RITES OF PASSAGE - In which Bob discovers that, in
large part, it is
both unsafe and illegal to drive old sports cars - By
David J. Bedard,
from Automobile Magazine, February 1988.

I see it coming, but there isn't anything I can do to
talk him out of
it. It's a rite of passage every male endures, a kind
of mechanical
Bar Mitzvah, only it comes enough years past thirteen
that the victim
ought to know better. My friend Bob Wheeler is about
to buy an old
sports car, a 1972 Triumph Spitfire.

Bob's migration toward the financial cliff begins when
he sees such a
car, complete with a golden-haired goddess who is
engaged in
demonstrating her fondness for the driver. The
Spitfire is sold to
Bob by a man with an extraordinarily firm handshake,
suede loafers,
and a Jackie Stewart cap, who could sell Mr. Coffees
to devout
Mormons.

Four days after the purchase, Bob is exiting his
driveway and toes the
brake pedal, as is his custom before venturing into a
busy street
backward. The brake pedal slaps uselessly to the
floorboard, but not
before the piston in the master cylinder, which has
ruptured, squirts
eight ounces of hydraulic fluid through the firewall
and onto his
feet, causing the shoe polish on his Kinneys to
curdle. Bob does not
notice. He is busy pumping the pedal and eyeing a
yellow Pontiac
bearing down on him at an alarming rate. When the
futility of this
action strikes home, Bob grabs the emergency brake and
yanks mightily
toward his armpit. The ratchet in the lever makes a
busy noise, the
return spring offers comforting resistance, and the
car slows not at
all. Bob gives up and steers toward his mailbox.
This stops the car.

When Bob attempts to drive the Spitfire to the brake
shop, using the
engine's compression for deceleration by turning the
ignition key on
and off, he learns two things: (1) When he turns the
key off, it locks
the steering column; and (2) switching the ignition on
and off with
the car in gear causes a backfire that can be heard
for many blocks,
which blows off the aft two-thirds of the exhaust
system and attracts
the police, who tell him, "It is both unsafe and
illegal to drive a
car without brakes and a muffler."

A few weeks and many phone calls later, Bob's car is
rolling again,
until there erupts a carrots-in-a-blender noise from
between the
seats. Bob spends the following Saturday at a
junkyard, scrounging
for a usable gearbox at a reasonable price. He is not
able to find
one anywhere. Ever. But within two weeks, he has
collected two
95-percent complete gearboxes for a '71 Spitfire, one
80-percent
transmission from a '69 model that obviously won't fit
but which his
shop swears is interchangeable, one 50-percent shift
linkage, and two
baskets of what he thinks may represent a '73 gearbox
in poor repair
but is in reality the overdrive unit from a bus.

Bob also discovers that the owner of transmission
number three had
sufferd a similar misfortune and had reamed out the
cases and
substituted a gear cluster from a '66 GMC pickup
truck.

Weeks later, the car runs well enough that Bob
unwittingly drives far
from any possible source of help. As darkness falls,
he is not
annoyed that the headlights are blinking on and off,
or that the
dimmer switch sounds the horn. He is annoyed that the
car is emitting
an odor like burning track shoes. It is just as well
that he cannot
see the short in his electrical system that began
beneath his oiled
wooden dashboard and is now spreading down the wiring
harness toward
the headlights and is about to supernova beneath the
hood.

He pulls to the shoulder and discovers a crackling
fire running the
length of the main wiring bundle. It looks like a
glowing snake and
smells like Akron. Wheeler removes his $200 suede
jacket and tries to
beat out the flames and then retreats to the safety of
the middle of
the road, where he discovers that part of the evil
scent was his hair,
which now looks like the outcome of a bizarre
electrolysis mishap.

Furious, Wheeler kicks the car, and the vibration of
his blows causes
the now crispy harness to drop harmlessly to the
ground. The fire
goes out.

Although the Spitfire is still idling, Bob suspects
the necessary
wiring for the starter has melted. He is afraid to
turn the car off
so he can liberate the ignition key to open the trunk,
where there is
a flashlight. Instead, he uses a length of pipe from
the gutter to
jimmy the trunk handle.

Bob sets out toward home, hanging his head out the
side of the car,
aiming the flashlight's pitiful beam down the road.
This operation
goes well until Bob's foot slips off the clutch and he
stalls in the
middle of an intersection. Only then does he confirm
his suspicion
that the starter wiring has indeed burned up, and he
is unable to
restart the car. He sits patiently and awaits the
arrival of the
police. They tell him, "It is both unsafe and illegal
to drive a car
at night without any headlights at all."

Bob agrees, wholeheartedly, imploringly, ingenuously.
The policeman
softens and confesses, "I always dreamed of buying a
Spitfire." Bob's
brow unwrinkles as he introduces himself with an
extraordinarily firm
handshake.

 

Good one!!