Well, since I've been asked by name...
The term "shipwright's disease" comes from a joke told on
the list two or three years ago:
"How many shipwrights does it take to change a lightbulb?"
"Well, as long as I've got the bulb out, that socket is
pretty corroded, and you know, the wires running down to the
switch could be replaced with something with better insulation,
and that switch has always driven me crazy..."
This struck such a resonant chord with so many of us that
shipwright's disease has become a term for the mental
aberration that affects us when we go in to work on one
part of our LBCs and end up restoring the whole system
rather than replacing just the single faulty component.
It's like starting to do an oil change and, as long as you
were down there, replacing the transmission and clutch.
It applies to any project that starts with simple, well-
defined goals and turns into a partial or complete restoration.
Note, by the way, that it is the *owner*, not the car, that
succumbs to shipwright's disease; I thought I saw a posting
the other day in which someone taking a car apart noticed
signs of shipwright's disease in the car. Shipwright's
disease affects humans; our cars are susceptible to many other
malaises, but shipwright's disease isn't one of them.
In considering the task of replacing the motor in The Green Car,
I've had to fight off the urge several times to remove (or at
least loosen) all the wires, hoses etc. in the engine bay "as
long as it's out" and clean, paint, and restore the rest of
the engine compartment. That's reasonable, and I'll probably
do quite a bit of that while the 18GK is out before the 18V
goes in. But that's not where it stops... I start thinking
that as long as the motor has to come out, I might as well take
out the transmission, and then there are the extra bushings I
could put into the right-front lower A-arm, and then, and then,
and then... Next thing you know, I'm MG-less through the end
of the century. And I need to get this thing back together
for my own mental well-being.
This is somewhat distinct from the other syndrome, such as
Roland Young has been experiencing with the gas tank, where
you try to do a single, well-defined thing and it turns out
through a combination of circumstance and accident to take
on proportions far more massive than originally intended,
without your actually changing your original intent. That's
more like chipping away at the tip of Murphy's iceberg and
finding the Lost Continent of Atlantis in it, if I may be
allowed thus wildly to mix a few metaphors.
I hope this has illuminated the members as to a find old
SOL tradition, and made following postings more clear.
--Scott Fisher
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