One of the things I've always liked best about owning what Peter
Egan always seems to refer to as "hopelessly shot old British
sports cars" is the feeling, every so often, that you're personally
responsible for reversing some of the entropy in the universe.
Sure, replacing the valve guides on a 21-year-old MGB really isn't
going to have a dramatic effect on the tendency of the Galaxy's
subatomic particles to reach a uniform level of heat in a few
billion years, but it's nice to do what you can.
Last weekend, I reversed a few fairly big chunks of entropy in
various systems of The Green Car. Remember the list of annoyances
I mentioned? Well, a few more of them bit the dust over the weekend,
and I'm getting closer to having a fairly nice sports car.
First off, I arranged on Friday for a local muffler shop to put
in a few parts I had been amassing against the eventual arrival
of cash and time. Specifically, I had a drawerful of those hokey
silver doughnuts that go between the header and the downpipe flange,
and I also had an Ansa exhaust system that I'd bought used a year
or two ago. Now, I hate pulling on the header studs while lying
under a car, so it was well worth whatever it would have cost to
have Dan at the muffler shop do it (since Dan can drive the car
up onto his lift and do it that way). And as long as the car's
up there, he might as well put on the sporty muffler.
So late Friday afternoon I stopped by the muffler shop. The
green car was on the lift but the lift was lowered. "Hop in,
start 'er up and see what it sounds like," Dan said. I did...
What a shock! All the noise is coming out the *back* of the car,
instead of from under the hood! And it sounds... GOOD! Sporty,
low, growly and vibrant instead of huffy, spluttery, popping and
hissing with only the occasional hollow blat from the tailpipe
when the Brownian motion of the engine and the downpipe would
come up with something halfway resembling a seal in the engine
compartment. Now it sounded throaty, slightly deep, and very
respectable. I parted with $30 -- an absolute bargain if I ever
heard of one -- and drove home, wishing I'd picked a muffler shop
twenty miles away instead of five or six long blocks of city traffic.
Saturday morning I piled into the MG with Torrey, my oldest daughter,
and we headed for the Auto Parts Club. This place, a sort of Price
Club for gas stations, has become a regular stop for me. No, it's
not the sort of place where you can expect to pick up, say, the
distance piece on the trafficator of a 1955 Austin-Healey 100-4,
or the thrust washers for an 1147cc Spitfire motor. But hey, we
all need to buy oil, and hand cleaner, and rags, and Brakleen, and
tools, as well as oil filters and spark plugs and the like. Anyway,
I specifically needed a full-size floor jack to do the next bit of
work on The Green Car, so that -- plus some assorted tools, a case of
Brakleen for Miq Millman, and one or two other things -- rode in the
shopping cart with Torrey atop them. (Best of all: the Auto Parts
Club keeps track of club members' purchases and at the bottom of your
receipt, they tell you the total of the list prices of the stuff you
bought, then compare that with their price, and then give you the
amount you've saved on that visit and on a year-to-date basis. So
far I've saved enough money to buy a brand-new cylinder head or a
pair of wire wheels with new tires on them.)
On the way back, the oil pressure gauge started to drop. As it neared
zero, I started feathering the throttle, hoping that this would yet
again be one of my gauge problems, but fearing the worst. Oh well,
that's why I have another engine in the garage, right?
We got home, I had lunch, and then I went out to the garage to do
some diagnostics. Sure, I'd installed a gauge for test purposes,
but I'd never driven the car with the gauge installed. So I managed
to rig up something with some not-quite-right fittings and drove
the car around the block.
Seventy-five psi at full throttle. Idling pressure was 40 psi. Not
a zero reading to be found till I shut it off in the garage.
But the trail of oil drips from the non-fittings gave me pause. I
took a handy capillary tube that had come out of a '73 MGB parts car,
threaded it through one of the convenient drain holes in the footbox
on the passenger's side, and hooked it up to a genuine Smith's gauge
with oil pressure over water temperature. It sealed tightly and I
took the car for a spin. Pressure just about perfect, though the
gauge fluttered a bit (say, are you supposed to bleed these things?)
It hasn't fluttered today; there was a heavy coating of drier lint
on the gauge, most of which I cleaned off before installing it. I
figure the lint was causing it to stick. But it's been fine all day,
even in the heat of my lunchtime drive. And the car's in good shape,
with 25 psi at very hot idle and 70 psi as soon as you give it full
throttle and at least 3500 RPM.
Best of all, though, was the work I spent on Sunday. I used my new
floor jack to raise the car so I could replace the bushings on the
rear springs with new nylatron components. The worst part of this
job ended up being remembering how to fiddle with the springs so that
I could get the shackles loose. The nuts came off easily, thanks to
another APC purchase the previous day, a 3/8" flex-head breaker bar.
Not a bolt snapped; I got the springs out and took the rubber bits
out in pieces -- some of the rear shackle bushings were seriously
worn, compressed, and out of round, while the passenger's side
spring clamp plates were just shot beyond all hope. It's a wonder
the car would work at all, and no surprise about the oversteer in
left-hand turns.
That side went back together fairly well; I broke, cleaned up for
lunch, gave Kim a few hours for her tasks while I dandled the kids
on my knees, and then finished the job. Test drive time approached...
It's like a new car. I tried a U-turn to the left and never felt
as though the car was going to swap ends (a scary feeling from before,
even at what should be far lower speeds than required to get the B
to go backwards through an offramp). The rear axle is solid, not too
stiff but very firm, and upsets to one wheel have only the faintest
effect on the other wheel (well, it *is* still a live axle).
So the car hums down the road, with a much nicer sound and all of it
coming from the right place. It does so with perfect by-the-book
oil pressure, and it does so in something much more like the driver's
intended line now than previously. And as a final touch, I adjusted
the handbrake cable so that for one thing, the brake catches at about
8 clicks instead of going to the 15th click, which is beyond the
ratcheting mechanism's range of operation, at which point the car
rolls very slowly on my almost flat driveway. Now it'll hold a real
hill.
And the nicest thing about this is that all these changes, improvements,
revisions and certifications have come about during the last two months.
For years, this car has been the reliable old car that I've driven (and
maintained, of course, with regular lubrication tunings) while I pursued
the Improbable Dream on the race course. The race car sucked up all my
money and even more time; the green car got a lot of promises and a
regular stream of new Castrol GT, and that's about it.
But now its own turn has come. I'd almost forgotten how nice it is to
drive a car that's better than it was last week, to feel or hear or see
something that wasn't right two months ago, to hear it making better
noises than it ever has while feeling surer-footed and more of a piece
now that the rear axle moves only in the ways God and Syd Enever intended.
I'd forgotten how satisfying, how all's-right-with-the-world it feels to
drive a car that is improving, that shows with its every sound and movement
that you're making a difference in its operation. It reminded me of a
philosophical observation I've made in the past -- that, of the almost
infinite number of ways in which it's possible to divide the world's
population into two types, one meaningful way thus to divide them is
into people who put energy and effort into things, and people who take
energy and effort out of things. Racing absolutely requires the latter;
racing is the operation that makes a prune out of a plum, applied to an
automobile. Since I've always felt more comfortable in the first
camp, it's good to be back.
--Scott
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