british-cars traffic is very light this week. Everyone on vacation?
Too busy watching the Olympics? Well, since I have to be here at work,
guess I'll bore everyone with another snake update.
I didn't have too much time to work on the car over the weekend because
we had company part of the time. I did manage to clean up some
under-the-dash wiring and to glob more Connolly Hide Food onto the
seats. So far the seats have soaked up about a half a jar between them.
The leather still seems pretty dry and brittle and may be beyond
salvage. But I'll keep applying the Hide Food. Figure I have nothing
to lose.
I had my son watch while I pressed the brake pedal to see if the brake
lights were working. I already knew one tail light was out. He noticed
that one brake light (opposite to the bad tail light) was out too.
Normally snake tail light bulbs are easy to replace because there's
direct access from inside the trunk. Unfortunately these bulbs have
been in their respective sockets for 28 years and since the sockets are
made of aluminum and the bulb bodies of brass, electrolysis had fused
them together. The first bulb twisted out of its brass body when I
tried to remove it and I had to get the rest of it out in pieces. I
tried penetrating oil on the the second bulb, but that didn't seem to
help much so I tried the freezer trick. Since brass and aluminum expand
and contract at different rates when heated and cooled, the idea was to
break the corrosion bond between them by hot and cold cycling. This
worked on the first try. Too bad whole engines can't be put in the your
household freezer.
My biggest accomplishment of the weekend was getting the Lucas heater
out from under the dash. The core has had a leak for several years but
there is a separate cut-off valve for the heater water supply so I've
had it turned off during this time. This is the third time I had the
heater out of the cars since I bought it. The first time I had it
repaired at a radiator shop. That repair lasted a couple of months
before it started leaking again. The second time I did the repair
myself and it held for a number of years. I may look into getting a new
core this time. Guess the next job will be to get the radiator out.
That should be considerably easier than getting the heater out was.
I also managed a few more turns around the neighborhood and found that
the brakes felt even better than last week.
Roland Dudley
cobra@hpcdcsn.cdc.hp.com
CSX2282
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