some of us get to drive the cars pretty much year round . . .
and, we get to do maintenance, pretty much year round . . .
same joys and frustrations, I think. although I couldn't imagine having to
bed my car for the winter!
-----Original Message-----
From: terryrs@comcast.net
Sent: Sunday, February 7, 2016 4:22 PM
To: triumphs@autox.team.net
Subject: [TR] Satisfying
Something eminently satisfying about winter maintenance. During the driving
season, irritants pop up, ignored whenever possible during the joy of it
all. But winter...that's when they get sorted.
The needle that fell off the speedometer last spring? Fixed.
The dim yellow lights that illuminated the speedo and tach, replaced by
amazing LED's.
The clutch that slipped. Replaced.
The soft clutch pedal, replaced with a much less used pressure plate...it'll
change the whole feel of driving, I'm thinking.
Then there's the usual oil change, greasing, wheel-bearing packing, fluif
topoffs.
I know people can love these cars and enjoy driving them without ever doing
their own work, and that's as good as anything else. But for me,
personally, there's something amazing about squeezing an extra two spurts of
grease into a zerk that you had no idea was quite so dry as all that. And
testing the instrument panel when you've transitioned from filament to LED,
and seeing it shine brighter than ever, brighter white than I even thought
possible. Watching the guy at Quantum Mechanics fish a broken tooth out of
my transmission. Draining the oil and putting a fresh WIX filter and new
oil in while not seeing any metal shavings around the magnet in the drain
plug.
I joke about engineers and English majors here. But in these moments, I
know why you do what you do. Or at least a bit of it. And I find it
gratifying. In fact, if it weren't complicated, I might do it too.
Now, with luck, I won't have any irritating bugs this coming driving season
so I don't have so much to fix next winter!
Terry Smith, '59 TR3A
New Hampshire
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