Stuff ...

Limey Steel ...

Yes, we have a customer with a '54 MG. Good God is it rough, and a royal pain in the ass to work on (think 65 years of rust), but cool to toodle around town in.





And one of my favorite rides, a late model Jaguar S-Type 'R'. Fast as hell and handles like a dream while you feel like you're sitting on a plush leather couch.

Yes, that says "supercharged"

By the way, the huge aluminum brake calipers are so light, they weigh less than the two brake pads inside 'em.

Got change for a Quattroporte ...


This is one beautiful piece of Guinea Iron (2007 Maserati Quattroporte) with a story behind it that has a moral.

Seems the customer bought this car a couple months ago off the Internet for a high-5-figure price tag, sight unseen (pics only). Imagine his surprise when, last week, the dashboard advises him of a transmission failure (Tiptronic) with only 15K on the clock. No problem, you say, take it to the dealer and heave 'em fix it under warranty. Well, seems Maserati and Ferrari are pretty particular about transferring warranties. They don't like people selling their late model cars as 'used cars'. Guess what? They informed him the warranty is void. Heh ... Now he gets to pay me to fix it. By the way, the dual disc clutch pack alone is $2500.

Moral: Never buy an exotic car (or hotrod) off the intarwebs unless you or someone you trust can physically go and see it and drive it.







Another story related to this car. The Ferrari/Maserati dealer we used to use for parts (Ferarri of Glen Cove) went out of business. So now, instead of driving a mile and a half, we have to go to Ferrari of Long Island which, fortunately, I pass on my way home.

So, the other day on the way home, I stop in to get all our account and resale paperwork set up with their parts department and pick up the parts I need for the Quattroporte. Now, I've never been in there but I've seen the building a million times so I pull in a space and head for the front door. As I'm walking up, I look through the glass and I see this huge marble atrium and the only thing in it is this huge marble desk with a hot woman sitting at it and a security guard standing next to her.

By the time I got the front door open, the security guard was on me. "What do you want?" He says. Mind you, I'm coming from work so I'm dirty, wearing a ball cap, uniform shirt - open with a dark blue 'wife beater' underneath - BDU pants, and combat boots.

I ignore him and walk up to the babe behind the desk. "I'm looking for the parts department," I tell her.

"Well, that wouldn't be in this building," she says, and I can see her turning up her nose at whatever it was I was spooged with last before I left the shop. "That's three buildings up the block. This is the showroom."

"Excuse me," I said, tipping my sweaty hat to her. "Thank you." I gave the guard an evil look before heading out, thinking if I went home, showered and got into one of my three-piece British suits and went back, she and the guard would have thrown their backs out trying to bend down to kiss my ass. Fuck 'em both; ain't buying no Ferrari.


The Prince of Darkness lives ...


So I get this 10 year old Jaguar in with a steady miss in #1, plus random misfires throughout. I ohm out the #1 coil and I find the resistance is a little high after determining I had a signal from the processor.



I check the computer and see the car has about 60K on the plugs, so I yank the coil to check their condition. I pull the coil out and what do I see? Jaguar ain't learned shit over the past 50 years.



After seeing that little sticker, I ordered 6 new coils. Heh ...

"Safety meeting" at Nunzio's?

Click to embiggen

Photo: LATimes

Splinter City

This is a Czech film of an American race in 1920. An amazing period piece. I sure wish they'd had sound back then!

You know how much a splinter hurts, right? Picture an assload of 'em!

Also note that the machines don't run rear fenders. Best to not slip off the seat or you're in for a polish job that will rock your world!

This will become clear toward the end of the film: 212=132. Holy shit.

Indian Board Track Racing at Daytona

Thanks to FloridaSportbikes.

For Our Pal Gordon

Actually, I'm impressed, they spelled it right.

H/T^ Failblog.

Speaking of aluminum ...

In comments on my last post, we discussed the amount of aluminum you find in today's cars. I had this big, fat, late model Chevy pickup (2500 series) in the shop today and what do I find on it? Aluminum brake rotors. Granted, they're aftermarket and this guy threw a buncha money in the trash buying 'em, but you see these a lot on hybrids and the micro-minis the car makers are pumping out these days to save weight and increase fuel mileage.





The reason I had this load in the shop today is for a vibration that came on at 40 mph and continued up to highway speed (kept up no matter how fast I got it on the highway). Now what possessed this guy to put these huge tires on it when it hardly sees any dirt is beyond me but the things have the most aggressive tread to still qualify as a street tire (noisy as a fuck). The whole wheel/tire assembly weighed about 60 lbs which is why I said he wasted the money on the drilled aluminum brake rotors.

The idea behind the aluminum is to reduce "unsprung weight". That's the weight of the parts of the vehicle not controlled by the suspension - "anything below the springs" in our parlance (wheels, tires, brakes, axles and differential housings sometimes, control arms sometimes). The idea is the less weight below the springs, the better handling the vehicle is and is less susceptible to "bump-steer" - the wheels reacting to bumps and divots in the road. It's why they put steering dampers on off-road vehicles - to absorb the shock to the steering gear and undesirable inputs coming back through the steering wheel. The weight savings over iron rotors compared to the aluminum ones is negated by the heavy wheels and tires.

The reason you see a lug nut with washers under it is because I was running the beast up in 4WD on the lift without the heavy ass wheels and tires on it (trying to rule them out as the cause of the vibration) and I had to keep the rotors from flopping around and destroying the pads, calipers, and mounts.

After running it up while having Nunzio watch the driveshafts and anything else that rotated while driving, we looked at the front axles (it's got an independent front end) and found the inboard constant velocity joint in the left front was binding. The hubs stay permanently locked (the shifting to 4WD is done through a solenoid on the New Process Gear transfer case) so you get it in 2WD as well. I slapped a new axle in it as soon as I could get one sent up and the vibration went away. Thankfully, I only had to take the wheels and tires off twice. I hate working on trucks.

Heeeeeere's Billy!

Fixer's bud talks bikes.

Thanks to plumtv.

"I have a rattle in my front end."

When a customer tells me that, I usually reply, "It's the marble rolling around in yer head."

Took me a while to find this one (Dodge Ram 1500 4x4 Pickup), but when I pulled the front differential cover, all this shit fell out along with the 90-weight:





Got a new (rebuilt) 3rd member coming from Jasper in a couple days.

Note: Click pics to embiggen. The darker metal pieces are parts of ring and pinion gears. Hardened steel as opposed to the cast iron aluminum (figured that out when I could actually see it) of the housing and bearing caps.

Update:

I got the diff out of the truck first thing this morning:



As you see, the right side bearing cap is gone (yes, I know it's on the left in the pic, but in the car it's on the passenger side; that's the right side no matter how you look at a car), only the bolts and bosses are left. That's what most of the shiny shit sitting on my bench was.



The ring gear (the darker shit in the pile on my bench) got the worst of it.





The new unit should've got there late this afternoon and I'll install it first thing tomorrow.

So what goes on ...

At the local Volvo dealership where the parts department manager brings his delivery vehicles to us to repair as opposed to having the mechanics at the dealership work on 'em?





I have yet to get a satisfactory answer to that, but their checks don't bounce so I could give a shit less.

Treasures ...

It's that time of year to get all the cars out of Winter storage for their owners. Nunz and I spent Thursday morning in the barn, putting batteries in, getting them started, and then servicing each one. Lotta fun driving the old iron.

One of the original Datsun Z cars:



Classic Benz's:



An old VW Thing. Nunzio and I want to paint it Wehrmacht gray and put a Maltese Cross on the doors. Heh ...



A mint '57 Tbird:



An old Rolls:



A mint '70s MB convertible:



And talk about mint. This '78 Beetle is perfect:

The last hotrod ...

The last hotrod I built for myself was a fire breathing Camaro (454) about 20 years ago and I got rid of it when we moved in here (the guy who got it still runs it on the track) because of all the work I knew I had to do on the house (didn't have time to support a hotrod). I told Mrs. F I was gonna build us one more before I die and one of the young'uns is gonna inherit it. Well, for the last couple years I've been keeping an eye and an ear out for some classic iron that needs some help. It has to be the right car (or big pile of parts) at the right price.

I think I found it.

More when plans firm up ...

Home-brewed 700cc Royal Enfield 'Musket'

This is just amazing. Me want!

From BikeAdvice.in

What you see here is a 700cc Royal Enfield V-Twin constructed using two 350cc top ends. The whole bike appears to have come from the factory, or maybe the “special vehicle operations” section, instead of the mind and work of a creative and determined owner.

When you read the story of the build, take note of the process, …he had an idea and over many years kept at it, continued learning, continued working, he just kept going until the idea became real and he was riding this bike down the road.

From Aniket Vardhan

I was born in and lived in Delhi, India till 1999 when I came to the USA - ostensibly for a Masters in Industrial Design, but here’s the dirty truth- I came because of the sound of a Harley Davidson. Saw one once in Delhi, long ago, belonged to some filthy rich type, heard it start up and rumble away, wet myself publicly and resolved that one day, I would visit their homeland.

Yeah, them hawgs'll reach all the way to the other side of the world ta fuck ya up...

By all means go read about how he did it, but first watch this:



Damn nice job, Mr. Vardhan!

Thanks to BikeAdvice, India.

Update:

I couldn't resist...

This one shows that Mr. Vardhan knows that when you are demonstrating a completed exhaust installation, always point it at a brick wall for maximum effect.


And the all-important road test:

Thanks to winsomniac.

Also see bench testing the completed engine. Read the sidebar.

[...] If you all know about the Norcroft and Carberry Enfields and are wondering why I did this anyway, well, too much time, effort and dreaming had been done when I heard of them, so inspite of some major discouragement that the enfield V twin had already been done by professionals, I decided to plough ahead anyway. NO REGRETS! Watch out for some more videos from me with info on the motor, test rides etc. coming soon!
TURN UP YOUR SPEAKERS, CRANK UP THE BASS!
Thanks for watching!

I thank him for documenting this so well. Inquiring gearheads want to know...

Final thoughts

What Mr. Vardhan did was take the rotating and reciprocating elements from two pretty nondescript Royal Enfield single-cylinder engines and make his own crankshaft assembly and crankcase to graft them together and then get the resulting lump to fit between the wheels. It's been done before, so it's not unique in that way.

What is unique is that he did it at all. That is a tremendous amount of work. He obviously paid a lot of attention to detail and it shows. He ended up with a very nice 1930s-looking motorcycle that is his and his alone.

I think he should make me one.

Dear Chrysler,

It'd have been nice, during this tumultuous time for the auto industry, if you'd have thought about your parts supply chain before embarking on this 'reorganization'. I have 3 Jeeps in various states of repair because I can't get parts from you and they aren't available in the aftermarket. Get yer shit together, I'm running out of room.

Regards,

Fixer

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Honey, I Shrunk The '34!

The other day, me 'n Mrs. G were out shopping for a new washing machine to replace the 25-year-old wearing-out one. We just happened to run into our old friend Dave who was standing in front of his shop in the same complex as the appliance store. We hadn't seen him in quite a while, years in fact, so we stopped and chatted with him for a few moments.

I've known Dave for 28 years. He's a gearhead of the first order. When we met, he was the proprietor of Hirschdale Auto Wrecking a few miles east of town down in the Truckee River Canyon, which is no more due to environmental concerns about having a junkyard on the bank of the Truckee River. That place was a hangout in the best sense of the word! Just as an example, Dave likes guns and so do we. Let's just say that, at the wrecking yard the hills were often alive with the sound of gunfire, sometimes with the shots coming awfully close to one another in rapid succession (wink wink nudge nudge - know what I mean?). Mrs. G had just gotten a new S&W .22 revolver, and in honor of the event Dave broke out a brand new good used California Highway Patrol car door skin for her to blaze away at. Heh.

Also, I learned a lot about cars there. F'rinstance, when a customer is interested in a used engine, there's no way in the world it will ground-start unless there are a half a dozen guys standing around it and they all have a beer in their hand. But I digress...

Dave went on to be a big rig mechanic (read: a lotta 3/4 and 1 inch drive stuff) and worked for years as a mobile mechanic. The CHP has an inspection station, aka The Scales, just east of town, where they weigh big rigs and inspect them to make sure the things can get over the crest of the Sierra and down to the Valley without wrecking and closing the Interstate and killing people. I'm sure he did engine swaps on occasion, but it was mostly safety stuff like air brake systems, suspension components, tires, etc. When the CHP sidelines a rig for a safety item, it stays right there until it's fixed. Dave worked out of a well-equipped truck and fixed rigs out in the open in all kinds of weather. This is deep snow country and it was no picnic sometimes. It paid pretty well. The truckers just wanta go and they pay, believe me.

Dave got tired of that after about twenty years (I don't blame him!) and opened his own shop, A-1 Automotive (first in the phone book after all the AA Automotives).

Dave's an old biker like me, so I decided to drop by the following day and show him my Royal Enfield. We had another nice chat. I was gettin' ready to throw a leg over my ride and head out when he casually dropped the bomb: "I'm runnin' the dwarf car now..."

I had seen pictures of them and thought they looked like big fun, but I'd never seen a real live one up close. Needless to say, both legs stayed on one side of the bike and I was there another half hour while Dave showed me his car and told me a lot about it and his racing. I brought the camera the following day. Hyar 'tis:

Click pix to embiggen

Here's Dave. I got him to pose after I reminded him he doesn't look like his 'wanted' posters any more. He had just crawled out from under a church bus after replacing a rusted-out fuel tank. Note the door. No way he'd get more than a little ways inta that thing through the window, although the visual of the Fire Department tryin' to get him back out if he tried is hilarious. While he was waiting for them he coulda sold ad space on his ass! Heh.



A little about the car: It runs a 1000cc (61ci) Suzuki GSX-R (Gixxer) motorcycle engine and gearbox, perhaps 160 horsepower, and redlines into the rev limiter at 12,500 RPM. This one is fuel-injected, but carbs are allowed as well. It is mounted longitudinally in the car as opposed to transversely as it would be in a bike. Drive is through a driveshaft mounted to an adapter that replaces the chain drive. There is a minimum weight requirement of 1000 pounds unladen and Dave has to run ballast to comply.

Do the math: 1000 lbs divided by 160hp = pucker power!

Here's a photo of the well-appointed interior. The padding on the far side covers the driveshaft tunnel. He's runnin' a Toyota rear end with one short axle and one long one. The motorcycle clutch lever is mounted to the shift lever, and he runs mostly in 3rd gear.



A little about the racing: Dave runs with Dwarfs At Reno-Tahoe (DART). They run at tracks mostly in northeastern California and Northern Nevada, but occasionally at tracks as far as 250 miles away. They have drivers from 14 to 78(!) years of age.

Dave is currently in 7th place in points so far this season. Pretty good, I'd say.

Go to DART's site and click 'media' and 'photos' for many good racing photos.

Here's an interesting point: Track operators love these guys. When the Dwarfs come to race, attendance goes up 25%. I believe it. I bet these things are a lot of fun to watch, and I'm planning to go spectate one of their races this season.

Interesting point #2: These $8000 cars run the same lap times as the $25,000 Late Models and Modifieds. I bet they're a lot more fun to drive too.

Below is Dave's car runnin' a Polish victory lap with its previous owner. I'd love to be there when Dave gets to do this:

DART photo

Update:

I took a printed copy of this post and the photos to Dave. He said if anyone would like to cough up some sponsorship money to call him at the number at the A-1 Automotive link. Tell him Gordon sent ya. Now there's a real racer! Heh.

"Oh, please, dad ..."

"Let me borrow the car tonight."

So, dad lets the kid take the car this weekend. This car:



This is how I got it this morning.



What, you say, you didn't know Ferraris came with 4-wheel steering? They don't. This is the left rear wheel.







If this were my dad's car, I'd be dead.

Update:

Got the wheel off and found the brake was the only thing holding the wheel on. The kid twisted the axle hub clean off. Shouldn'ta dumped the clutch at 8 grand. Heh ...





Update II:

Got the new spindle and stub axle assembly from Torino and the thing is back to sitting on the ground. The customer will pick it up this afternoon. The bill didn't quite crack 5 figures. Heh ...

Just A Quick Tip

In these trying economic times, record numbers of people are opting to drive without car insurance, that can be understandable, to a point.
The other thing that no one thinks about is having to put tabs on your car on a regular basis.
I have seen a serious uptick in current year tabs on our equipment come up missing.
Here is how to cure that.
When you put the new tabs on your plates, take a razor or a sharp knife and cut an X across the tab.
Then they can't just peel it off and put it on their car without considerable difficulty.

The Great Escape, re-enacted

I was reading an article, sadly no link, in Cycle News about the new "McQueen Replica 650 Triumph Métisse Desert Racer" currently being offered by Métisse Motorcycles in England.

Years ago, the Rickman Métisse was the ne plus ultra of racing conversions. Basically, the Rickman brothers offered it as a chassis kit with motor mounts for whatever kind of engine you wanted to put in it. They would accept almost any suspension and wheels as well. I have an unrestored 21ci (350cc) Triumph Métisse Mk3 myself. "Unrestored" is the kindest term for it I can think of. One'a these days...

"Métisse" is French for "mongrel", by the way, and that's exactly what they were. The Rickmans had a sense of humour.

Anyway, the McQueen Replica sounded kinda interesting, and Cycle News printed out a URL that led me, after several attempts at typing it in wrong, to an article in the TimesOnline, with a video you MUST NOT MISS!!. Turns out them Limeys are good for more than just telling the truth about our politics. Heh.

I didn't know this, but even after 47 years there is a controversy over whether Bud Ekins made the famous jump in The Great Escape on a stock bike or a highly modified one. A "highly modified" Triumph in those days mostly referred to stronger suspension, maybe some gussets so the frame could finish a race all at the same time, and a reliable electrical system, so it sounds kinda silly to me. Ekins said it was a stocker and that's good enough for me. Excerpts:

In stunt-riding circles, the jump is still regarded as one of the most technically skilled — and controversial — performed for the big screen. Controversial because Ekins later claimed it was done on a standard, factory-built Triumph. Some film historians say such a jump could not have been accomplished except by special effects or on a highly modified machine. Forty-six years after The Great Escape was made, The Sunday Times has solved the mystery by reconstructing the jump.

But good though it was, by today’s standards the 1960s Triumph was a clunky old machine and quite unsuitable for jumping — all the more reason to marvel at Ekins’s achievement, if it was genuine. We were about to find out.

And find out they do! Note that the fence is held together with string, designed to fall apart if the rider hits it. The stunt rider's comments about Ekins would not be permitted in the U.S. press. Heh.

The fence Bud jumped over was made out of string with rubber bands for the barbs, not wire as stated in the article. He was fearless, not crazy.

I don't know how to snag the Times video, so please go see it.

Here's a Beeb video that I can show you. I wanted one of these gorgeous machines so bad my tongue got hard, but it went limp again when they got to the bottom line. Drat. I will gladly send my address to anyone who wishes to send me one of these things. Enjoy.

Note that the Métisse rep says you can't ride the machine on the road at the same time the test rider is riding it down the road. Catch me if ya can, coppers! Limey riders are just like American ones. Heh.

Thanks to screamingdj, UK.

Update:

Found the Times video at YouTube. Not quite the video quality as the one at the Times but plenty good:

Thanks to DoNotTreadOnMe.

Couple things ...

Swaps

Got a 10 year old Dodge van in with a wore out engine. Well, two lobes on the cam were flat but the motor (and vehicle) have 175K on 'em. Being the customer wants to keep the thing (it's a work vehicle) we explained that for a little more than the price of a camshaft replacement, we could put a new (rebuilt) motor in it ($1600 vs $2500). Well, he went for it so I yanked the old V-6 outta there (why someone would buy a full-sized van for commercial use with a V-6 in it is beyond me - way underpowered).





Now, if this was a hotrod or a classic, I woulda overhauled the thing myself but it wasn't worth the effort and we were doing it on a budget. Instead, we put a call in to Jasper Engines and they sent us a long block, complete with oil pan and timing cover.



As anybody who hangs around here knows, I hate working on vans because their ain't no room to work and you have to take half the fucking car apart to get the motor out.



The new Jasper long block in place.



I got it most of the way together by quitting time last night and I'll have it running this afternoon. In all, not a bad swap.






Tis the season

A couple of Nunzio's cousins own landscaping businesses (Guinea landscapers, go figure) and it's that time of year to get their vehicles ready for the season. Working on this big shit, I'm beginning to feel like Nucks. God bless ya, pal, I couldn't work on heavy duty trucks all day.








Humor

Or what passes for it at the NY State Department of Transportation:

The sign says: "Traffic Moving Well To Exit 64". Yeah, we're moving well ... at 4 mph.

Careful

Maybe it might not be a good idea to have this bumper sticker on your car when you don't know the political persuasion of your mechanic. Just sayin', heh ....



You never know

Being mechanics, we always (mostly) prepare for the worst case scenario, which is why we still have the snowblower handy even though it's been in the 50s and 60s for the last 2 weeks. Maybe by July ...



Yes, I know ...

I'm gonna be 47 years old this year and even though I've used Safety Seal products for decades, it always cracks me up when I get out the can of tire plug lube. Can't help it. Heh ...



Bing bong

Nunzio got a chime for the front door last week. It's good because if you're in the barn mounting a set of tires or doing something noisy in one of the bays, you didn't hear the front door open. Somebody coulda walked away with the office by the time we noticed. Thing is, it's annoying as a fuck, especially in the mornings when customers are coming in one after the other to drop their shit off. So I ask him "how much you pay for that thing?"

Nunzio: "$16, including tax at Home Depot."

Me: "Good, I'm putting a $20 bill in the top drawer of my toolbox. When you see the chime sailing across the Avenue and shattering on the curb, take it and buy yourself a new one."

The term 'Blower' explained...

Thanks to CHICKINDRUMSTIK (UK).