Not much to write

As a christmas gift, my brother-in-law got me the new millenium's Danish answer to that 70's classic "Dress for Success"; the loosely-translated title is "The Return of the Braggart". It is mildly amusing, in a profoundly shallow and irritating way, and the bottom line is that I'd prefer to return it for a book I will use, like "How in hell do I figure out what's wrong with my car?", and, perhaps even better "How the fuck do I fix it?" If I can't find these books, perhaps I'll write them; it would do the universe good to have a spiritual counterweight to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

He DID also give me an extra car battery he had lying around which I plan to use in my modern car, the one with all the electric bits and bobs that seem to go wrong constantly. It's most recent trick is to only enable the intermittent setting on the windscreen wipers when I have the turn signal activated. Once I've turned the corner and straightened out again, the wipers are either full on or full off.

I did get an idea from my newer car though; when it wouldn't start last night (dying battery) I was forced to ring for help and remembered an old subscription to an auto-assistance service I have paid for 12 years and haven't used in the last 7. So NOW, when my small Sprite kicks up a fuss, I can just call a toll-free number and someone more clever than I will come and fix it or drag me somewhere that can. And I can't wait to try it out!

The Profound Disappointment

I signed up for an evening class on automobile repair and maintenance last month, and last night was meant to be the first session. I arrived on time - an infrequent cause for celebration in my seemingly hectic life - and no one automotive was anywhere to be seen. It was a huge complex of buildings, with old-age pensioners learning how to use computers (the concepts of bold and italic were heavy on the agenda), many late-developing musical talents conspiring to torture a Rossini overture, and lots of renovation work that appears to have frightened the more timid aspiring evening students and their teachers away. As I stumbled around in the dark, trying a huge variety of doorhandles to fast-locked doors, peering through dirty windows into dimly or unlit rooms, I managed to see a mangled car and a dilapidated motor scooter standing deserted in a huge shadowy hall, and realised that the automobile-equivalents of bold and italic weren't going to plant themselves in my brain that evening.

Home again, and a stiff letter to the evening school later, I went to bed just as ignorant as I wakened. Must find another course today!

Driver's Handbook

Off work for the 'holy-days' of conspicuous consumption and self-indulgence, and I am reading the Austin-Healey Sprite Driver's Handbook. The style is almost quaint; the content is rather burdensome. For a quaint example:

• The importance of running-in the new vehicle cannot be too highly stressed. Beyond all doubt the owner or operator will find that careful, considerate treatment during the vital running-in period will be fully compensated by the resulting dependability and efficiency that will be obtained throughout its life.

For the burdensome:

• EVERY 1,000 MILES

Gearbox: Check the level and top-up if necessary. ...
Rear Axle: Check the level and top-up if necessary. ...
Brakes: Apply an oil gun to the brake balance lever nipple on the rear axle, and to the handbrake cable nipple located just forward of the rear axle. ...
Front Suspension:
Swivel Axle:
Steering Connections:
Propeller Shaft Universal Joints:
Shock Absorbers:
and so on ...

I sit and think about my more modern car - the one with windows that go up and down with electricity, with sound-proofing to make the already quiet motor seem quieter, with a multi-source music system, with door handles on the outside because you can lock the thing up, with servicing every 15,000 km, and wonder just what I have gotten myself into. Yes, it is infinitely more boring, dull, and commonplace, but also yes, it is measurably more convenient. Take it into the gomers every year or so (I don't drive that much) and they hold it hostage for a more or less reasonable ransom after which I can drive it again without thinking about anything but petrol and windscreen washer fluid until next year.

Now I have a car that needs attention ten times more often. And while I won't drive it 15,000 km per year, I have at least three annual entertainments to look forward to, involving oily nipples I can't find and bits whose funtion I've yet to understand.

So now the question becomes Why do cars require so much less maintenance today than 40 years ago? Is this a function of the mechanics, a function of the needs of society, or both? I imagine both, if not even more.

<rant>

Walk up and down any suburban street in the evenings and you will see the sickly blue light of packaged entertainment - glowing for hours - in almost every home. Not that futzing around with old cars is more noble than watching re-runs of Frazier, but it is more challenging, more genuine (until Frazier is broadcast in 3D and we can slap him for being such an absurdity), more engaged with one's own life than with the banal moralistic sermons of mainstream 'western culture'. (For the vocabulary-challenged, futzing around is best defined as: the last thing you do with something just before it stops working.)

</rant>

Off to bang my head on the underside of the bonnet, peering here and there for nipples ...

Battle of wills

No, no one died. This is a self-styled battle between the little car that wouldn't and the utterly ignorant owner that would. Visitors - a rarity in my part of the world - popped by the other day. "What's this I hear about you buying an old clunker?", one asked, and I was delighted to show him my new little delight. Suitably impressed - though whether by my enthusiasm or the car itself I'm not certain - he asked to hear the motor. It passed through my mind that this was somewhat like asking to see photographs of someone's new baby; or, having seen the baby, asking to hear it cry, but I was swept along by the situation. I sat in the car, turned the wee key, pulled the starter knob, and listened to absolute silence. Hmm. I just spent an ocean of money getting the damn thing fixed (a good-sized lake, in any event) and here it won't perform the simple task of starting. Battery dead, I thought, and tried the headlamps. No, bright headlamps means lots of battery power. Perhaps the starter motor is stuck. When I pull the knob, the headlights should dim slightly as some power is drawn off by the dysfunctional starter motor. No, headlamps just as bright means a fault in the wiring somewhere between the knob and the starter motor. Sigh.

Wanting to kick the baby that wouldn't cry, I resolved to figure it out. I read the manual. It is full of English words strung together into sentences that follow the rules of English grammar - perfect syntax. As regards the semantics of the entire mess, it might just as well be quantum physics written in hieroglyphics. So my next resolution is to learn some basic automobile maintenance skills. I've signed myself up for an evening course emphasizing the repair and maintenance of 'older automobiles'. It's in Danish, so I've got still another set of syntactic and semantic filters to see through, but it'll be a start. And then perhaps my little car won't be so overwhelmingly troublesome.

The car after it's visit to the workshop is quite different. I can't say the engine purrs, but neither does it burp, fart and spit as on the first drive in town. It just growls roughly in first, roars a bit in second, grumbles amiably in third and clears its throat almost elegantly in fourth. On the surface many trivial things are fixed, like new slender silvery windscreen wipers that suit the car and don't mar the paint job on the boot when it's raised, like the tiny rear-view mirror that lets all the headlamps from the following cars nearly blind me, like the rear turn-signal lamps that are now a Danish-legal orange instead of British fire engine red.

Much of greater importance - and greater expense - has also been dealt with. The car can now stop reliably, with new bits and pieces, it can stop evenly, with newly balanced older bits and pieces, and it can stay stopped, with a new handbrake + mechanism. Neither does the car sway to and fro or bounce going around corners with its new front shocks. Engine oil no longer squirts playfully about in the cockpit, although the windscreen washer fluid bag - which looks like a dwarf's hot water bottle and sits up behind the dashboard - is still blackened and greasy. I have much cleaning to do before I have passengers who don't have to sit 'just so' to avoid soiling their shoes and trousers.

I learned that the car has been used for racing, with many improvements to the front suspension and turning assembly. While some of these have been removed - hence the need for new shocks - their fittings remain and can be re-installed if I ever feel mad enough to trust my life to racing in 50 year-old technology. Though I suppose we all do that each time we fly in a Boeing 707. Perhaps the best advice, other than buy new or re-build your elderly carburretors, was not to gear-down to help the car brake. The 4-speed transmission is original, even if the engine is not, and is made of brass - not the sturdiest of metals - and subjecting it to the extra wear and tear of the larger engine is stress enough without using the weight of the engine to brake the car. I know I'll do this anyway - it's what makes fast cornering fun - but perhaps I won't take quite so many corners quite so terribly fast ...

I'm an elitist bastard, I am

It seems that I use too many polysyllabic words (or I misspell them and this confuses the algorithm) for more or less 'normal' people to read what I had hoped would be an entertaining blog about my mid-life crisis misadventures. Or are they purely pre-pension prattlings?



Dear me.

The Broken Budget

This was broken the day I purchased the car. €13,000 for "the car", should also have included the 'opportunity cost' of seeing it in the first place (about €500), transport from wherever to sunny Denmark (€400), modifications and repairs to pass the Danish Vehicle Registration Inspection (about €1200), and registration duty plus licensing (€750). In other words, if I'd found a car for €11,000, I'd be OK, but I found one for €12,500, so I am now 11% over-budget.

Plus I have oily carpets to remove and clean (and possibly replace) before any sort of outing is an option, and these sorts of really filthy and water-intensive activities aren't much fun in the dark cold of the Danish December. Must check all the many Spridget part websites for a holiday season bargain. When I find these, they'll appear to the left ...