HAVING A BREAKDOWN....

At one point, one of the bolts that held the air cleaner assembly to the carb began sheering on a regular basis. The first time it happened, the air cleaner pivoted around the remaining bolt, shutting off most of the airflow and cutting engine speed to a crawl. Easy enough to spot and to rectify on the shoulder, but potentially dangerous if I was making a left turn across busy traffic.

So aspiring Mensa candidate that I am, the next time it sheered, I unscrewed the remains of the stud a few turns and left it in the carb to at least properly locate the air cleaner hole. This left me feeling that the universe in was in perfect harmonic balance - at least until the first warm day of spring when the following occurred.

I was making a rare client visit that morning - which meant I was wearing my best suit - and I was feeling pretty good about being out of the office with afternoon temperatures forecast in the low 60s, plenty of sunshine and anticipating the first excellent top down drive of the year. I was on a limited access highway and I pulled into the left lane and stepped on the gas to pass slower traffic. Unfortunately after I lifted my foot off the gas, the car continued to accelerate. Stuck throttle. Not a big problem as I had plenty of room and I kicked the pedal a few times to free it. No luck, I was now at 70mph and continuing to speed up. I switched off the ignition with the car in gear and pulled off to the side belching huge clouds of black smoke (unburned gasoline) into the annoyed faces of the cars that I just passed.

I got out of the car and checked the usual suspects - caught on carpet, frayed cable, broken return spring - all to no avail. Looking closely at the carb, I noticed sufficient slack in the cable, but the throttle plate was not closing for some reason. Hey, I've got a great idea. Close it by hand. It wouldn't close, but never one to be dissuaded from an act of stupidity, I applied more force and it now appeared to close. I restarted the car and was amazed to see engine speed still leaping towards the redline and beyond. At this point, the trucks passing a couple of feet to my side threatened to blow the bonnet right off the car. Since I was at an exit, I decided to do further investigation in the parking lot of a nearby strip shopping center. So I restarted the car, hurriedly let the clutch out before it over-revved and lurched down the ramp, riding the brakes. Shortly after I pulled into the shopping center accompanied by rapidly fading brakes and the smell of burning linings. I shut the engine down and removed the top of the carb for a better look. Hey lookee here, that ol' stud from the air cleaner done vibrated clean off and fell in the carb and jammed that durn throttle open. Stupid stud! I tried to imagine what would have happened if the throttle hadn't stopped it and it went down the manifold and into the valves. Or better yet, all the way into the combustion chamber. Best not to think about it.

Anyway, I CAREFULLY managed to ease the broken stud out with a screwdriver. Success! I restated the car but it STILL revs uncontrollably. What the ... ?!? Apparently I had bent the throttle plate when I was trying to force it closed and when the top half of the plate was closed, the bottom was still bent open. And there was no way that I could straighten it while the carb was still on the car.

I decided to try and get back to the highway where a partially stuck open throttle might not be too much of a liability. I turned the ignition key ... click...click. Dead battery - my weak alternator strikes again. Might as well add sweaty to the greasy hands/good suit combo. So I push the car up a small hill, roll it down, pop the clutch, roar off at high revs, ride the brakes on my way back to the highway. I creep up to the first traffic light which of course is red, "change to green dammit", still red, almost there, still red, can't turn the car off with a dead battery (you think it would charge at 5000RPM), still red, aw shoot, make a quick right turn on red into some neighborhood instead of the way that I want to go. I'm driving along riding the brakes so I try turning off the car and coasting, but it won't shut off with an open throttle, it just keeps dieseling on and on. I finally find a hill to stop and shut it down and cool down for a few minutes before roll starting it and heading back to find a gas station and a phone. Of course the light out of the neighborhood is red, but surely there is now enough charge in the battery for a restart? Well actually ...no. Well I'm parked on a slight downgrade so I grunt the car back up the hill, wait for a green light, roll it forward, pop the clutch, it sputters a few times, but refuses to start. I repeat this a few times - I now have a veritable sweat topographic map, rivers, stream and various tributaries, on my body, but the car still won't start. Up to now, I was convinced that I would somehow work this out and not have to call a tow truck, but I was finally ready to give up. I walked to the closest gas station and decided to walk back and give it one last try and apparently the cool off period had worked miracles and the car started. Unfortunately, I had failed to time the green light and I was forced to drive right back into the shopping center. Back to square one. I found a payphone and called a co-worker with a company car who agreed to come get me. "So what's wrong with your car?" she asks. "Well, the throttle is stuck wide open" "Can't you fix it?" (I DO have a reputation) "Well, yes but it would require removing the carburetor" I respond in my best defeated voice. "Oh" she replies obviously disappointed in me. "I'll be there in about 30 minutes" But this gets me thinking, can I get the carb off, the throttle plate pounded straight and the carb back on in half an hour in my best suit? The challenge proves irresistible. I simply MUST try. The carb comes off easily, but I am unable to bend the throttle plate straight. I don't have a hammer so I pound on it with my lug wrench and it does become straighter if not actually straight. I bolt the carb back on and check the time -25 minutes. So I try to start it. Click...click. When my co-worker shows up, I explain what I have done and she is amazed and my reputation is salvaged. She agrees to jump me (you know what I mean). The car idles with the slightly bent throttle plate at what seems to me to be a very sweet 2500 rpm and I drive it back to work and later that evening home that way.

But that is not the end of the story. That night, I again remove the carb, remove the throttle plate, carefully hammer it completely flat, and re-install the carb. All fixed? Nope. It still idles at 2500 rpm. D'oh!!! Do I need an exorcist? So I AGAIN remove the carb and take a good look at it. Apparently hammering the throttle plate stretched it, so that it is now too big to close. I CAREFULLY file the perimeter until it fully closes. It now idles at 1000-1100, hey, close enough. Passed the emissions inspection a few weeks later too.

EVERY CAR LOOKS BETTER WITH A NEW BONNET ON IT

After my first accident, I had replaced the trashed hood (bonnet as the English call it) with the rusty, dinged one from my "project" car. But I stayed on the lookout for a better one and one day at the "local" U-Pull-And-U-Save aka The Caveat Emptor Salvage Yard, I found a 79 Spitfire with a fairly straight, unrusted bonnet. And the price list said "Hood - $20", what a deal. Unfortunately, I had no way to get it home that day but I borrowed my mom's Toyota and drove back a day or two later planning to tie it to the roof. (My wife, bless her little anti-paradigm heart, suggested that I drive my Spitfire up without a hood and install the new one for the drive home. Clever, yes ... practical, no). So I pull the hood off the donor car which was pretty deep in the yard and I'm kinda wondering how I'm going to get this thing the quarter mile or so to the exit. I had noticed that some of my fellow compatriots of the salvage yard had driven cars up and down the aisles to remove heavy pieces so I trudged back to the office and asked if I could bring my car into the yard to recover this heavy body part and the head junk man smiles sweetly at me, I mean glares at me and snarls "no". "But", he continues, "we can let you use that yard car over there", a very sad Ford Fairmont Station Wagon of what could charitably be called indeterminate vintage. I get in and put in the clutch and reach for the key. No key. No ignition switch. Just the remnants of a switch which I'm staring at with some confusion when I notice that I'm rolling backwards down the hill at an ever increasing speed. Apparently the parking brake is broken and putting in the clutch wasn't such a hot idea. Anyway, I stop the car, get a screwdriver from my tool box , jam it in the remains of the ignition switch and twist it to start the car. I drive to where the bonnet is waiting for me and muscle it up onto the roof. Since I have no way to tie it to the roof, I drive off one handed with the window rolled down and me trying to hold it on the roof slipping the clutch the whole way to keep my speed down (but hey it isn't my car). When I get to the gate, the yard guy tells me "$70". Whoa! The price list says $20. "Yeah, but that part you got there includes the fenders, the headlights and the headlight surrounds. $70". Well what am I going to do at this point? Of course I pay the $70 and leave feeling raped. I tie the bonnet on the roof of the Toyota with used clothesline in a most unskilled and unconfident manner and drive the 2 hours home expecting any minute for it to blow off the roof. Which would not only waste $70, but probably cause a major accident.

But by keeping my speed under 30mph, I arrive home without incident and begin restoring this bonnet. Within a month, I am in an auto accident which trashes my old bonnet and the new one suddenly becomes the best $70 I ever spent!

SPITFIRES AND HURRICANES - TOGETHER AGAIN!

On September 16,1999, the remnants of Hurricane Floyd either slammed or sashayed (depending on what you're used to) into the greater Philadelphia area, flooding streets (and basements, d'oh!), knocking out power and closing schools and businesses. Although my spit spends it's nights in a nice dry garage, I was concerned about parking it all day in the open at work, knowing how the top leaks. I mean, we already have one "pool car" at work.

So, the night before I went to the hardware store and bought a couple of feet of velcro and velcro-ed the top to the frame and to the side windows in several places. I also placed a high tech water barrier on the seat, e.g. a plastic trash bag. It worked! After seven hours parked in driving rain, the inside was reasonably dry.

The drive home through the heavy wind, rain and flooding was not so successful. For some reason, my idle speed dropped to 400-500 RPMs, on the constant edge of a stall. So I had to clutch AND brake with my left foot and stay on the gas with my right through the frequent traffic backups and fitful start/stops. And the low idle speed meant that the alternator couldn't handle the defroster, (AND the headlights AND the brake lights AND the wipers) unless I was moving at speed, so the windows kept fogging up. And when I did run the defroster, it turned the interior into a sauna.

For the last 20 minutes of the drive, the engine began missing and sputtering for no apparent reason - not that I was going to get out and look. It did get me eventually home though, bless it's little 1500cc heart! The next day cleared up beautifully and I was surprised to find the engine still missing. At the time, the motor that I had in the car was very worn and had a tendency to foul the number 3 sparkplug with oil deposits. That was the reason for the miss the day before. Knowing the tendency to foul plugs, you think that I would have had enough sense to clean 'em prior to venturing out in a hurricane...

WHAT"S MY CLOTHES LINE?

I have always taken pride in my ability to do roadside repairs and get myself going again. That's why, one day on the shoulder with a snapped throttle cable, I found myself rummaging in the trunk (boot!) for a solution. Clothesline? Clothesline! And yes I was able to tie it to the carb where the cable normally attached, run it under the hood (bonnet!) to my left hand hanging out the window where I could tug on it and go. Did I get some weird looks! Someone later asked me why I didn't just turn the idle stop screw up and leave the throttle partially open and drive it that way. Well it never occurred to me...

SOCKS APPEAL?

In my early years of marriage, one year my wife got me a pair of socks for Valentines Day. They were obviously meant as a semi gag gift, since they were bright red and librally sprinklered with pink and white hearts. Of course, I never wore them and each subsequent Valentines Day my wife would teasingly ask me about them. Well one year, I decided that my manhood was secure enough and dammit I was going to wear these things into the office. We had just moved into our first home, a small "twin" starter house. Since the driveway was too small for two cars and since it was still winter and the lawn was ungraded frozen mud, I had taken to parking right in the front yard. But I pushed it one day too far as we had a thaw on February 14th and instead of driving off the lawn, my wheels just spun and dug a deepening hole. The neighborhood was still under development and a couple of contractors were nice enough to come over. "This happens with our pickup trucks all the time. No problem" one of them told me and he grabbed a long piece of lumber and started levering the back of the car while the other guys pushed. When the car worked free, I stepped out to thank them and stepped into some mud which instantly sucked my shoe off. So I'm standing there in the mud in those damn goofy socks with these guys carefully not looking at my feet and I was ready to die. Guess my manhood wasn't all that secure...

SPITFIRE WINTER TOURING