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25/01/2005 9:06 am
An oustanding day yesterday!
It started out around 5:30 AM. I crawled up on a stepladder to get one of the bleeder plugs out of the TF's oil pump -- not that it's one of those jacked up 4x4s whose headlights are level with your rearview mirror, but it's on a lift and I was too lazy to back the Z3 out from under it to let it down. [Why English cars leak - in the space of 64 cubic inches the oil passes through - the flange between the sump and block, out the side of the block to an external oil pump -- with two bleeder screws, through the oil filter and back into the sump -- that's two cork gaskets, one rubber gasket and three dissmilar materials!]. The bleeder screws had copper compression washers which were about the thickness of aluminum foil, and I was going looking for replacements. After several rounds of the popular British game of "Guess the bolt - Metric, Whitworth or BSF(HA! - "British standard" is an oxymoron)" the hex on the bolt was worn and the points were digging into the washer, allowing for more than the originally designed leakage.
I love California! Compared to Vermont, where my attempt to buy a wiper blade for a VW Golf at the local auto supply was repulsed with the exclamation "It's a foreign car (at the time, the most popular car on the face of the earth), the local Auto Zone had the parts I needed. When I got home there was a box from Legacy waiting for me.
It was a 1:18 Kyosho Austin Healey 3000. What a beauty! Following the law of mechanicl perversity, the AH 3000 is one of the nicest looking cars ever placed on 4 wheels. The Kyosho is metallic blue over cream side coves - just the way I like 3000's and the colors are the US's FIA racing colors --- before F1 cars became rolling billboards fighting for the glory of a cigarette pusher. The interior is medium blue with off-white piping. The engine compartment is so detailled, you can almost smell the gas dripping out of the cork bottom seals of the SU's. The wire wheels are a work of art, although I don't believe they were chromed on the 1:1. The only things necessary to complete the illusion of reality are a puddle of oil and a pile of carbon under the exhaust outlet.
On top of all this ectasy, my Hemmings Classic Car came with the 100(?) most beautiful American cars, a TF being offered at one of those snooty auctions and a drive report on a '64 Riviera.