A Mostly British Obsession
Valuable, if hard, lessons learned
The new viscous clutch for the engine fan arrived, and it has made the car reasonably quiet again. And, as you can see, the rear bumper has been replaced with a “new” used item that’s actually straight. I was probably the only person who noticed the dent and bend in the old one, but it drove me nuts every time I saw it. Unfortunately, the chrome bumper is a 1998 LSE-only thing, so they’re hard to come by and over $1200 new; this was a fraction of that and is as nice as anything else on the car.
Disco is awaiting some parts for repair…the fan clutch has siezed. The fan now spins all of the time, which makes the car sound like a turbine. More to the point, the fan isn’t designed to spin at high speeds, which is what the clutch normally prevents. I’ve got the parts on order from Atlantic British and hopefully Disco will be back in action within a week or so.
My “new” truck–a wonderful time capsule, and I like the copper color more every time I see it. “Goldie” is a 1968 F250 Camper Special, very similar to my previous one, except that this machine has led a quiet, well-cared-for life, and it shows. The interior is immaculate and while the paint has seen better days, it’s still reasonable considering it is 38 years old!
I’ve been putting quite a few miles on the Land Rover, and it is a pretty comfortable and interesting machine to drive. It could use a bit more power, but it’s not an absolute slug. Here it is on the ferry on the way over to Chuck’s house. That is a Triumph Daytona 600 parked next to it, nice to see more British machinery around and about.
Another MGB. I bought this car in Issaquah shortly after I got rid of the Healey 100-Six. I’m trying desperately to remember how much I paid, but it was probably about $1500. It was bright red, with a halfway decent paint job, but had essentially no interior and a lot of blow-by from the engine.
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Ah, the joys of a free car. Once I had the head down to the machine shop, it turns out it was cracked in not one or two, but three places. So it had to be sent out for welding…which is almost done. My friend Jeff, who is to British cars what the iceberg was to the Titanic, was going to buy this from me when I’m done with it, but he has since bought an MGB.
This means I’ll either keep the car (???) or sell it once it’s sorted out. Actually, I can see three choices:
or
The eye-rolling is almost non-stop around here these days.
I was given a 1987 XJ6 Series 3. Why? It has a blown head gasket, and having a pro fix that will cost you more than a middling-nice XJ6 is worth. (And since it took me about 12 hours just to get the cylinder head off, that’s no suprise, if you imagine even a substantial fraction of that being billed at $90 an hour, with no reconditioning or repair done.)
I’ve agreed to buy back my 1990 F150 pickup from my friend Brent, who bought it from me a few years ago. It’s a good truck and is the very base model F150 from that year–what they called a “work truck.” No carpets, vinyl seats, no accessories at all. But it’s in good condition and still only has 65,000 miles on it. I guess it was somewhat forgetable since before now it didn’t even make it into my list of past vehicles!
It has a canopy on it which I paid a decent amount for, so that our fostered Chocolate Lab, Flake, could ride in it. Hence the entry name. Do I even have a photo of this thing, anywhere, from my past ownership? We didn’t get a digital camera until Allie ran the Portland Marathon, and I think that may have been after we bought Moby D, the white ’98. Hmmm.
Imagine the bike pictured in much worse condition, and you have my machine. It actually looked OK at a glance but the fairing had been broken so many times it was more glue than plastic!
I have a hard time remembering anything really specific about this car, other than it was a reliable, unremarkable, dinged around, and just generally cheap MGB GT that did what I asked it to. I have no photos of it, which probably says enough right there.
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