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Re: Hot Time in the Ol' Garage...

To: triumphs@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: Hot Time in the Ol' Garage...
From: Bob Lang <LANG@ISIS.MIT.EDU>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 11:06:44 -0500 (EST)
Hello,

So, I posted to the Triumphs list yesterday about my dilemma - fix Karwon 
or do more prep on Khartu... Went to the parts pile looking for a head 
gasket - oops, I don't have one. Khartu wins the round.

So I go out to the garage - now I'm going to focus on some body work on 
Khartu. I got out my new air chisel (how is it that I've been playing 
with cars for 30 years and I never had an air chisel???) and started to 
play. Great tool. Bob says: Buy one!

At any rate, some background is in order. Turns out that I'm converting 
an RHD body tub to LHD. This is due to particulars specified by a certain 
USA sports car club which shall remain nameless... not by my choice - so 
please no flames...

Conversion from RHD to LHD (or visa-versa) is actually pretty straight
forward, but there are a couple of brackets that are specific to either
model. So, using my air chisel, I removed one of these specific pieces
from the RHD car. I then needed the similar part from one of the parts
cars and went outside to get it. I get outside the garage and start poking
on the parts car. There is this annoying squealing sound coming from
somewhere - but I could not figure out exactly where.  Undaunted, I
decided to figure this out... 

Turns out that the sound I was hearing was coming from the 'phone pole in 
front of my house. It was on FIRE! Well, I called the gendarmes and 
promptly closed up the garage. I did this because if the 'phone pole 
failed, there was a very good chance that it or the wires would fall on 
the garage causing an unsafe condition. Well, it did - the power line 
feeding the house melted through and one phase shorted out on the big 
ground cable - sending sparks flying and causing the other phase to part 
company with the feed... and dropping the power feed to the house.

So, without power - I went in the house and grabbed a frosty cold root 
beer and watched things unfold. Pretty wierd stuff. FWIW, the Gods must 
have felt that I shouldn't be working on the car that day. I'm okay with 
that. Eventually, the fire was extinguished (the fire guys wouldn't do 
anything until the electrical guy got there, and they literally just sat 
there watching the fire burn the top 3 or 4 feet off the pole - oh and 
all the nearby trees were smoking too because they were apparently 
touching each other and the power lines... it was really quite amazing.

Oh well - we're back on-line now, but I'm another day behind on my project...

Now back to your regularly scheduled programme.

rml
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