How I Spent Memorial Day Weekend
or
Heaven and Hell are Closer Together Than You Might Think
If you read the notes that lead up to my trip to the Fat Chance Garage
over Memorial Day, you know that it didn't start well (picked up the
car later than expected, couldn't get her to run well, left anyway
about 12 hours late), that I made it OK, and that the main goal of the
trip was a tranny swap, to give Sarah the overdrive tranny that she
(and I) had always wanted.
And, you already know that we managed to spend the entire weekend doing
nothing but playing with cars and drinking beer. I've often thought
that that might not be a bad way to go through life, but now I realize
that it's another of those "be careful what you ask for" wishes.
It's hard to know just how to tell this story -- there are so many cuts
to take on it. We can start with the specific, measurable results: from
mid-day Wednesday to late afternoon Tuesday, I spent about 30 hours
driving to and from SLC, we spent 47 hours working on Sarah, hosted a
bar-b-q, attended a car show and and autocross, and ate about 6 meals.
No, maybe 7. Maybe 5. Depends on what you consider a "meal", vs. just
consuming calories. A day and a half into the work part, I sent out this list:
--
I finally found time to get out here, and we've
stripped the interior
removed old exhaust
pulled the old tranny
replaced U joints in drive shaft
replaced U joints in left half shaft
cleaned and painted various bits
checked out new tranny (looks like it had a recent rebuild)
installed new clutch
That was in the first day and a half. Still to go:
get proper new throwout bearing (I was suffering brain fade)
pull overdrive electrics from TR6
install new tranny
install overdrive electrics in TR4A
install the Monza exhaust I've had sitting around for two years
install the new ABS tranny cover
replace the interior
find the oil leak (dipstick always at low mark, no matter how much
oil I dump in)
find the gas seepage around the fuel pump
repair broken oil pressure line
tune and test
We probably won't get to:
rebuild clutch slave cylinder
repair stupid previous owner welding on clutch pedal
paint pedal box and pedals
install new clutch master
install Aeroquip clutch line
--
As it turned out, we did everything except paint the pedal box and pedals (that
would have added two hours or so and it was already after midnight, though we
did stay in the garage until 4am that morning). Oh, and we didn't rebuild the
slave cylinder, but I think it's in good shape anyway.
Or I could tell it from the perspective of brain fade:
The day after I arrived, we opened the garage door and were almost
knocked over by the smell of gas. Sure enough, my fuel pump was
seeping. Brain fade, perhaps amplified by time spent lying under the
car undoing various bits, had already set in: rather than fix that
problem immediately (let's see, this would have been Friday morning),
we just put a bowl under the pump so the gas was collected, opened the
windows and found a fan to blow the fumes away. We left things pretty
much that way until some point on Sunday, when we finally realized that
we might not have these headaches if we fixed the damned bowl gasket.
And then there was the "exhaustive work" that Steve Bender saved us from: mjb
had the new Monza hooked up and working, except that there was a leak
where the manifold meets the downpipe. We couldn't get it fixed, it was
late, we decided to heat cycle it and hope it was better in the
morning. So we tuned her and went to sleep. In the morning, it was no
better, so Mark undid the joint. Gasket was fine, no obvious traces of
old gasket on either face. But the gasket looked funny -- there were
circular areas of discoloration (it's a two-pipe system there, so the
gasket is sorta square with two holes in it and four bolt holes at the
corners). I asked "is there any chance we got in in sideways?". Mark
measured and said "no, it's symmetrical". I said "OK" and we went on
looking for non-flat spots. (Right, I say now in retrospect.) Steve
came by around this point, looked at the gasket and said "Aren't the
discolored spots from where the gasket is in sideways and the exhaust
is trying to get by?" Of course, said that way, it was hard to miss
even with the massive amount of brain fade. Apparently Mark had put it
on correctly once, but while he was under the car on the creeper, it
fell off and he put it back on without looking and bolted everything
up. Oops. Rectifying this caused us to get a nice roarty exhaust note
out of the Monza, as expected, and made the leak go completely away.
And after we got the tranny cover on and the seats in, Mark took one
last sweep under the car to make sure that we hadn't missed anything.
And discovered that we had forgotten to tighten the second bolt on the
tranny mount ... which took him about 45 minutes to tighten from
underneath with fairly limited access (we were NOT going to take the
tranny cover off again!)
Or I could just tell the schedule we kept:
The original plan was
Wednesday: drive to SLC
Thursday: get up late, disassemble interior, perhaps remove tranny
Friday: finish tranny swap, install roll bar
Saturday: attend British Car Field Meet, tune and test
Sunday: attend autocross, pack up for return trip
Monday: drive back to Palo Alto
In reality, I didn't leave until Wednesday afternoon, only made it to
Battle Mountain, NV. Thursday, I arrived in Salt Lake around 2pm. We
went to Squatter's ("The good news is: this is the best brewpub in SLC.
The bad news is: this is the only brewpub in SLC.") for beer and wings,
and my first approximation of real food for 36 hours (Power Bars and
Triscuits are only adequate for so long). Then we started taking the
interior out. This was a relief -- some Former Owner
had replaced the real carpet set with two pieces of black shag, one per side.
Glued and *nailed* to the floorpans. And then there were the seat
rails: only two of the eight bolts were the same, and those were the
metric bolts that had been forced into the 1/4-28 captive nuts. The
passenger side floorpan was found
to have a couple of perforations, and there's a bunch of surface rust, but
nothing terrible. Part of the original fibreboard tranny cover was
gone, covered with plastic to keep the water out.
I think mjb started on removing the old exhaust at this point, too. And I got
totally spoiled by my first exposure to an air ratchet. Jim Pivirotto
came over, did a bunch of work on the Spitfire 1100, and helped us pull
the old tranny. This took a lot of unexpected grunting and pry bar work
-- we found rust on the splines of the input shaft when we were done!
Oh, and I cleaned, tightened and painted the starter.
We only worked till about 11:30, finished the evening with a shower and
a homebrew. Not bad.
Friday, got up and had a real breakfast, then drove to the outskirts of town to
pick up Steve Bender's TRG TR4A (solid axle). The theory was that mjb would
enter it in Saturday's show and replace the leaking fuel pump. They made a
pretty picture, two green 4As in the garage all weekend, one on jackstands. Of
course, the fact that they were both leaking from the fuel pump made the garage
smell a bit (more on that later). All this driving meant that we didn't
get started working until about 1pm. I pulled out the remains of the
rear tranny mount; the rubber block had completely disintegrated, which
meant that the rear of the engine/tranny combination wasn't located at
all. No wonder there was so
much vibration! I replaced the U joints in the drive shaft, and pulled
the left rear axle and set about replacing those U joints, too (the
right side had been done about 4000 miles previous). Around 7pm, a few
folks came by for a barbecue, and we did that until about 11, at which
point we got back to work. Mark was checking out the new tranny, it
looked like it had a very recent rebuild, so we didn't tear into it,
just replaced the rear oil seal. He installed the clutch, but I'd
forgotten to get a throwout bearing, so ... we hoped we could find on on
Saturday.
Worked till around 12:30, finished with a Klisterbrau and viewing of
old Triumph rallye footage and the beginning of a documentary on Group 44.
Saturday started early: I think it was donuts for breakfast, then off to the
British Field Meet. We helped set up the funkhana, then went off in search of a
throwout bearing. No luck; PartsMaster was closed for Memorial Day! Oops.
Luckily, in the midst of running people through the funkhana, the service
manager from PartsMaster came by, and said he'd let us in. He showed up about an
hour later with a brandy new bearing, and I was quite relieved. Jim,
Mark and I ended up at Squatter's around 3 for lunch, then it was off
to work. I finished
the U joints and installed those parts. Mark finished installing the clutch and
pilot bearing while Jim and I chased nuts and bolts. We installed the
tranny, during which Jim broke the nylon fuel pressure line. Uh oh.
Mark started on the new exhaust.
I think this ended around 1 or so. We finished the Group 44 footage and
rolled into bed.
Sunday there was an autocross. Utah Region is very leisurely -- first
car out was around noon, and everything was done by about 3, just when
the rains came. Off to Squatter's for our daily meal, then Mark
continued on the exhaust. I spent an hour or two pulling the overdrive
electrics from the donor TR6, and we consumed a lot of coffee. We spent
untold hours repairing the nylon line, doing very fiddly work with a
heat gun and small fittings while strung out from lack of sleep, lack
of food and too much caffeine, but we got it fixed. Before hanging out
over the line, though, we finally fixed the leaky gasket in the fuel
pump bowl. Then we discovered that the clutch wouldn't disengage,
because we couldn't get enough travel. Turned out to be too much play
at the pedal; a previous owner had fixed a worn out pedal end by
brazing on two washers to the pedal and the clutch master fork and
using a bolt instead of the clevis. This just wasn't going to work any
more. We thought about just making up a phony clevis that fit right,
but since I had a new master cylinder along and it was only 11pm, we
decided to do it right. Out came the pedal box, Mark welded up the old
hole and drilled a new one, I installed the new master cylinder and
replaced the hard line with an Aeroquip line. And put on the new pedal
pads. Now there was *plenty* of slave cylinder travel. The exhaust was
in place, it was time to start her up.
Sure enough, she started. Swapping in a new set of plugs and getting the timing
just so made her run pretty well, though the exhaust didn't sound quite right.
Part of this was the leak at the manifold/downpipe joint; there were serious
puffs coming out the back. We tightened and loosened and tightened, to no avail,
and decided to just let it alone; maybe a couple of heat cycles and a night of
hanging would make it work. So, we tuned. No great news here -- #2 was starting
to oil the plug, and #3 and #4 had really low compression (120 vs 170). Adjusted
the valves, found #4 was really tight, that helped a bit. Looks like a valve job
in the near future. Thought about retorquing the head, but that would mean
adjusting the valves again, so we didn't. At this point, things were taking much
longer to do than they should, and we both realized we were on the verge of
making negative progress. So we quit. It was 4am.
Monday, we slept in, and got a decent breakfast. Made it into the garage around
noon. The exhaust leak was still there, so mjb started disassembling.
We felt around the mating surfaces looking for remains of old gasket,
missed the fact that we had the gasket on wrong (see the brain fade
section above) corrected it. While he tightened the exhaust, I
installed the overdrive electrics. Mark started taking pictures. We
installed the new ABS tranny cover -- this took a fairly long time
because there is very little leeway in the predrilled holes and the fit
from the factory isn't *quite* right -- much pushing and pulling and
wedging and ... we got most of the bolts in, close enough. About 8pm,
we took her off the jackstands. Then spent some time retuning her (now
that the exhaust system really *was* a low-restriction system), and
took her on a quick test drive. Started packing her up, cleaned up,
went to Squatter's (where else?) for our meal of the day, during which
we toted up 47 hours of car work during the 4.5 days. Around 11pm, I
got on the road, drove to Wendover where I planned to stay the night.
Somewhere between SLC and Wendover, in the middle of the salt flats, I
determined that she would happily do 100 without significant vibration,
in o/d top. Hooray! The car was completely different, but just the
same. That exhaust note was wonderful. The fact that reaching redline
was only noticeable by watching the tach, instead of feeling it in my
body, was quite a revelation. I stopped in Wendover based on good
sense, though it felt like I could have driven a few more hours. On the
main drag, I got a speeding ticket about 100 yards from the hotel ...
too much exuberance and a bored cop, I guess. Into bed around 1.
Up at 5:30, on the road by 6. Drove all day. The only event was getting
into the Sierra just west of Reno and discovering all my power gone,
where previously I'd
been climbing passes easily at 75 or 80. Pull out, pull the plugs. Sure enough,
#4 is badly fouled. #3 is not much better. They didn't show signs of fouling at
idle, but don't seem to be happy under load. Clean them off, take a break, get
back on the road. Idle isn't great, but there's power again. Home by 6.
Or there's the gas mileage perspective: 26.1 mpg out, 23.4 back. But
wait: on the way out, the first two legs were 29+ mpg, and the last was
19 (and the car wouldn't idle, presumably due to the badly fouled
plugs); on the way back, the legs went 31.8, 24.7, 18.7. So if I can
get the oil control problems solved (hmm, head gasket? valve guides?),
I can probably count on 30+ mpg. And the trip back was cruising at 80
-- that 31.8 mpg leg included a good stretch at 100!
But the best way to tell it is from the perspective of the grin on my
face all the way home. It's a bloody boring drive across Nevada, but I
didn't care -- I had the wind in my hair, a nice exhaust note behind
me, lots of power (most of the time), the ability to cruise at about 80
ticking over at about 3200 rpm, and finally, the feeling that she was
stable enough that I could drive down the road with just one hand on
the wheel, something I've never been able to do before. Just the same,
but completely different...
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