This qualifies as a previous-owner's-garage bash. Early members of
this list will remember this story. When I bought my Spitfire, I asked
about the extra switch under the dashboard. Seems the original owner
(I was #3) had been having trouble with overheating. Her garage had
done the usual stuff to debug the cooling system including change the
sensor on the radiator. When that didn't help, they decided that the
block had clogged water passages. This meant an engine rebuild, which
they had done even though the car had about, oh, maybe 30,000 miles.
This didn't help much, and within a few more thou, it spun a bearing.
Oops. Rather than rebuild it again, they just swapped engines with
another they had sitting on the shelf. That didn't help, and she sold
it to owner #2, who took it back to the same garage. Then they wired
the fan to a manual switch instead of the relay and radiator switch.
When that didn't work either, they *finally* noticed that it had a bum
fan motor with tight bearings. It just wouldn't spin very fast. Hence,
no cooling when it was sitting still. Shortly after that, I bought it.
I decided I preferred to let the still-functional switch on the radiator
turn on the fan when it was appropriate (in case I might forget about
the Temp gauge), plus have the manual switch too. So I wired the relay
back up in parallel to the switch. That's how I ended up with a 1980
car with a 1976 engine...and both a manual and automatic fan switch.
Kind of a boring story compared to some of you folks' stories, until
you figure it accounted for an engine rebuild and another swap because
of ol' Joe Lucas' fan.
Lessee, what have I done that was seriously dumb? Hmmm, now if this
involved fish stories...a buddy and I once disassembled a TR-3 gearbox
with a screwdriver and fingernail clippers, then glued the layshaft
back together with superglue so we could drive home from a bluegrass
festival. Drove it that way for 3 years...oh, you want *true* stories?
I once happened on the Pres. of the local sports car club (of which I
was a member) whilst he and his wife were stuck on the side of the road
and mad as a hornet. Seems he had been having trouble with the engine
missing just a bit in their air-cooled VW (a Transporter, I think (err,
that's a Bus to you ex-hippies and Deadheads)). So he had decided it
was foulded plugs, and he just *had* to fix it right then and there.
So he had stuck his plug wrench in and unscrewed one plug, and upon
trying to pull the plug out, had realized that his plug wrench didn't
have one of those rubber inserts that keeps the plug from falling out.
Said plug had immediately slipped back down into the plug well. Being
an air-cooled engine, the entire thing was shielded by the cooling
shroud, so the plug was practically irretrievable. You could barely
see it if your stuck your head and a flashlight into the engine bay,
and you could barely get one finger on it, let alone get two fingers
on it to grasp it. Fortunately my toolbox had a magnet, so in 5 more
minutes they were on their way again, only 45 minutes later than they
had started but with a much-altered outlook on life!
Jim Muller
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