"Jules Richardson" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 22 May 2011 17:58:57 -0400, Robert Green wrote:
Yeah, Britannia may have ruled the waves, but her cars can't navigate a
puddle without the engine dying. Learned all the Lucas jokes, too.
"Why do Brits like warm beer? Because Lucas makes refrigerators."

As a Brit, I grew up with British cars (obviously and never found
them *that* bad - the Lucas stuff wasn't any worse than anything that
anybody else was making. The big problem was rust - poor quality steel
and little thought to where water would end up and how it would get out
again once it had.

My big problems were when water got under the hood, when the transmission
(Borg-Warnet) blew up, when the power steering pump blew up spraying the hot
exhaust manifold with enough PS fluid to create a small cumulo-nimbus cloud
outside the gates of the Naval Academy during June Week (now I would be shot
as a terrorist bomber), the sudden loss of spark to three of the six
cylinders (it did managed to limp thirty miles home in that condition) a
failed A/C compressor, which apparently was held in mid-air while the rest
of the car was built around it (it was SO hard to remove), a fender full of
tree-nuts that apparently only grow in Spain, plenty of the body rust you
allude to, an engine that ran hot enough to alligator the paint on the hood,
a failed "anti-creep" system that kept pressure on the brakes during idling
until the vacuum gave out, releasing the car to roll into the one ahead of
it or downhill if you were in an unfortunate spot when it occurred, a horn
ring made of white metal with so little support that the first time you hit
it hard, it broke off (and no spares existed in any Jaguar junk yard I knew
of), a rear brake assembly that was half disk, half drum and all trouble, a
push button starter that meant anyone who didn't know Jags who serviced it
routinely broke the key off in the switch assuming that it must start that
way rather than the big "START" button on the dash and last but not least,
three Solex carbs that had to be tuned by a combination of praying, cursing
and magic.

I wouldn't mind having an XKE in the garage, though. One of the
sweetest looking cars ever made.

Yeah, nice looks for sure... but then I think that most Jags were until
the most recent models of the last decade or so. In terms of curvy
goodness, I wouldn't mind an XJ13, but they only ever built one of those
and then wrecked it ;-)

The Mark X was the four door predecessor to the XJ series. Walnut fold-down
picnic tables behind the front seats, all walnut dash, twin 13 gallon fuel
tanks with separate electric pumps, gauges for everything (no idiot lights),
leather power seats, power windows, a big boot, a well-fitted tool kit and a
top speed of 160 mph. I liked it an awful lot until I decided I really
needed to get from point A to point B more than I needed to drive a fancy
car. Saved me from making a $80K mistake later in life, I think.

What's Lucas Electrics motto? "Get home before dark!"

http://www.mez.co.uk/lucas.html

(See the fuse panel equivalency diagram!)

http://www.mez.co.uk/fusereplacement.jpg

--
Bobby G.