--- David Woerpel <dwoerpel@wi.net> wrote:
> WHAT!!! Don't stop there, TELL me......you always
> do that part way
> stuff! How come I didn't hear about this one????
> I'm slipping. ;-)
> Giving it to your bro?? or is this to race?
> Dave
Well, this is a car that has been circulating within
the "network" for 2 years or so. The car was supposed
to be a california car, original, with disks,
948/smoothcase, new hydraulics, stainless hoses,
totally rewired, a worked head, NEW (yes, new) HS2,
BMC header, expensive Ansa exhaust, tons of spares and
books, spare racing wheels (Minilites?), drive it
home. Car was sold last year for $6500, deal fell
thru due to health reasons, a local "expert" some of
us know so I won't say, made an offer above what the
asking price was, saying the car was worth a lot more
than his offer.
Here's what we found: (I must emphasize - I don't
think the owner was being deceptive - I think he was a
nice guy who was DECEIVED by other "experts").
Nice color paint (Viper blue, gold racing stripes down
the center). Very nice bonnet. Tired interior, some
switches in-op and sort of dangling. Rocker,
A-pillar, lots of spring
box rust, something funky done to the tail, maybe
glass. Miscellaneous rust underneath, leaky wheel
cylinders, crud around MC (nice job, Apple), brakes to
the floor (recovered after several hundred pumps),
total shit job on the wiring (every wire was yellow!
And everything 5x longer than it needed to be),
we-tight Chevy wires with wrong ends on them that
floated on the plugs, (like coil side ends on the
spark plug side), corrosion at ground terminals, fuse
box broken in half, with 1 fuse in an insertable
holder (like on the back of a piece of home
electronics) held together with a ball of electrical
tape. Extra yellow wire wrapped around the steering
knuckle, NOS coat hangers holding up the rusted
exhaust. A bunch of spare parts insertions later, we
got it started sort of, but it wouldn't stay running
for more than a few revolutions. SU's found to be
adjusted to the
bridge, not below (12 flats starting point etc.). Very
little intake
vacuum. We definitely had gas and spark (although we
had to get gas at a local station, the car was
basically on "e - minus"). The head was advertised as
having been milled .008. That may have been true, but
it was also milled .10 or .006 in other places. Water,
oil, etc. was weeping out the head. And there was so
much blowby that the draught tube was pee-ing just
from the starting process. I violated my cardinal
car-shopping rule and didn't bring my compression
gauge because it was advt as drive-it-home condition.
I didn't really need it - we had no compression. We
tried everything -valves, static timing check, etc.,
that was all OK, we just had no compression, and we
were probably getting sucking thru the head gasket on
intake as well. We were about to pull the head, and
then said "what the hell are we doing?", and stopped.
Ah yes, and the spares: The books were pretty good,
Horler, a few misc. Spridget histories, SU tuneup.
And a large box of Victoria British catalogs. The
racing wheels were just Midget ROSTYLES with the
square slots. One of the original dashes was finished
in simulated wood contact paper.
We finally gave up and walked away. Any other LBC but
a Bugeye, and I'd have been gone in minutes, but we
stayed a while, and left the car in much better
condition than we found it. But no the car for me.
The body scared me a bit (Chuck could probaly fix it
in a few hours, but I don't have a Chuck handy...)
IMHO a drivetrain swap out would be necessary, and a
complete hydraulic sorting out, and, despite my
fondness for yellow, a total rewire. And an exhaust,
and new gauges. Pretty much a complete restoration.
Probably a good car for a lot of people, just not for
me right now.
The throttle cable was nice, and so were the tires.
So I'm real glad I didn't actually send $$ sight
unseen. Pictures and hearsay can really, really, burn
you.
Beautiful day in Door County otherwise. And lots of
laughs between me and Peter, mostly at the Bugeye's
expense.
=====
Ron Soave
The optimist says the glass is half full.
The pessimist says the glass is half empty.
The engineer says the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
The British car owner says it's leaking.
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