In which he releases some Magic Lucas Smoke

'Twas a matter of time, really, until the Prince of Darkness made his malevolent presence felt. One of Dame Zara's foglights has always been dodgy - tap it and it works; switch off, switch back on - doesn't work. Bad earth, thinks I. Pulled it apart once, cleaned off one of the contacts with some wet and dry. Worked for a bit - next time I switched it on, nothing.

So today, after finally giving the dusty old dear a good spongebath and vacuum, I took the ailing foglight light apart again, gave both contacts a good scratch with some coarse sandpaper until they were shiny, cleaned off the general grot, put the light back together, switched them on ...

One worked, the one I'd just cleaned up was dead.

Then came the smoke! Acrid, grey smoke billowing out of the 'fixed' light, from under the bonnet and from the left-hand wheelarch. Mild panic on my part, but I had the presence of mind to reach in and switch off the lights.

Heart going at about a million miles an hour, I gently popped the bonnet and, some wafts of smoke aside, no flames shot up to greet me and it seemed nothing had been seriously fritzed. Closer inspection showed that I'd burnt the original cloth insulation of the wires leading to the left-hand foglight to a crisp, and half-melted the heatshrink cover over both wires all the way back to the connector on the inside of the mudguard.

I disconnected the fried wires at both the connector and inside the light, taped their ends just to be double-sure, took the bulb out of the offending light, put it back together, and left well enough alone and came inside to drink wine and eat smelly cheese!

The care package

The Pater Familias sent another of his distinctive care packages the other day - it was constructed from two empty wine casks and a lot of packing tape and was full of all manner of goodies, including:

• a non-squeaky pulley wheel for the fanbelt tensioner
• a big box of assorted electrical connectors and a crimper
• a timing light
• the mysterious missing screw for the second set of points
• an odds-and-sods socket set in an old metal case, including a 1/2" socket handle and a hand-modified square socket to use as a jack handle
• a spare carbie dashpot piston
• a radio interference supressor to fit across the coil

Almost every item was hand-labelled with little black engineer writing on masking tape, just to make sure I knew what it all was. Thanks dad!

After getting home from another long, challenging day at work (oh the joys of launching a new website!), taking Niven the 15-year-old toothless cat to the vet for his flu jab, and heating up some leftover risotto for dinner (did I mention that Niven and I are bachelors gay for the next fortnight, as Kathy is off in Oslo for a work junket?), I ventured out to the cold garage for a spot of fiddling.

First up, the radio supressor went on the coil, once I worked out which side it went on (positive is the battery/ignition side. What did we all do before Google?). But the f*%^@ng radio still picks up engine noise, and much more on FM than AM, so now I'm convinced it's the aerial ... (there's now a suppressor on the coil, another on the alternator, a noise filter in-line with the radio's power supply and a fresh ground wire earthing the radio case to the car's body. Surely that's enough!).

Next, I fixed the 'low brake fluid' warning light by dint of a few fresh connectors - strangely enough, 37 years' worth of brake fluid fumes and damp had corroded the ends of the copper wires.

A fresh spring was fitted to one of the heater flaps for extra 'sproing' when you lever the lever in the appropriate direction. (The heater, by the way, begins to noticably warm the car after about 15 minutes on these colder mornings - about exactly the time it takes me to get to work if the traffic's good. So I shiver until just before I turn into the carpark! Beryl the '75 Mitsubishi Galant is fulfilling her proper role as daily driver much more often of late - her heater fires up like a sauna after about 5 minutes, then you have to turn it off lest you pass out !)

Then, emboldened, I decided to open up the distributor and attempt to fit the second set of points. Unfortunately I was foiled straight off. The screw dad found is exactly the right thread, but is too long, so fouls the distributor base long before it's tight enough to do any good. So I'll have to lop it off before I can go any further. (Hmmm ... might need a vise for that - have a hacksaw to cut the screw, and a file to smooth it off, but nothing to grip it in as I work on it ... oh, Cash Converters, can you hear me calling?)

The dashpot piston went straight in the right-hand SU, and screws in much more securely than the previous one, which had stripped its thread and had a habit of popping loose every now and then (you could tell it had happened as soon as you put your foot down - instant flat spot, then surge).

By now it was getting late (10pm), misty and cold, so it was time to come inside. I made good my threat to Kathy to turn the kitchen into a workshop while she was away, unscrewing the two left-hand door caps and bringing them in to sand off on the kitchen table in preparation for a revarnishing. A glass or two of passable red and some nice music on ABC Classic FM helped out.

I also found a can of 'hammer look' aluminium silver spray paint yesterday, so am now all set to finish off the air cleaners the next warm weekend day that comes along.

Another to-do list

Really for my reference, but my flock of readers may be interested ...

• the old dear really needs a clean & polish! She's been out in the rain a few times in the last month and is looking very mud-spotty - a flaw of the darker colour, I suppose. But as it's getting wintery, it's hard to find a time when I'm free and it's not cold, raining &/or dark!
• the air cleaners were sanded off and primered the other week, now I need to get correct-looking silver paint (Hammerite?) and a warm-ish, dry day to finish them. I painted the fusebox cover and starter shield gloss black - a big improvement on the chipped, rusted appearance they had before. I might do the fan cowl as well once I have the silver paint.
• more painting: I should do the front valence 'box' and clean/rustproof/underseal the 'crow's feet' and everything at the front of the car. There's a rust hole at the base of the grille that I should get seen to, and the front bumper is quite rusty on the inside (although the chrome is very good on the outside).
• Dad has been busy on my behalf: he's found the missing screw for the distributor; made me up a socket so I can use a common-or-garden socket handle for my jack; found a new fanbelt tensioner to replace my rattly-squeaky one; and I sent him a wish-list of little bits and pieces to look for at Dunsters, a Canberra-based Jag service/wrecker place that's going out of business and having a big clearance.
• The front passenger-side door lock has gone doolally again (already!). Which means I need to take the door lining off again. Which means I should buy some plastic sheeting and take off all the door linings and have a good pre-winter waterproofing/rustproofing session. If I was really organised/dedicated, I should also get some new rubbers from Scott's - at least the main window strips if not the quarter-light ones - and organise some new unbuckled backing boards for the door linings ...
• something is rattling/resonating in the dash all of a sudden and it's very irritating. I suspect it's something in the radio/heater bit, which means I'll probably have to pull it all apart (again!) and make sure it's all tight.
• I have a bit of 'spare' money now that Kathy's sold Gussie (a long and complicated financial tale I won't bore anyone with), so I can finally get a few things done that require paying other people - a new rear window seal is top of the list; then a service for the auto. Next will be some quotes for replacing the headlining around the rear window (I'm hoping just that piece can be replaced and not the whole thing).
• Tony & Ennio the 'diagnostic technicians' at Kingsway (who have done work for us in the past on both Gussie and Beryl) are drooling at the prospect of putting their heads under Zara's bonnet - Tony used to have a V8 himself once upon a time, so he knows from Daimlers. Once I get the crucial screw from Dad, I'll fit the second set of points then perhaps entrust her to them for a full tune-up with all their machines that go 'ping!', checking the dwell angle, timing, tune of the carbs, kick-down, etc. Fingers crossed we'll finally get the 'hesitation waltz' cured by the time we've done all that!
• the left-hand exhaust is banging on the underside of the body somewhere when the car's idling. Need to get under there and see what's up - probably needs a new rubber washer of some sort. The exhausts are pretty rusty all over - I suspect I'll have some holes before too long. How much is a stainless steel system, I wonder? I think I'll be wondering for quite a while before I can afford it!
• I'm still losing coolant. I know I could do with new top and bottom radiator hoses, and I'll have to take off the fan and alternator belts (both of which need replacing as well) when I fit the replacement tensioner, so I think now it's *really* time to flush the radiator and heater and check all hoses for leaks. I suspect, though, that I might have weepy plug on the engine block - when the car's been sitting in the garage for a few days there's a little puddle of coolant that seems to be coming down the left-hand side of the engine from somewhere under the exhaust manifold. Tricky to get to and messy (hence potentially expensive!) to fix, I fear.
• when dad was poking around the other week, he noted that my spare tyre is a near-new Kumho and that I have three Kumhos and one Hankook on the road wheels, so I should probably put the spare with the Kumho on the back and use the Hankook as the spare ... but the spare wheel itself is the grottiest of the five, with chipped paint and some rust.
• the brakes are pretty good but I noticed that the vacuum tank in the right-hand front wheel-well seems to have a pipe coming out and back in to it in a loop, so I suspect it might not be connected into the system at all. It's more than likely that the tank was leaky from rusting out, so that will also need to be replaced in the fullness of time.
• I still haven't succeeding in completely quieting the buzz in the radio, despite replacing the suppressor on the back on the alternator, putting a noise filter in line with the radio's power supply and running a new earth wire from the radio body. It could well be that the stereo itself - a 70s Eurovox AM/FM/cassette player - has just had it. I had been thinking that I would buy an iPod and one of those FM transmitters and just use the existing radio for now, but more and more I'm thinking I should put the original Radiomobile back in the dash (working or not) and get a brand new stereo with a remote and put it under the passenger seat (or maybe in the glovebox - but I don't want to lose the storage space for 'stuff'). There are already two speakers in the front footwells, and they seem quite decent, so I'm sure they'll cope with a new CD player. The rear parcel shelf is so narrow I don't think even 5x7" oval speakers would fit there - where do other V8/Mk2s put rear speakers? I'd rather not put holes in the rear door linings ...
• in the longer term, I will get some colour-matched seatbelts, hopefully with period-correct metal buckles (At the moment she has ugly black 70s ones in the front and none at all in the back).
• winter nights seem like the perfect time to start on sanding back and revarnishing some of the simpler interior wood pieces - I'll start with the door tops, which are just like rulers. Even I can't mess those up!