It's a lovely summer night here in Salt Lake City, leaving me wishing I'd
brought Racket, my Mark 1 Spit, down to the shop. A top down drive home in
the cool shadows of a June evening would have been just the ticket, but
earlier I chose to do battle with the rush hour hordes in the air conditioned
Eep, CD player cranking away. Getting lazy in my old age, I guess.
Now I'm standing at the chain link looking down on I-15. As some of you know,
there is *major* road construction going on in Salt Lake. Basically the main
freeways through the valley are getting rebuilt, possibly done in time for the
2002 Olympics. We shall see. The shop I rent is about a trunnion's throw from
the centerline of the Interstate, and a dozen or so feet above roadway level.
I'm watching progress being made, in the form of what could pass for a 1950's
Sci Fi movie rendition of robotics. A massive, brightly lit mechanical thing
is clamoring its way along the right of way. Before it, a seemingly endless
string of large trucks disgorge raw, wet gray concrete in its path, making
sure the monster is fed. On and about the machine itself swarms a hive of
orange clad drones, equipped with shovels and pokers and brooms and such,
fussing about in the shadows of the powerful lights mounted above. Behind
the behemoth lies a few lanes of virgin freeway, applied inches at a time,
in the wake of a fascinating mix of man and machine.
The machine had made its way past the shop before, laying down the northbound
lanes. Tonight it snorts along generating the southbound lanes. But that
is not the machine I am writing about which has returned. No, I'm talking
about Junior, the once and future Triumph racer. Junior (short for Killer
Junior) is a 1974 squaretail Spitfire, holding a place of note in the main
photo on my web page, http://www.team.net/mjb/mjb.html. It is the car in
which I waved goodbye to FTD at the Rockford VTR. Drat.
Bob Allred, a local Mazda racer, autocrosser and general Neat Things Mechanical
guy is Junior's current caretaker. Hmmm, if the major players in Team Fat and
Team Geezer collaberate, will we be seeing "Fat Geezers" at future events?
We made some progress this evening down at the shop on getting rid of the 3/8
galvinised rear suspension control arms, [I really should have photographically
documented this amusing hack] to be replaced with the proper bits from a too
far gone 1970 Mark 3 donor. I hate to see the remains of the 70 and its 146
pounds of body filler over rust tossed aside, but I love to see Junior on the
way to once again roaring about, as Triumphs were meant to do.
mjb.
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