Over the long Labor Day weekend I worked like mad trying to get the
snake ready for the Palo Alto British Car Show Sunday. I traced out the
turn signal circuitry and got that working; I installed a switch to
bypass the thermostat control for the electric radiator fan; put Redline
in the transmission and differential; reinstalled the steering wheel;
rotated the rubber boots on the rack-and-pinion so that the leaking
cracks faced up instead of down; bolted down the passenger seat;
installed the seat belts; re-lubed everything; repaired several more
butchered electrical connections; and so on and so forth.
Unfortunately British Wire Wheel didn't come through with my wheels in
time. Well, they did say three to four weeks and it won't be four weeks
until tomorrow. Seems they wanted to let the new paint dry just a tad
longer, so rather than risk damaging the finish I decided to wait the
few extra days.
I did manage the caravan up to the meet (in my Chevy). No doubt I saw a
lot more that way so maybe it was for the best. As T.J. Noto noted,
there were a number of overheating cars in the line-up to get in to the
display area. I'm not so sure I would have wanted to face that without
a working water temp gauge. I talked to one of the Sunbeam Tiger owners
whose car seemed to be overheating more than most. He told me he had
trouble enough on an open road even with added oil cooler, electric fan
and hood scoops. Of course, it was very hot Sunday.
I recognized quite a few cars from last year and quite a few new ones,
or at least ones I couldn't remember. Pretty easy since there were a
LOT of cars there. Certainly in the hundreds. I was please to see a
few that looked as ratty as mine; maybe one or two that were even worse.
I also saw a few SOL owned cars but only meet a few of the owners. Most
everyone was doing the same as myself, off ogling at cars. Biggest
disappointment for me was not seeing any ACs. I was hoping to check out
a few details and snap some pictures. This was a surprise because there
were several at the show last year. Had I brought the snake, it would
have had the distinction of being the only AC of any kind there. There
was a Cobra replica in the shopping center parking lot across the street
but that was the closes thing to an AC in the area to be found.
One thing I did do was confirm that the rack-and-pinion steering on an
MGB is indeed the same unit as on my snake (at least externally) so I
feel pretty confident that if I order an MGB boot kit it'll fit. I
meant to check some of the TRs for this too but it had slipped my mine
by the time I got around to the Triumph area. I've heard enough bad
things about Moss' rubber boots not to want to order from them. Does
anyone know if TRF sells boots that fit an MGB?
Roland
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