There is a point of usefulness in some distracting pursuits, and beyond that comes a serious dilution of inertia which is not good. The little red car, Hollie, stranded me again to day and now I’m convinced that the approach the fellow took in rejuvenating her contained delayed penalties. My approach was superior. Now to meld them. You see, he did a great job on the parts I am not so sure I’d master. I did well where he seems possibly to have dropped the ball. My only real beef was rather than bring everything up to the same level of renewal he chose the “practical” path of leaving alone whatever didn’t seem broken. So now it breaks. Today it was the clutch. That suddenly failed about two miles from the house and I thank my lucky stars it didn’t happen yesterday in rush hour traffic far away. It surely could have.

The clutch is the part of the car that makes it possible to shift gears without grinding the teeth off them. A pressure plate presses against the flywheel and transmits power, but to take the transmission gears out of danger, the clutch and flywheel disconnect when the pedal is pressed. That stopped happening suddenly in a parking lot.

While I checked to see if it was something I could adjust a couple came to admire the little car and I showed it to them and we had a nice chat.

Then a fellow came who had had a Sunbeam back in the sixties. That didn’t go so well for  him because the car was prone to failure and I think he got a bad taste for Brit cars. Now he’s in a Panamera. I saw many of those in DC but rarely ever find one here. Beautiful car. He showed it to me and explained what a Dry Sump engine is.

It’s certainly a solid looking car. I’d drive it.

He said I ought to have the Europa towed and after a little more investigating I concluded he was correct. So I called Triple J.

The dispatcher sent her husband. I’d told her I had a tiny British car.

He showed up looking the part and driving a nearly new massive Ford truck with a long flatbed. It had less than 8000 miles on the odometer. We discussed what the options were and he went to work. Actually there weren’t many options. The only hook point was the rearmost chassis drop. There was no other place to grab. He considered hooking a couple of places that I advised him would surely damage the car.

He was an earthy fellow with the baseball hat, fuzzy hair and massively unkempt wild mustache in a field of week old stubble as thick as  grass. The long hairs were mostly tan orange brown but the stubble was a special color of white. He said they send him for the “fun ones” because some of the newer drivers are not so careful.

I loved talking with the guy. He gave me a web address for the local ham radio club. He said they send him for the “fun jobs” because some of the newer drivers are not so careful. Mine must have been a plumb. He couldn’t come up with a car he wished never to ever tow again, but he had plenty of favorites. He’s a late 50’s big fin car and middle 50’s Packard guy. He lamented a fellow who owns a couple of Shelby Fords, the ones with a 500 on them that lets them just sit unused in the garage.

We compared notes on how we refer to the perils of substandard motorists while we’re safely sealed up in the cabs of our rides. He (allegedly) uses the word “retarded” where as I (allegedly) use “moron” to react to bone headed other drivers. I told him that word hurts feelings and he smiled and (allegedly) said no one hears it.

For $90 I got my car back in it’s place in the  garage and now I can safely map out the repair. It’s awfully tempting to replace the wheel bearings, universal joints, and hub spacers since I have all the parts on hand. That would require more time and a trip to the machine shop. It might be good though since the bearings in all those parts contain 47 year old grease.