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Felt Like Cheating

The drive between here and the closest of my far flung children is twelve hours and I’ve made it many a time, often in the peril of winter. I recall the drive home with the top down in an MX5 convertable in a summer at night beneath a blanket of stars. Another time I came home in the coldest winter white-out with peril at every mile.

One set of ancient tires should have done me in because they were so very old. I didn’t know that the rubber compounds age out and the tires become dangerous. That set (allegedly) exceeded 100 mph and never gave me trouble! Meanwhile a brand new tire blew itself to bits in the desert mountains.

When I finally took a jet plane, I was home in scant few hours and still had time to fix dinner and play with the cats. It felt like I was cheating.

I’ve been working on an old British car for years. Last month I bought one  that someone else had already attended to and I can drive it. Knowing all the work that’s gone into my disassembled version of the car, just buying it in working shape feels like cheating.

I think I much prefer doing it this way, the “easy” way.

I didn’t get out of all the work though. Seems like any car purchase is followed by the resolution of some issues and that’s what happened with this vehicle. Previous owner says it didn’t give him trouble. It stranded me repeatedly.

Today I enjoyed driving it after doing a lot of sorting it out this month. It’s not over. Today the temperature gauge read very high, so there is yet another curveball to manage!

The earlier problems were electrical: ignition switch, condenser, and bad chassis ground and electrical connections. The Condenser has been replaced. Then I went further and installed electronic ignition. ignition-1500x939

I thought that maybe the contact points on the voltage regulator were bad. I bought two new regulators but that was not the problem even after 4 decades. Now I have a backup and a replacement for the other Europa.

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The ignition switch is ingenious. It’s marked October 1968 and the dried grease with dirt caused intermittent problems.

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I replaced the ignition switch and condenser. The car began to work again! I installed the pertronix electronic ignition and then the motor started missing. That led me to the main chassis ground which was not secured properly. To make it right I had to install an access hole and add a nut to the ground bolt. So now that I think about it, it doesn’t so much feel like cheating. I paid a fair price and jumped way ahead in the line toward the finish. An old British car is never completely finished though.

 

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Fenimore Central

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