Hello all,
Just thought tell you all about a little adventure I took this past
Saturday. You may know that I picked up a "new" '74 Spit 1500 recently.
The body of this thing is in pretty rough shape (Photos will be on my web
page as soon as I can borrow a digital camera!) ... but the car has only
50,000 miles (3,000 of them in the past 18 years) and is in very solid shape
mechanically, as far as I can tell.
SO anyway, I had to get the car from London, Ont. to the lakeside resort
town of Grand Bend Ont. which is about 50 miles away. I figured why pay
for a tow when the car ... runs? So a friend and I got to work on it first
thing (10 AM) Saturday morning. The carb got a big blast of spray carb
cleaner and some dashpot oil, the stale gas got a shot of Wynn's carb
cleaner/decarbonizer and 2 gallons of fresh 94-octane gas ... the tires got
some air ... the oil was topped up, a heater hose was replaced and fresh
coolant installed. The brakes barely work, and drag quite a bit without
pulling (making me think it's the rear brakes dragging) but we didn't bother
with them.
The plan was to put the license plates from my other Spit (Which is also
blue) on this one and just take the gravel side roads all the way to the
Bend. Surprise... it worked! Not a single OPP sighting the whole way
there, though we did hit a drunk-driving spot check on the way home in
Ultimate Beater(at 2 pm - welcome to Ontario!)
The Spit ran beautifully the whole way there, with a little grindy noise
from the driveshaft area and a couple of squeaks from the rear axles
(Hopefully they'll just need grease!) ... Two things really stood out when
compared to my Mk. IV, Fireball. Firstly, this 1500 has WAY less power,
which I attribute to a combination of very old tune-up pieces, a grungy
carb, a low-compression engine and badly dragging brakes (When we made a
Maple Syrup stop I didn't need to use the parking brake!) ... Secondly,
Fireball needs a front-end rebuild WAY worse than I thought! This car made
driving on gravel and dirt roads (And getting slightly lost) a treat, where
Fireball shakes and rattles so much that I avoid them like a Ford!
All in all, it was a teriffic fall drive in a Triumph, and generally as
nice a December 1st as you could spend without SNOW!
Luke
'71 Mk IV - "Fireball"
'74 1500 "Baby No-Name"
'85 Voyager 5-speed "Ultimate Off-Road Knobby-Tired 2"-Lifted $100
Winter-Beater"
'01 Echo "The car" <yawn>
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