1. Do your best trousers get oil and grease on them?
2. Have you ever bought a tool because it looked cool and never used it?
3. Have you ever bought any special tools, unique to one model?
4. Is there, somewhere in your garage, a piece of steel pipe that you have, on one or more occasion, used for extra leverage?
5. Do you worry that you will develop mesothelioma from working on asbestos brake shoes/pads?
6. Do you spend more time listening to the car noises than the radio?
7. Do you spend more time listening to the car noises than your partner?
8. Have you ever used the domestic oven to heat gearbox or crankcases in order to remove or fit bearings?
9. How many containers half full of unidentifiable petrochemical products are there around your home right now?
10. Do you possess a set of Whitworth spanners? (Score double for sockets)

In LBC terms it goes something like this:

The glovebox light is out, I'll just replace the bulb, but look, the contacts are a bit corroded, so I better put in a new socket. To do that I have to pull out the glovebox itself, and look here! The heater is leaking.
I'll just pull off the leaking hose and whoops! The core is rusted. Off with the dashboard, out with the heater core, and oh my, there's rot in the firewall. IN the engine compartment, I take out the battery to see the rot, and I can't weld the patch on it without taking out the engine, so out with the hoist. While the engine's out I might as well rebuild it, and the transmission and clutch. And I noticed that the shocks are shot, so off with them, and the suspension bushings have seen better days, but look! The spring tower's cracked, so I have to weld it, but I can't get at it without removing the body, so....

...so replacing the glovebox bulb led to a frame-up restoration.

Some of you may think I'm making this up. I made up only the specific details of this case.

... and where do I go to catch it?

You're in the right place. [The Triumph (or the ZCar) mailing list]

-- Berry Kercheval
(resolutely resisting polishing the brake lines or I'll never make the DBTBD run.)

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[Kas Kastner]

I know it's not in the book, if I put all in the book it would have been called the L.A. Phone Directory.

-- Kas Kastner Triumph Competition Preparation Manual

The discussion of radiator caps reminds me of an old car I once had. You know the kind, ratty and raggidy, driven when I was a poor college student. I was having trouble with something I couldn't readily identify myself, so I took it into the shop.

The mechanic looked at it a couple of minutes and said, "What you really need is the radiator cap solution."

"Oh," I said, trying not to sound too confused. "Do you mean the radiator cap isn't holding enough pressure?"

"Thats part of the problem" he said. "You need to lift the radiator cap and drive another car under it. Then the next day you can replace the radiator cap, and it should solve your problem."

-- LLoyd -ahh, the good old days-

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Triumph Heritage

From Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen, an Opera in Five Acts with the text an anonymous adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream the following little ditty:

Hark, how the echoing air, a Triumph sings,
And all around pleased, Cupids clap their wings.

I'd call that a pretty fair description of the wonderful sounds we all enjoy on a quiet sunny afternoon when all those SU/Stromberg, Lucas, and Stanpart pieces are working together in harmony. I wonder if Shakespeare's was Red or British Racing Green?

If you check the original owner's manual for any british car it says, usually on page 14, the following:

Rust proofing is not required due to the unique British Car Dynamic Oil Spray System (BCDOSS) with which your vehicle is equipped. Also note there are no required winterization precautions as the car will spend its winters being in a constant state of repair.

... you could look it up ;-)

-- Mike Himelfarb

You know you've owned a Jaguar too long when...

* You always park downhill.
* The guy at the parts house is listed as a dependent on your income tax form.
* You get in a car and are surprised when all of the instruments work.
* You tell your wife that you were out until 3AM because the car broke down ... and she believes you.
* The family is no longer upset in having to share the dinner table with a bunch of SU parts.
* You don't trust anyone named Lucas.
* When your generator dies, you just pull another out of your Lucas pile of bits.
* You wash your hands before working in the engine compartment.
* You'd rather give the family pit bull a bath than tune your SU carburetors again.
* You allow four hours for a trip, 3 for repairs and 1 for driving.
* You can unstick a jammed starter in the dark, in the rain, in 5 minutes and don't think it's a big deal.
* There's no oil on the garage floor so you know the car's completely empty.
* Your car makes a funny sound and you immediately know what's wrong, how much it will cost, and what tools you will need to repair it.

-- George Cohn and others

In February in Wesley Chapel, Fla., Joseph C. Aaron, 20, was hit in the leg with pieces of the bullet he fired at the exhaust pipe of his car. While repairing the car, he had needed to bore a hole in the pipe and, when he could not find a drill, tried to shoot a hole in it.

[Tampa Tribune, 2-17-95] Rob Chiles