Wow, ole snake sat in the garage an entire week with nearly a full tank
of gas and not one drop leaked out. I know this isn't a big deal to the
rest of you, but it really made my weekend. Kinda weird having a snake
that doesn't smell like gasoline. Well, the hot dirty oil smell more
than compensates.
In celebration, I decided to do a little Christmas shopping in the car
Sunday morning. Thanks to Scott Fisher's suggestion, I had already
picked up a much warmer tweed driving hat at Eddie Bauer's Sportsware so
I was prepared for the nippier open cockpit conditions. Aside from the
choke not being properly adjusted for the cooler weather, the car ran
fine. However, on left turns I noticed that the dash turn indicator
lamp wasn't flashing. After parking, I tried both directions to see if
the problem was in the dash or if one of the exterior bulbs was out. To
my surprises, both the front and rear left turn indicators lights worked
but the right-front did not. This was a bit mystifying, but I decided
not to worry about it until I got home.
At home I pulled the cover off of the right front indicator; sure
enough, one of the two bulb elements was open. I cleaned the bulb up
and took a good look: Made in England. Crummy Lucas bulbs, only good
for 30 years. Replacing the bulb fixed the exterior problem. Not
surprisingly, it did nothing for the dash indicator. What had me
puzzled was the fact that when I traced out the turn-signal wiring a
year or so ago, I found that the dash lamps were connected in series
with the rear indicator bulbs. Finally I did get to the bottom of this
mystery. Sticking my head under the dash in the darkened garage I could
see the dash light flashing. The bulb (a 30 year old Lucas, of course)
had gotten pulled from its socket. I was glad to find this out but I'm
not looking forward to plugging the bulb back in. Access is a pain.
The only other snake activity was a bit of paint stripping. This has
never been high on my priority list, but the first words out of almost
everyone's mouth after seeing the car for the first time is, "When are
you going to paint it?". I figure removing the mish mash of colors and
half ground off paint will greatly improve the looks of the car and
maybe even give it the appearance of not being in immediate need of a
paint job.
Up until this weekend I've only used the standard smelly methylene
chloride based paint strippers, but this has meant working outside.
Since it's starting to get cooler, I decided to try an experiment. I
bought some water based, non toxic stripper. I tried a test spot where
there was only a bit of zinc chromate primer and a few thin spots of old
undercoating. It seemed to work, though I had to be leave it on a LOT
longer. It doesn't dry nearly as fast or stink up the inside of the
garage so the extra time may not be that big a deal. The real test will
be to see if it removes paint that isn't mostly ground off. One thing I
did discovered was that covering it with wax paper (which works fine
with the old type stripper) doesn't work very well with this stuff. The
water in the stripper soaks through the paper and turns everything into
a soggy mess. The instructions on the container suggested using plastic
wrap. That worked great. In fact, I tried this on another spot Sunday
night and it was still wet Monday night.
While driving around I spotted a maroon Morgan in traffic so I pulled in
behind it for better look. On its back, next to the spare, in chrome
letters, were the words Automatic Morgan. At least I think that's what
it said. Did I read this correctly?
One last thing: While shopping I found a calendar I couldn't resist.
Each month has a picture of a an old airplane, including a nice aerial
shot of a Stagger-Wing Beechcraft. There's also a pretty good overhead
shot of a Tigermoth painted WW II RAF colors complete with insignias.
When I get time I plan to scan both of them. Maybe I'll even upload a
gif of the Tigermoth to hoosier.
Roland
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