Subject: It would be a better story if we'd actually made it
Date:	Wed, 29 Jul 1992 15:37:28 -0700

			The "Diner" TR3 gets back on the road
					or
			  Let's not do this again real soon

It seemed like a simple enough plan. John Lye owns the '59 TR3A that
starred in the movie "Diner"; for various reasons, it's been off the
road for five years and "almost ready" for roughly two. This year's
Vintage Triumph Register National Convention was to be in Savannah,
Georgia -- too far to drive from California, and I really didn't want
to be "without" a TR at the convention again. So I suggest to John that
I'd fly to St. Louis and drive DINER to Savannah, following them while
they tow the TR4 race car. John liked the idea and we decided to go for
it.

(As a side note, Mark Bradakis and Bob Bownes struck a similar deal
where Mark would fly to Albany and help get the TR6 and Spit to
Savannah. That didn't work out in various different ways, but I'm not
going to tell that tale.)

A month before Savannah, John was sounding pretty unsure that he'd get
the car done. I tried to encourage him, things got better, he made some
progress.

Two weeks before Savannah, it was looking pretty close, but John was
going to keep at it.

A week before Savannah, I stopped hearing from John. Last I knew, the
car was on jack stands with the interior out. It had a fresh engine
with about 90 miles on it, had driven to its current location about two
years ago, and hadn't been moved since. I suggested that it might make
sense to bolt the driver's seat in and get some shakedown miles; this
was the last conversation we had.

A day before I was scheduled to fly to St. Louis, we talked and I got
an update; the car was pretty much together, but stuck behind the TR4.
He was going to keep working on it; I would be there a day early and we
might have to do some last minute work and then make an assessment of
whether or not to drive.

I flew to St. Louis on the redeye flight; left SFO at 1:30am, arrived
at STL at 7:30. I was hoping that John would meet me in the 3, but
didn't dare say that to him. He was at the gate, we walked out, and
there it was. I was quite pleased.

"There are only a few problems", he said. "The overdrive isn't working
-- since it's got a 4.55:1 rear end in it, that will make driving on
the freeway pretty buzzy (probably around 4200 for 65mph). The diff is
leaking a bit, and I'd hate to run the new limited slip dry on the way
down. And the oil needs to be changed; it's five years old, even though
it only has 90 miles on it."

No problem, I figured -- we had a day. I'd gotten about two hours of
fitful sleep on the plane, but the night-day transition seemed to let
me convince myself that a night had gone by and we got to work.

Well, after drinking a pot of coffee and eating breakfast.

First, the car seems to be idling really badly. John suspects that the
idle jets in the Webers are too rich, so we swap them out. We fiddle a
while, a friend of his shows up to return something, and stays for an
hour or so helping us tune. Turns out that the air filters were very
clogged, so the car seemed rich with the filters on, but the jets were
OK with them off. #2 cylinder isn't sucking as much air as the others,
we resolve to set the valves later. For now, the plugs look good, and
the gas that was coming out of the overflow seems to have stopped.

We put the car up on jackstands, and planned to change the oil first.
Fat chance. The square plug head had been buggered pretty badly, we
didn't have an eight point socket. A 7/16" open end just rounded off.
So did vise-grips. So did a crescent. Out comes the propane torch --
blackened it a bit, but not hot enough. Bother. OK, ignore that for
now.

Drain the radiator to flush and change it. Bolt the cowl support on
properly.  Determine that the overdrive solenoid seems to be working,
but needs to be adjusted -- it's not set to engage far enough. The
tranny cover should come out for this, but neither of us feels like it.
So we measure and drill a hole through the (metal) cover, John gets a
3/16" drill lined up properly, and I lie underneath, swinging wrenches
a half flat at a time to get everything set. An hour or so later, we
start up, engage the overdrive, and sure enough, revs drop and speed
increases. Hooray!

Time for a tool run; we head out and look for tools and techniques to
get the oil plug out. John has new ones, so we can bugger the old one
as much as necessary. I want to get the hotter propane mix that I use
at home, but we can't find it. We find an 8 point socket. We get
channel locks, and a pipe wrench.

We eat lunch.

Too much has been rounded off for the 8 point to really grab, even
after filing a bit. The pipe wrench is no good. The channel locks
aren't either; can't grab tight enough. I try heating for a long time,
but that doesn't do any good, either -- just can't get a good enough
grab to crack it loose. I try heating it some more and dumping ice on
it. No go.

After a while of this, I get fed up. I drill a hole across the flats
big enough to accomodate a pin punch. Put the punch through the hole,
hit it with a 3 lb. sledge, and voila! out it comes. Hooray! Miracle
number 2 for the day.

We drain the oil, change the filter, fill the radiator. In changing the
filter, notice that the glass filter bowl on the fuel pump is full of
cruft. I pull it off, hold my finger over the outlet to keep the gas
from flowing out, and hand the bowl to John to clean. I look at the
pump to try to figure out how to minimize the gas spill, and hear the
sound of glass bouncing.

And breaking.

OK, let's not panic. I ask if there's a spare. No. How about the
mechanical pump that was on the race car? Had been converted to
electric before he bought it. Know anyone who would have a spare? No.
Help me plug this line so I can stand up. OK. Anyone with a 2, 3 or 4
who would loan us one for a week?

Hmm. There's this guy that just bought a 3 to restore. We give him a
call, leave a message. Go on to other things, like setting the valves.
(We used one of the Clikadjust tools, which is truly a miraculous
device. Set all 8 valves in about 10 minutes.) We run out and buy some
more positrack additive for the diff.

Later on, he calls back. Yes, he has the "shot glass", yes, he'll loan
it to us. That's 3. We drive over in the pouring rain, chat for a
while, get the glass, go home, install it. We eat dinner. Valerie comes
home. We decide to call it a night, start early and reseal the diff
cover. Val is fairly concerned about whether or not the car will make
the trip, maybe we should leave it home. I'm up for an adventure, we
try to reassure her that it'll be OK. Heh heh.

Tuesday morning I sleep sort of late, by the time I get up John is
already doing the diff cover and a few other odds and ends. That all
goes well, we erect the hood, install the side curtains (it looked like
rain, sigh), load up the race car and trailer, and get on the road
around 1pm, hoping to make Georgia that day.

19 miles into the trip, the speedo stops working. No big deal, it was
reading about 35% fast anyway, and I still have the tach. I ask for
calibration data over the walkie-talkie (3200 rpm ends up being 65mph
while the overdrive was engaged) and we go on.

At the first gas stop, the brakes feel a bit weird, like they need to
be bled.  We're only getting about 19mpg, which seems low, even with a
C cam and headers, so we figure we'll be doing some jet work in
Savannah. No big deal. Since the engine is fairly fresh, I try to vary
the revs and keep them under 3500 for now.

At the next gas stop (and dinner), the brakes go flat. Not quickly,
like a rupture, but slowly. I grab the handbrake and am pleased to
discover that it actually works, and think about what the failure is.
Decide it must be the master cylinder seal, which means there's really
nothing we can do until we get to Savannah and buy a kit from The
Roadster Factory. Oh well. It's mostly interstate driving, the car
engine brakes well, and the handbrake works. I'll just be careful.

I've taken the side curtains out by now, since I was roasting, but it's
still too threatening to drop the hood. Shortly thereafter, we hit our
first thunderstorm, and I learn all about TR3 weather protection. Hah.
We stop under a bridge and install the side curtains. I guess they help
some: the water fairly streams in past the leading edge of the door,
the inside of the windshield fogs up, and I could really use some
interior wipers, because quite a bit of water gets blown through the
"seal" where the leading edge of the top is snapped to the windshield
frame. I keep my eyes on the trailer, my hand on the emergency brake,
and my wits about me.

No surprises, we get through the rain, I take out the side curtains
(getting good at this), drive a while more. Another storm, repeat,
except that this one is much worse -- I can't see anything, John isn't
doing much better, we stop under a bridge until it passes.

About now, the charging system starts acting up. John has seen some
trouble, and I'd seen it too, when the car was cold -- the charge light
would stay on for "a while", apparently until the control box warmed
up. But now the charge light was glowing dimly after everything was
nice and warm. We stopped and gave teh box a few sharp taps and got
things going again, but it was getting dark and I was a little
worried....

We got lost in Nashville and ended up taking some rolling surface
streets. The map said it was only five miles, but they were some of the
hardest miles I've ever driven -- lots of traffic, construction,
traffic lights with downhill stops, and me with just a handbrake. I
locked up the rears once, and another time I was seriously considering
turning into the curb to avoid hitting the trailer at a red light, but
we made it back to the freeway without incident.

This is getting just a little bit too festive, if you ask me.

Stopped in Manchester, TN. Got a good night's sleep and headed out in
the morning. About 150 miles down the road, the charge light came on
bright, and nothing we did fixed it. Great. We tried fiddling the
control box settings, and John worried that he'd fried another
generator (a chronic problem when running headers). We drove up and
down through the Smokies (pretty exciting with no brakes and lots of
semis) and found and survived another storm. Made it through Atlanta
without incident.

Now the rain has stopped, but the sun is beating down enough that I
keep the hood erected for protection. Oh well.

About 150 miles from Savannah, we stopped for gas and I investigated
the fairly awful noise I'd been hearing. It was either generator or
water pump ... finally we noticed that the water pump pulley was
striking the pump body, throwing sparks. The nyloc nut holding it on
was gone, and it seemed to be wobbling. Found a nut, tightened it down,
hoped for the best. The pulled seemed to be turning the pump spindle,
but only by friction -- the Woodruff key was gone, sheared off.

About 50 miles from Savannah, the noise changed some, for the worse.
About 20 miles from Savannah, I heard a thrash and clunk, and saw the
pulley in my mirrors. I yelled "I just lost the pulley" into the CB and
pulled over.

Now what? We decided that we were close enough -- John and Val took the
truck and race car to the hotel, unloaded it, John came back.
Meanwhile, I looked for the pulley as a trophy, but couldn't find it.
We had to push the 3 onto the trailer because the battery was too flat
to start the car and the jumpers weren't long enough. We found the nest
of fire ants that I'd parked next to, too. Drove into Savannah ... so
close, so close. It was a great story, but it would have been a better
one if we'd actually made it to the hotel!

At least this year Bob and Mark met us with a beer.

That was Wednesday. Thursday was the autocross, so we unloaded the 3,
put the 4 back on the trailer, cleaned up, ordered a bad pizza for
dinner, and crashed.  Thursday we spent all day at the track, hoping
the rains wouldn't come. John finally beat Mark in his own car -- in
fact, for the first time, John wasn't DFL in the car! Instead, he was
first, by quite a bit. We would have been 1,2,3 in Prepared Medium
(1600 to 2300cc engines, as I recall) if I hadn't had cone trouble (I'm
still not convinced that my final time was my best computed time, but
the intermediate results never got posted, sigh).  Bob was first in his
class, and should have had FTD in stock 6 cyl -- the guy who got it was
later found to have non-stock wheels. Val took first in the ladies
class. Load up the car, head back to the hotel, go out to the beach for
the evening activity.

Friday, we start locating parts. TRF has a new water pump, but no
pulley. One of the autojumble folks has a pulley back home, so we get
him to call and UPS next day ship it. We discover that the master
cylinder reservoir is dry and that there's a leak at the rear axle
union. TRF doesn't have prebent hard lines, so we send out for new
lines and a bending tool. It's a slight blur from then; we couldn't
check the generator until the water pump was on and the engine was
running, but knew that it put out some voltage when spun, so maybe it
was just the control box setting. Which, of course, we couldn't set
until the water pump was on and the engine was running.

John set about bending a brake line. We looked at the old line and
didn't see anything obviously wrong, so we suspected the union of being
cracked. We fabbed up a couple of plugs and blocked the line, stood on
the pedal and looked for leaks -- none. John finished the line, Mark
and I installed it, only to discover that the line came with a long and
a short flare nut, and the short one was too short to seal. We looked
for a supply of stainless flex line and aeroquip fittings to no avail.
We sealed up the rear union again and planned to go home that way;
front brakes is better than no brakes.

Talked to Ted Schumacher for a while, who discouraged us from sealing
things that way. We thought about it for a while and decided to quit.
Cleaned up for the pool party, collected Team Fat's assortment of autox
awards, and looked for dinner.

Saturday we went to the concours, looked around, then went parts
shopping. The Super Shops store said they had a whole wall of aeroquip,
but when we got there, we found nothing that we needed. Sigh. There was
a NAPA down the street, though, and we bought more hard line. Found
some lengths with two long flare nuts, thought we had it made. Bought
some liquid teflon sealing goo and some stop leak (the pulley had
grazed the radiator in a few places on the way out). It's now about
1:30 and the banquet starts at 6, so we hustle to do some work. Bend a
new line.... and discover that the flare nuts are metric threads. Sigh.
OK, we put the old lines back on, seal everything up with teflon goo,
stand on the pedal, no leaks! Great, bleed the system, the pedal's a
bit soft but it will do. We'll bleed it again tomorrow.

The water pump pulley has arrived, but we can't find the guys. Finally
we knock on their room door, they're asleep but have the goods. We
decide to install the old pump that came with the pulley -- seal up the
gasket with RTV, bolt up the pump, slip on the pulley, tighten it home.
It scrapes the pump body! I remember that I had found a spacer on the
old pump spindle and fetch it from the truck dash where I'd left it.
But to install it, you have to remove the key, and we can't get the key
off with the pump in place. In fact, we make a fair mess of it. So pull
it off, get the key out of the new pump, install the spacer, install
the pump. Now it's time to leave for the awards dinner, so we lower the
car, clean up and rush over there.

The banquet dinner is terrible, they never bring us coffee, and the
awards seem to go on forever. Probably take a pass on it next year.

We rush back to the parking lot. It's dark by now, so we rig a light.
There's a "winners reception" where the concours winners are encouraged
to park close by so folks can see the winning cars. We take a quick
pass, buy a drink (why did *every* reception have a *cash* bar this
year?) and get back into wrenching clothes. The sun is down, so it
should be cooler in theory -- but that just seemed to mean that we were
closer to dew point. Miserable weather.

Put on the pulley. Jerk the new belt around until it fits. Endure the
"tourists" who come by to make conversation and comments -- mostly
distracting, reminding me that I'm wrenching for my life (well, at
least my ride home) instead of relaxing and having a good time. Finally
get it on, we fab a new heat shield, start the car. No leaks, no fuss,
no noise, everything's working.

Except the generator. We go through the test procedure for the control
box and determine that the generator has indeed failed -- the output
never makes it past 2 volts. Go into the TRF display and get a new
one.  Take off the old one (the engine is now hot, the header is quite
hot, and the front bolt is *much* too long) and put on the new. It's
11pm. The car runs, the charging light goes off, but the ammeter still
shows discharge. We spend a long time fiddling the control box, and
finally around midnight Dr. Bobwrench asks why we don't just install
the new one. So we do, and all is right with the world. We put away the
tools, park the truck, drive the 3 into a parking space, and crash.

Somewhere in the midst of this, Bob tried to get John and me over to
the PA to award us the Asphalt Agony award. This was an outgrowth of
our plans to re-ring Bob's engine last year in the parking lot at the
convention (we couldn't find the rings we needed, or we'd have done it)
-- I look on it as a piece of preventative voodoo: if we're giving the
award, we can't give it to ourselves, so all will go well.
Unfortunately, the award wasn't ready in time, which I figure is the
reason that we had all this trouble. Next year for sure!

Sunday morning, we bleed the brakes, inspect for leaks. None. We can't
get a really solid pedal, keep finding streams of small bubbles,
suspect that the fitting isn't really tight and is sucking air. So we
tighten it up and leave it. One pump gives a solid pedal with no
visible leaks, good enough.

The plugs were very sooty -- and the jets very lean. So we suspect that
the unregulated mechanical fuel pump is flooding the floats, causing
the mixture to go rich and pushing unemulsified fuel out the overflow
into the intakes. So we clean the old plugs, put in new ones, and
figure it will get us home.

On we go. The car is running great, consuming a bit of oil, no worse
gas mileage, the brakes work, no real fluid consumption, no water
leaks. We skirt a couple of storms, nothing major. The new generator is
charging the battery, after a few hours (!) it seems to have a full
charge. The starter works great. I take a hard run up one of the passes
in the Smokies -- the high steering effort and skinny tires cause me to
chicken out at about 4200 in overdrive top, but it's good fun. We do
about 550 miles and stop outside Nashville when it looks like we're
about to head into a big thunderstorm.

The next morning we re-oil the rear generator bearing and clean the
plugs. St.  Louis is about four hours away. After about two hours, the
clouds clear and the temperature isn't sweltering, so I finally get to
take the top down. Ah, that's nice ... take a run up to my self-imposed
4500 rpm redline while getting onto the freeway, it'll only pull to
4400 in over top, probably due to the slab windshield. But it sure
feels nice -- looks like we have all the bugs shaken out!

Get home, surviving a terrible traffic jam into St. Louis. A very
pleasant trip home, all in all. Just a few things to repair and the car
would appear to be well sorted. Perhaps a painful way to do it, but I
figure we compressed puttering that would have been done over six
months to a year into a long weekend, and the car is now on the road
again. If we hadn't used this trip as a catalyst, it would probably
have been "almost done" for another year or two -- and keeping them on
the road is what it's all about, after all.

("Would you do it again?", I hear you ask. Well, sure ... but not next
week.)

Thanks to Mark, Bob, and Mr. Mike for all their hard work in helping us
earn the Asphalt Agony award. Thanks to the folks at The Roadster
Factory and HP Imports for having the parts we needed.

And thanks especially to John and Val for being willing to take on the
adventure that I created!