John Early writes:
> ...started watching the British TV show _The_Prisoner_. What
> was the car that John Drake drove in the opening sequence? I think
> it was a Lotus of some kind, but I'm not sure. Second question:
It was a Lotus 7, license number KAR120C. It was sold afterward to
an Australian businessman. The Prisoner (Patrick McGoohan insisted
he was NOT "John Drake") claimed to have built it with his own hands,
which is possible since they were available unassembled.
Prisoner fans might note that there is a USENET newsgroup
"alt.tv.prisoner" to discuss this strange and wonderful series.
> I'm going to be looking at a '76 Spitfire this weekend...
> ... The seller is asking $3700.
Well, the '76 is probably the most desirable of the 1500 line,
since it was the only year with the high-compression engine and
the ~3.6:1 final drive ratio... But that's still VERY high
unless it's immaculate. For comparison I paid $2300 for an
excellent all-original 36K mi '79 with lots of extras, and I
was just offered another '79, ~80K mi, running, for $1000 even.
So that better be a helluva nice car. The downside of owning
a '76 is that spare diffs cannot be found in that ratio, so
you must have a rebuild done yourself with the correct ratio
crownwheel/pinion assembly.
On that subject, a thread last week talked about rear-end noises.
When diagnosing these, don't forget the U-joints on the final
drive halfshafts. Right about the time this discussion was going
on I had what I feared might be a diff problem (scraping noises
on acceleration, worse during right turns), turned out to be
U-joint needle bearings that had eaten themselves.
When I opened up the spider end caps, ground-up bits of powdered
bearing just poured out of one of them! This crud was perfectly
clean and dry, indicating that this end of the spider had been
packed without grease at the factory. Amazing that it took this
long to self-destruct! New U-joint pressed in, this time with
a grease nipple fitted, problem gone.
Cheerio,
Dan
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