Actually, about 400 of the 2500 or so TR8's made had Bosch L-Jetronic
(air-flow meter instead of air-mass sensor) injection. That's roughly
1/5 of total TR8 production. It works very well. However, as
Scott notes, the microprocessor is Lucas.
Q: Where can you buy a Lucas microprocessor for your late-model LBC?
A: MOS Motors.
Guess what the latest big
discussions in the TR8 Car Club newsletters are about? You guessed it.
Dead or dying computers. Lucas refuses to release schematics too. Brand
new ones can be found for $1700.
This is why I received the message on 3-21 and I haven't replied till 3-26.
I just finally managed to scrabble around on the floor under my desk, find
my eyeballs, and get them shoved back into the sockets.
Seventeen Hundred Dollars is more than I paid for all but two of the
British cars I've ever owned. That's for whole CARS, not just a piece
of melted sand with some weirdly patterned impurities breathed onto
the surface like writing "WASH ME" in the dirt on the back of a minivan.
I spent less than Seventeen Hundred Dollars on the motor in the race car,
including parts and machine shop work.
No wonder houses here cost so damn much money, if you can melt down the
dirt, take out the carbon, and sell itty bitty pieces of it for Seventeen
Hundred Dollars.
You can get a rebuild for only $700 (with core).
I love the idea of rebuilding a semiconductor. "Waaal, lessee now,
our thin-film deposition machine is out gettin' calibrated, so we
won't be able to lay down a new PN substrate till -- Jim-Bob? When
did they say we was gonna get the thin-film machine back? Thursdy
or Fridy? I reckon we cain't do the sub-micron work till next week
at th'earliest. How long kin you leave it?"
You can send it to a guy in California who MAY be able to
fix it for $325.
Even better.... "Well, what we DO here at the Marin County Holistic
Center For Semiconductor Self-Healing is to construct a pentagrammatic
pyramid that is psychically attuned not only to the inherent crystalline
structure of the silicon, but that resonates at the natural frequency
of the dopants. I am afraid that we cannot guarantee results, as it
is crucial that your semiconductor WANT to be healed before any real
benefits can be observed."
Seventeen Hundred Dollars. I think I'm going to go home and fondle my
SU carburettors.
(What REALLY gets me is that somewhere on this list there's someone
who's going to say something like "You'd never use a thin-film machine
to lay down the PN substrate, you'd use sputter deposition with a
photoresist and then etch the gates with an X-ray laser..." Sorry,
guys, but it's been six or seven years since I was at a SEMICON.)
--
"Do you ever wish you had a joystick with a big red button on it so
you could just nuke the person when you send a reply?" -- Kim
Scott Fisher/sfisher@wsl.pa.dec.com/DEC Western Software Labs/Palo Alto, CA
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