[TR] ABRR Update: Two bite the dust, one of them my TR6

[Blake J. Discher]

Hi everyone,

While on my way to the kick-off dinner Friday night (after having driven
from Detroit to Janesville, Wisconsin in my 1976 TR6 for the start of the
run), I hear a nasty clunk from the back of the car on acceleration and
deceleration.  I just replaced the differential bushings (or bushes, or
whatever those poly donut-shaped things are properly called) last week, so
I'm thinking one or more of the nuts vibrated loose.  We're all in the
parking lot with a gigantic flashlight snooping around the bottom of the
car, which is parked so that one half of it is up on a curb, and Pat Barber
notices the rear axle crossmember's weld to the frame have all broken.  Yes,
all of them.  So the back end of my car is essentially "floating" until I
hit a bump of some sort, when it crashes back to the frame. That's number 19
in this illustration: http://www.rimmerbros.co.uk/tr6/images/130a.gif.

Sitting for three hours in Chicago traffic, 1st gear, clutch out, brake,
repeat, probably helped to further stress whatever cracks were in the weld
to begin with when I left Detroit.  So the car is parked, will be flatbedded
to Milwaukee, where it and I will board the Lake Express ferry to Muskegon
Michigan and I will likely drive the car along the interstate, albeit
carefully, back home come Monday morning.  If there's a bright side, it's
that I'll be now pulling navigator duties for Mike Bilyk in his Aston
Martin.  Call it a free upgrade.  Well, maybe not so free.

The other "dust-biter" is Roger Garner's 1986 Jaguar XJ6 which blew the
water pump as he pulled into the Janesville Hampton Inn last night.  With a
few phone calls to the local Jag club, a pump is being located and a club
member who has repair shop is getting him on the road Saturday afternoon.
He'll head up to our overnight spot, Minocqua, WI, and catch up with us
tonight.

Pat Barber is emailing blog entries via his PDA to
http://barber-abrr2007.blogspot.com/.  Admittedly it's about he and I up
until today because it was the two of us who drove to Janesville together.
Today he'll be diversifying out!  

I'll keep ya posted.  PS. We're up to $22,600 in donations!  Thank you all.

Cheers,
Blake Discher, Event Organizer
America's British Reliability Run
www.abrr.org