[TR] Satisfying

[dave n]

some of us get to drive the cars pretty much year round . . .

and, we get to do maintenance, pretty much year round . . .

same joys and frustrations, I think.  although I couldn't imagine having to 
bed my car for the winter!

-----Original Message----- 
From: terryrs at comcast.net
Sent: Sunday, February 7, 2016 4:22 PM
To: triumphs at autox.team.net
Subject: [TR] Satisfying

Something eminently satisfying about winter maintenance.  During the driving 
season, irritants pop up, ignored whenever possible during the joy of it 
all.  But winter...that's when they get sorted.

The needle that fell off the speedometer last spring?  Fixed.
The dim yellow lights that illuminated the speedo and tach, replaced by 
amazing LED's.
The clutch that slipped.  Replaced.
The soft clutch pedal, replaced with a much less used pressure plate...it'll 
change the whole feel of driving, I'm thinking.

Then there's the usual oil change, greasing, wheel-bearing packing, fluif 
topoffs.

I know people can love these cars and enjoy driving them without ever doing 
their own work, and that's as good as anything else.  But for me, 
personally, there's something amazing about squeezing an extra two spurts of 
grease into a zerk that you had no idea was quite so dry as all that.  And 
testing the instrument panel when you've transitioned from filament to LED, 
and seeing it shine brighter than ever, brighter white than I even thought 
possible.  Watching the guy at Quantum Mechanics fish a broken tooth out of 
my transmission.  Draining the oil and putting a fresh WIX filter and new 
oil in while not seeing any metal shavings around the magnet in the drain 
plug.

I joke about engineers and English majors here.  But in these moments, I 
know why you do what you do.  Or at least a bit of it.  And I find it 
gratifying.  In fact, if it weren't complicated, I might do it too.

Now, with luck, I won't have any irritating bugs this coming driving season 
so I don't have so much to fix next winter!

Terry Smith, '59 TR3A
New Hampshire