A Mostly British Obsession

Category: Past Indiscretions (Page 17 of 25)

Valuable, if hard, lessons learned

Mk I, I Hardly Knew Ye

1958 Jaguar Mark I

I decided that rather than letting the Mk. I languish for years, I should sell it to someone who would be interested in working on it right away.

Nice guy named Daniel picked it up from me today. Interesting adventure to get to this point, though. Ran the ad three times on Craigslist and encountered every lame “buyer” you could find: people hot-to-trot who never pick it up, people wanting to hot-rod it, people needing to sell a car first, even a guy who wrote me a treatise on why the car was over-priced at $1,000.

In any case, I hope the car comes back from purgatory. I have high hopes.

More Ferguson Work

1955 Ferguson TO35

So far I’ve added the following to the list in the previous entry as I discover things wrong:

  • New manifold, my old one is cracked
  • The front pivot pin and axle bushing need to be renewed–they are really worn
  • The front wheel bearings on both sides and the bushings in the front uprights

I found a lot of the old governor in the sump, broken into nice little pieces–that might explain why it didn’t work!

Quite an expensive little overhaul, but the tractor should be ready for another good number of years afterwards–and without looking like it was pulled from a scrapheap.

My shipments of goodies will be:

  • Nearly everything mechanical from Yesterday’s Tractors, out of Port Townsend. I use their forums a lot and their prices are in line with other suppliers
  • Most of the remainder of the mechanical items from tm tractors, a seller on eBay. I’ve ordered from him in the past and had good service. He had a few things YT did not.
  • All new wiring and electrical stuff (minus the starter and generator, which seem in OK condition) from Agri Services in New York. They use original materials and their harnesses are indistinguishable from what was originally on the tractor. We’ll see, but I have high hopes.
  • A new used disk for one of the rear wheels, which is currently incorrect. This came from Helm’s Farm Machinery in South Carolina. They were helpful and if YT wasn’t handy, I would have ordered the bulk of my stuff from them.

The remaining big spendy item is going to be new tires. I’ll be picking those up at the local Les Schwab, who will mount them for free, with a small fee to transfer the fluid in the tubes from old to new.

Add in a visit to Autosport Seattle to do the machining on the axle bushing and swivel pin uprights, plus some welding from Mark at Britsport, and my summer fooling around with cars budget is exhausted. I must say I enjoy working on the old machine, though. Pretty nicely engineered and built to last.

Finally, I’ll be buying a new propshaft for the mower, it no longer has a shield and that’s an unnecessary danger that can be fixed for $100 or so (a shield by itself is as much as the entire shaft with shield). I don’t want myself or anyone else getting caught up in the rotating shaft…there is no escape if you get caught.

Summer Ferguson Work

1955 Ferguson TO35

I have my trusty Ferguson apart to fix a few “niggling” details and to give it a quick cosmetic restoration.

The mechanical list includes:

  • Rear axle seals
  • Repack rear bearings
  • Adjust brakes
  • Front left wheel bearing
  • Steering column bushings
  • New governor
  • Carb rebuild
  • New exhaust
  • New lift arms
  • Adjust valves
  • New hoses and belts
  • Replumb oil pressure gauge
  • New right rear wheel
  • New tires
  • New wiring, voltage regulator and starter relay

Cosmetic:

  • New fenders
  • Headlights and work light
  • Repair battery box
  • Repair grille lower panel
  • New grille
  • Repair right foot board
  • Repair hood
  • Paint (a quickie spray bomb job)

That’s probably enough. Not a complete restoration but the tractor should work better and be way more pleasing to the eye when I’m done!

Disco Sold!

I’ve decided to “streamline” and just use the ’68 F250 and ’63 MGB as my transportation, along with the Triumph. If winter rolls around and I think fooling around in the F250 is beyond the pale, I might consider something else–perhaps a decent MGB GT. I’m not really anxious to venture back into the world of black boxes…I prefer stuff I know how to fix with chewing gum and baling wire. That said, apart from the recent fuel pump failure, the Disco was a nice car, and very capable. I will not miss its fuel economy, however. 16 MPG is pretty tough when filling the tank costs $75.

Fail to Proceed

The Discovery had to be towed to the dealer today–I was at Costco, refilling our larder, and drove from the main store to their gas pumps to fill the tank. And that was that!

1998 Land Rover Discovery

I imagine it’s a fuel pump issue…but I think it’s time for the Disco experiment to come to an end. I like the car, actually, but this solid state stuff is hard for me to deal with. My F250 or my MGB are easy to understand and can usually be fixed with bailing wire and some gum. Hard to do that with sealed black boxes and the like.

We’ll see what the dealer has to say tomorrow. Sure hope it’s not hugely expensive…yeah, right.

Update: Fuel pump. $1,330 at the dealer. I could have fixed it here for less than half that. Bah.

Rusty Parts Car – Requiem

1964 MGB

Not much is left. All of the big pieces are tucked away and all that’s left is a moment’s silence for a terminally rusty shell. I suppose in the old country this would be saved (is that Lindsay Porter I see peeking from the blackberries?) but with the rust AND the crushed rear quarter, it would be easier to start from another shell.

This must have been a sharp car in 1963 when it was new–Tartan Red with a black interior piped in red. How it came to be parked in someone’s driveway without a top for 20 years is interesting to contemplate. How long was it cherished? Was it just another used car by 1965–or was it inherited by a youngster in the early 80’s after careful ownership only to be trashed and abandoned within a few years? Or did it just slowly decline, owned by increasingly hard-up owners until the 20th guy on the pink slip just couldn’t afford to fix it?

E-Type Chrome

xke_01

Not a lot going on in the Rusty Heaps world at the moment. After six years (!) I’m finally going to get my chrome back for the E-Type. The best evidence that there may be such a thing as Karma is that whenever I hand over parts or assemblies to be worked on by someone else, my own chronic tardiness is revisited tenfold.

XKE Data and XK Data have been joined by Saloon Data (for classic Jaguar sedans) and XJ-S Data (for fans of the Jaguar coupe). I’m also working on three other flavors of the data sites for non-Jaguar cars. It’s a bit of work, but folks seem to enjoy the sites so that’s worth it in the end.

(The photo shows my car on the day it was delivered.)

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