Dustin Kassman relates his experiences with some "custom" air filters:
>I discover[ed] that each plate was actually the bottom of an oil can with
>two holes punched through for the mounting bolts. Looking at the back
>side of the plates it looked like the holes were made with a can opener.
That's just plain silly. Ask Dan Dasaro about the correct way to make
genuine racing high-performance peripheral-flow air filters, using a set
of trashed original filter housings, a 5" bench grinder, and a hacksaw. :-)
Oh yes, and a can of gold spray paint. Can't forget the best part.
I generally try not to do stupid things to my cars, but on occasion I've
had to improvise to get the blasted things home. I know I've told about
how I learned that battery posts are tapered, when I turned the battery
clamp over on the Cortina and whomped it down with a big hammer. The
Cortina was a rolling (if only occasionally under its own power) object
lesson in How A Meatwhistle Previous Owner Can Sod A Car Right Well. The
wiring behind the dash had apparently been done blind, with no fuses; the
best part about this was that the lights AND wipers went out the first time
I drove the car at night in the rain. I should have had a guide dog for
the blind, we all know how dogs like to ride with their heads out the
window.
The weirdest part about that car was that the owner was simultaneously
MISTER Trick Racing Shit and the cheapest wank who ever spilled Castrol
on his shoes. The car had an old Formula B Lotus Twin Cam engine in it,
complete with dry sump and billet-steel crankshaft, and then it had the
Wiring Harness from Hell behind the dash. The engine fan had been
removed and a nifty trick Gilmer belt ran the water pump, but the guy
didn't put in the retaining plate that kept the Gilmer belt from falling
off its pulley.
And the best part: The first people to whom I tried to sell the car looked
under the trunk matting (pale-blue Ozite patio covering) to look at the
condition of the floor. Under the matting, the rusted out floor pan of
the trunk was replaced by a piece of aluminum that had been pop-rivetted
into place. In a previous life, this had been -- a hanging Castrol sign.
Now for the flip side of this discussion: it's confession time. What's
the most low-class, meatheaded hack job you've ever had to do to a car
to get you home, or to work, or whatever? I'll have to say that duct-taping
the battery cable to the ground terminal was probably my most shameful
moment, but it lasted until I learned about the reversing-the-clamp trick,
and that in turn lasted till I sold the car.
You get extra points for time. So for instance, the time I had the guy
at the gas station jumper the sockets of the fuel pump relay on the GTI
when the relay got soaked doesn't count, but the fact that I left the car
like that till the next rain (in Southern California, which means nine or
ten months) does.
So has anyone here welded another half-inch onto the clutch slave cylinder
pin to make up for a worn-out clutch? How about the old beer-can-in-the-
wire-wheel-splines trick? Or the Approved Factory Technique of dumping
the contents of a chemical fire extinguisher into the bellhousing to
degrease the clutch surface when the rear main seal leaked six quarts
of oil onto your Borg & Beck? (Done by the Austin-Healey Racing Team
to a Sebring Sprite in about 1961.)
--Scott
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