and the coolant
disappears mysteriously, at least it was mysterious till I
stood behind the car one morning while Kim started it and I
saw drops of water spitting out of the tailpipe), and a tendency
to gunk up the right-hand side of the block as the coolant/oil
mix weeps slowly from the juncture. Big deal; I clean the engine a
fter each oil change anyway (I've got the kind of filter that mounts
upside-down), and I check the coolant once a week, when I check the
oil and the dashpots and look for odd things in the engine compartment.
But I'm having a hard time getting my non-car-enthusiast friends
to understand that no, the car isn't BROKEN. I just have it APART.
There's a DIFFERENCE.
When a car breaks, it's usually while it is in operation, and it
usually results in the car no longer being in operation after the
breakage. Extreme cases of this are, for instance, when the
distributor hops out of the block and the car rolls to a halt at
the side of the track (or even more extreme, when the cam hops out
of the block, one lobe at a time, as happened to Andy last weekend).
Minor cases of this are when the water pump on The Green Car
decided that it really wanted to pump water out the impeller shaft
to the air outside the engine, or when the fuel pump developed
narcolepsy and had to be awakened, repeatedly, with sharp blows of
a hammer on the appropriate panel of the trunk.
My car is just APART. That is, it was working quite serviceably,
it merely had some pieces that were in less than ideal condition,
as is to be expected from a 21-year-old sports car. And unfortunately,
removing this particular less-than-ideal part requires disassembling
the engine to a large degree. That's the price I pay for my fun.
Well, that and having to deal with the mutter-cluckers who shake their
heads that I'm working on "that dumb English car" again.
Sigh. So *you* folks know what I'm talking about, right?
--Scott
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