A Spitfire owner/victim (O/V) is tooling along on his way home when
the smell of burning oil invades the cabin, and thick, gray clouds envelop
the car when it stops for a light. Other motorists shy away, and sprint
past to avoid whatever disaster might erupt.
The O/V decides to continue the 6 miles home, as water temperature seems OK,
engine sounds good, and no idiot lights appear. Upon arrival home, symptoms
have ceased; the incident is dismissed as just one of those things, and nearly
forgotten.
A week elapses.
The O/V is tooling along on his way to work when noise from the
gearbox becomes more insistent, and downright loud upon berthing in the parking
lot. The noise is not there in fourth gear, and the O/V feels some slight
kinship with Michael Schumacher as he tries to negotiate the hilly, heavily
intersected streets of his commute home in fourth gear without stopping.
After calling all over town for Castrol 80-90W gear oil, the O/V gives up and
gets whatever the NAPA store has, conceding a loss of purity and then realizing
he doesn't give a damn.
After wrestling mightily with the tunnel cover to divorce it from the recently
installed high-performance weather stripping, which has since developed
remarkable adhesive properties, the O/V exposes the gearbox fill plug.
Expenditure of enormous effort and unfruitful exertion of torque with most
suitable implements in the O/V's garage, lead him to suspect that the gearbox
fill plug is really just a dummy protuberance cast into the gearbox case
for show, like those fake convertible tops on American cars.
The 9 screws securing the gearbox cover to the gearbox, and the gearbox
cover, are removed. A quart and a half of gear oil is dumped into the box,
and the cover and 9 screws securing the cover to the box, are replaced.
Upon moving to the left side of the car to torque the final screw, the O/V
notices an attractive green stream emanating from an unfilled bolt hole at
the bottom of the rear casing face, which used to hold the bolt that secured
an exhaust pipe hanger strap. The pretty green stream pauses on its way
down to coat the exhaust pipe. The O/V pauses to marvel at engineers who do
not use blind holes to secure a liquid-filled box, further at the split
lockwashers providing the seal under the bolt heads, and further yet at the
direct coupling of engine vibration to a critical fastener. The O/V is
enlightened as to the source of the previous week's gray smoke, and realizes
that
>> All Phenomena In The Universe Are Connected. <<
The O/V then indulges in a small amount of conciliatory self-congratulation
at having at least placed the catch pan under the gearbox, and also at not
having shelled out the extra bucks for synthetic. He then re-removes the
9 screws securing the gearbox cover to the gearbox, and the gearbox cover,
tosses in a new quart and a half of gear oil, and replaces the 9 screws,
etc., etc.
The O/V is able now to tool along on his way to and from work, with gray smoke
and odor of burning oil both again at comfortable levels.
Yours in sootiness,
Tim
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