OK, one more story here. I've been reading the others with amusement and
nostalgia.
Somehow, I was born to parents who let me mess with minibikes and go karts, God
bless
them. This has some relevance to my current predicament.
Dad was a gearhead-wannabe -- in 1969 he bought a TR3B. Older brother totaled
it about
five years later, right before I became a legal driver. (Timing - it's
everything in
life.)
Flash forward to Kenyon College, mid-70's. My friend Bob from Chicago (who
just bought
a new Triumph motorcycle, BTW), comes to school with a new TR6. We tool around
in that
sucker in some lovely central-Ohio countryside (yes, there's plenty of it); he
even
drives it to Ft. Lauderdale for our futile spring break attempts at
species-propagation
practice.
Flash forward again to 1995. I'm driving along, casually minding my own
business, when
I spy a '74 Spitfire sitting at a gas station with a For Sale sign on it. I
continue
driving. Little remembrances of TR3's and 6's and go-karts bouncing around in
my brain.
A few minutes later, I return to the gas station, and a week later I've
bought the car
for $1300 -- a basket case in terms of detail, but a darn good basic car.
After that, fate leads me to a Northern Virginia LBC shop, wherein, for some
basic labor
moving transmissions from one end of a warehouse to the other, I am rewarded
with Spit
bits and moral support. Pretty soon, the car is scooting around like ... a
go-kart.
To shorten this story, let's just say I'm deep in torque wrenches once again.
The
Spitfire is gone; the GT6 and TR6 are here. Sheez, at this rate, I'll become
Pete
McHugh (he of 9 Triumphs and a Morgan)! (Right, Pete??)
--
Martin Secrest
72 TR6
73 GT6
somewhere in NoVA
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