On Sunday last, I found myself with no real plans, and not much to
do, so I decided to have a little fun fooling around with my long-
term (geologically speaking) project car, a 1967 Spitfire Mk3.
This car was bought and towed home about 1.5 years ago, and has
been sitting peacefully in the front of the garage waiting until
I finish the Ph.D.and have money and time. It hadn't been run
since the early 80's, at best.
So I rolled it out from the wall, and dropped a battery (from the
TR7) into the hole which used to be the battery box, (and is now
supported by wood). Using a timing light, I determined that there
was no spark. Hmm. So I tried swapping in a coil (from the TR7)
to see what happened. Still no spark.
Then it dawned on me (actually it was more of a sparking of light,
involving a screwdriver in the distributor) that this was a car
with points! (really just 1) Neato! None of my other cars (3)
have this feature, they all have electronic ignition. I also
happened to have a replacement contact and condensor with the car,
so I put them in, and pretended to adjust the gap ("hey look, you
turn this screw and it adjusts the distance here, cool!") until I
had a nice little spark in the distributor.
So I closed up the distributor and stationed my requisite friend
(who was also bored and even more broke then I am) near the car-
burettors with a can of starting spray.
Turn the ignition a little and
Blam! We have ignition. We have life. We have a couple of really
big holes in the bottom of the (ex-)muffler and little wads of
fiberglass on the ground.
This was getting really exciting, so we hauled the car outside, put
in the driver seat (did I mention the interior? Probably not,
because "not" is the state of the interior, but I do have the
broken seats) and put in a little gasoline.
Got the car started and decided to try a down the driveway, around
the circle and back sort of trip. Oh, to help the background a
bit, the windscreen is off the car too, so the profile is really
short. Come to think of it, the driver's door is off the car, too.
And so I drove (sputter, bang) around the circle and headed back
up the drive and, while pointed nicely at the pretty red Alfa I
made an important discover. No Brakes! I think I understand the
definition of Emergency Brake a little better, now. (OK, we
probably could have stopped the car by dragging our feet, it wasn't
really moving that fast.
Of course, a little running reveals that the carbs are flooding
excessively and the car stalls after a while, but it was a real
blast, the sort of thing that makes me want to have real income,
Now!
Grin.
Greg F.
krikor@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu
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