March 1998
March 3, 1998: Left home on a
nice warm sunny day to drop the car off at Bob's Foreign Car
Service and arrived there 30 minutes later in
pouring rain. So much for a clean car. There's something about taking my car to Bob's that always brings rain. The purpose of my visit is twofold: have
the carbs rebuilt and eliminate a persistent miss. Hopefully they're related. As usual,
any visit to Bob's results in LBC talk and
an inspection of all the cars in for repair and restoration work. If memory serves me
there was an: MGA, 2 MGBs, TR6, AH 3000, 2 TR3s and a couple of Spits. Out for paint work
was another MGA and an XKE. The good news is, he's up to his eyeballs in work..... the bad
news is, he's up to his eyeballs in work! During the visit I also got to meet Don Sforza
from the Connecticut Triumph Register, an organization I should join.
March 4, 1998: When does 1 + 1
= 1? Drove back to Bob's to pick up the car.....
no rain yet! The 2 carbs definitely needed to be rebuilt, especially in view of the fact
that only ONE was working!! Hence the 1 + 1 = 1. As a result, the engine was running very
lean (probably why it passed emissions) and was stumbling and missing. What an
unbelievable difference. No more miss. No more hesitation. No more driving with the choke.
It pulls very strong in all 4 gears and can cruise around town in 4th at 25 MPH. Step on
the pedal and it responds instantly....... now I know what other TR6 owners are talking
about. Bob set the mixture for "winter" driving and said to stop back when the
weather turns warm for the "summer" setting........ no charge! I knew advice was
free....... but service too? He did recommend I install a new choke cable as this one is
binding pretty severely........ so I shouldn't need two hands to pull out the choke?
March 5, 1998: When through the
TR6 budget and placed an order with Vic Brit for some accessories for which I've been
saving . Once they're installed I'll update the site with pictures. I also took the car to
work today as the forecast called for a nice sunny day. Left for lunch in bright sunshine
and drove into a snow squall about 5 miles from the office! SNOW........ well at least it
was brief and there was no road sanding or salting done.
March 16 - April 6, 1998: Been
off line for a while to get acquainted with my new power machine! More power is
good......... right! Well, now for numbers, I've got 3331281948.4!!
Guess you'll have to click to find out what it all means.
March 23, 1998: I guess it's
not too bad to only screw up one thing when you've torn a whole interior and dash apart.
Everything removed from the dash was marked, tagged and bagged. The only thing not tagged
was the power and ground leads on the radio itself. Red is power and black is ground.
Right? WRONG!! I hooked it up that way and then turned the key to on. Brief flicker of
radio lights, then nothing. Tried it again with the same results, plus
smoke.......................... SMOKE?!? What the heck? Smoke is pouring out of the radio
case as I feverishly turn off the key and cut the radio wires. The car's all right but the
radio is probably cooked. Only Dr. Lucas, the Prince of Darkness, would use the red lead
as a ground! So I bought a new AM/FM stereo cassette and new speakers and installed it
without problem. I even put in "rear" speaker, small square surface mounts.
Everything sounds fine, but with all the other noise going on "at speed", who
cares!
March 26, 1998: Came home and
found some big boxes sitting on the front porch! But it's now April and I'm still waiting.
Let's see
April's work......more
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