On Thu, 06 Jul 2017 20:13:31 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Thu, 06 Jul 2017 17:58:18 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 06 Jul 2017 05:51:42 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Wed, 05 Jul 2017 14:38:28 -0400, wrote:

On Tue, 04 Jul 2017 20:25:15 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

That sounds like a couple of interesting books to me, and I'm serious
about that. Let me know when you need proofreaders. Got pics?

Not many. I do have a couple of the '49 beetle laying on it's side in
the front tard on Makoma Road with the nose of the trans pulled off to
fix the broken shift fork.

Got a free Box account or somewhere else to post 'em? I just realized
that I don't have any pictures of building the Javelin 390, either.
Hermitic lifestyle.

They are 40+ year old ectachromes - - -

So scan 'em and Photoshop those fine old pieces of history.


Didn't get any of the spline stripped out
of the rear drum, or cutting the drum from a mid-sixties bug down to
fit with a hack-saw and cold chisel - - -

Oh, what fun you must have had!

Almost as much fun as putting the fergy tractor sleave into a Landi
engine that threw the top end of a rod out through the side of the
bore.

Or getting carb icing and vapour lock on the '49 beetle on the same
trip - within about 50 miles.

Holy Spit, Batman! You soitenly wasn't holding your mouth right.

When it sputtered to a stop due to vapour lock, I'd just spill a bit
of gas onto the fuel pump by pulling the hose loose - the evaporation
cooled the pump, and away we'd go. As the altitude increased and
temperature dropped a bit the car would loose power again - and when I
opened the engine cover the carb and early unheated manifold were
white with frost - with the carb a rapidly melting ball of ice.
Had exactly the same issues on at least 3 trips - over the same route.
Same road where I stripped the spline out of the drum


Or having the heads fall off a VW Variant (Suitcase engine) on the
first day of holidays

That's an owner error. I've heard VWs running up the road with the
heads bouncing 1/2" off the barrels the whole time. Then I see the
owner pump the brakes twelve times and barely stop. And that was only
when they weren't sitting on the side of the road engulfed in flames.
Owners forgot to replace that 2" flex line between the fuel line and
carb. About the sixth time I saw it happen, it had become commonplace
to me. And don't even get me started on that mind-numbing high-
frequency shriek from the damnable exhaust systems. Ayieeeeeeeeeee!

My 49 didn't have any high frequenct exhaust note - most of the time I
had it it had a landi driveshaft tube for a muffler with a landi fuel
filler neck for a tail pipe, connected to the head pipes with plumbing
fittings.
Easy to get rid of the shreik in any case - just remove or gut the
resonator pipes.

In Africa it was not uncommon for the case studs to pull out of the
crancase, letting the cyls droop and the heads to drop off due to
repeated temperature cycling and high temperatures. The heads had been
accurately retorqued and the valves ajusted less than 50 miles prior
to starting the trip.
It was a borrowed car too - belonged to a British neighbor who had
just replaced it with a Volvo and offered it to us to use because the
car we WERE going to use died about 10 miles short of half way from
Lusaka to Livingstone. The heads came loose about 10 miles short of
half way going the other direction


Or scrambling a CV joint on a VW412 in the middle of traffic in
Lusaka, and changing it laying in the gutter with 2 wheels on the
kerb. - or having the bonnet latch let go at about 80MPH on a long
level stretch of gravel road and seeing the bonnet WAY up in the air
in the rear view mirror before it swooshed back down to the road.
Never hit the windsheild OR the roof - just took off like a Titan 2.

Whee!


Or the day the hood latch let go on a '64 Rambler American on a test
drive. I saw it come up, hit the brakes, and it went right back down
and latched - not a scratch!!!

Aha! Proper mouth positioning.


Or my brother blowing the clutch line on the Rover TC downshifting for
the hill coming across the French River bridge. He missed the shif and
we were "dead in the water". I rolled it back crosswise on the road,
put it in low, started it up and drove all the way up to the fishing
camp on the west arm of Lake Nippising, and all the way back to
kitchener with no clutch.

Or driving the "Fabedougou Expressway" with a Prado, or on a Honda
Elsinore 250 - without a map. (the "fabedoughou Expressway" is the
stretch of single-track that goes from "the domes" (look it up on
Google) to the village of Fabedougou -if you don't know where it goes,
you could end up in Mali or the Ivory Coast and never find Fabe!!) The
bike trail to Banfora is a challenge too - particularly for a then 50
year old who hadn't ridden a trail bike for almost 30 years!!

Yes, it's definitely been an interesting 65 years - particularly the
last 50 - - - .