Jeff.A.Williamson@jci.com wrote:
>
> 35mph, having to stop 6 times on the way home one night to unplug my fuel
> line because I had used silicon sealer around the gas cap filler neck area,
> and the time I lost some of my brand new interior pieces (rear carpet and
> fender-well covers) at 70mph because I had forgotten to glue them down.
>
> Sorry about the long post, but your post got me to reminiscing and
> rambling. Thanks for the memories.
These stories illustrate perhaps one salient fact--that sports cars and
the general ignorance of youth seem to go together quite well....
<smile>
I would say my experiences with Triumphs were little different, although
I never got to do them in a sidescreen car. Note that some list members
have heard some of these before, but for the benefit of the newer
members:
My first car was a Spitfire, which I bought in Hawaii when stationed
there in the army. The unit I was with was disbanded only two months
before it was scheduled to go to Viet Nam, and the prospect of spending
all my time trapped up in the mountains at Schofield Barracks was
depressing. So, I took my PFC's meager savings and put part of a down
payment on a `63 Spitfire, and financed the rest. After the notes, and
the insurance, I had about $11 a month to spare. And started driving the
car, and trying to learn about it.
So much had to be learned backhandedly--I learned about the brakes and
"ordinary" brake fluid when, with the horn and emergency brake
inoperable, the brakes failed completely in the middle of rush-hour
traffic on a four-lane undivided boulevard in downtown Hawaii, with just
enough room to scoot down the center stripe between opposing lanes of
traffic, waving frantically with one hand over the windshield and
steering with the other. Too young and inexperienced to think about just
shutting the key off....
Learned about engine timing from a Jamaican in my barracks, who saw me
fiddling with the timing vernier on the distributor, walked up and said,
"Hey, mon, don' be fiddling with that thing--when the timing's right,
just let it be." Generally good advice for a long time to come. <smile>
Learned about regular maintenance when the axle flange-to-output flange
bolts loosened and fell out on a long downhill coming back from a
drive-in one night at midnight... the tow was four times the cost of the
repair....
Learned about swing axle behavior when, on a fun drive up and down Mt.
Tantalus in downtown Honolulu one afternoon, I came into a very tight
switchback way, way too fast. Brakes weren't enough, so I decided to
double-clutch down into first, and on the second clutching, my foot
slipped off the pedal. The nose dropped instantly, the back end came up,
the wheels tucked under, and I went sailing toward a sheer drop at 35
mph, backwards, with one foot on the brake pedal, the other foot on top
of the other, pushing for all I was worth. When the car stopped, I
looked down and back, and the center of the left rear tire patch was
about a foot from the edge.
I leaned back and saw about an eight-hundred foot drop, and after a
couple seconds to gain my composure, looked at my girlfriend in the
passenger seat, said, "That was fun!," and started the car. That's when
I also learned that women show disgust better than almost any other
emotion--she had completely lost bladder control. I had to pull the mats
and interior drain plugs and hose the car out afterwards.
Learned resourcefulness when, in 1970, I was taking the car back east
after I got out of the army and the left rear hub-to-axle key sheared at
about 4 am on a mountain road at 80 mph in Arizona. Talked the kid
tending an all-night gas station into letting me get car up on the lift,
and gave him ten bucks and left ten bucks for the day mechanic to get
another flat-blade screwdriver after I'd sacrificed one of his for a
home-made key.
Learned that there often are other reasons for things failing than the
obvious, when the axle bearings failed a couple of hundred miles
further. I limped into Gallup, NM, where the only shop that would work
on the car was a Continental engine franchise owned by two partners that
were the Odd Couple, if there ever was one. I walked in, and one was
boisterously explaining all about engines to an awed bunch of hippies
standing in the back of their `50s-era Dodge pickup while he proceeded
to put their flathead together with an impact wrench.... The other was a
small, quiet man disassembling a VW engine, and he had it stripped and
in the solvent tank in about forty minutes, while muttering, "that
engine is going to last about 50 miles, and you know who is going to
have to go out and tow it back and fix it properly." "You work on my
car, okay?," I said. <smile> Also learned that one didn't find parts for
"furrin'" cars very easily... I spent three days in Gallup, waiting for
the parts to come down from Denver by bus. The guy was terrific--let me
use the shop after closing to putter with the car, met the bus on Sunday
morning to get the parts and spent a good part of his Sunday fixing my
car and getting me on my way.
On the same trip, learned that Americans had difficulties with geography
long before the current educational crisis. Yanked a muffler off on a
frost heave in Canada, pulled up to US Customs at Niagara with the
exhaust complaining loudly, and was told that I couldn't enter the
country without a passport. Hmmm? I don't need a passport to go through
Canada from the US. "But, you're coming from a foreign country." Canada?
"No, Hawaii." Pardon? "Hawaii's a foreign country." Told the customs
agent that it became a state in 1961. "No, it didn't. It's a foreign
country." After about twenty minutes of trying to explain the obvious, I
had the good sense to rummage around for my discharge papers, which were
stamped at Oakland Army Terminal in CA ten days before, thus proving
that I had entered the US legally, regardless of the plates on the
car.... I'm still believe the customs agent thought I had driven the car
from Hawaii directly to Canada.
Two years later (and after yet another rear bearing replacement--the
bearings were failing because the axle was bent--more unseen causes),
the car was destroyed in an abandoned car cleanup campaign. I'd put the
car up on blocks for the winter near my apartment outside Boston. The
police called, saying they had traced an abandoned car to me. How? "We
checked the registration." Did you notice that the registration is
current? And the insurance? And that it's on private property? "Nope,
but we will." The police lieutenant called back a couple of days later,
said I was right, and he'd take it off the list of cars to be picked up.
Two months later, the National Guard arrived early one Saturday, wrapped
a chain around the car, hoisted it up onto a flatbed, drove it to a
nearby junkyard and dumped it on its nose. Wasp-waisted, frame bent, the
car was totalled. Boiling, I called the police, located the lieutenant.
Sheepishly, he explained that he had taken it off his list, but then had
gone into the hospital for a double-hernia operation, had been out on
convalescent leave, and had forgotten to call the National Guard to have
the car removed from _their_ list.... Probably the only Triumph ever
destroyed by a policeman's hernias.... He did try to make it up to me...
one car that an owner asked to be removed was offered to me in
exchange--a tatty, torn-up `58 MGA, but I had no place to work on it,
and had to pass it by.
And that was just the Spitfire... there were others. <smile> And, I'm
still learning.
Cheers, all.
--
Michael D. Porter
Roswell, NM
mailto: mporter@zianet.com
`70 GT6+ (being refurbished, slowly)
`71 GT6 Mk. III (organ donor)
`72 GT6 Mk. III (daily driver)
`64 TR4 (awaiting intensive care)
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