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ryoder

For owners of English cars

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riggerrob

Riddle: Why do Brits drink warm beer?

Answer: they have Lucas refrigerators!!!!

Lucas: the Prince of Darkness



Come come now.... we who have owned many British cars in my long life...... like my first that was a TR3A 1959 with the aftermarket Smiths heater that forced me to buy a Beater with a Heater come November...... We know that some of the best engineered and best built automotive parts in the world... fall off of our little British Sports cars..... especially my damn Jaguars.

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My British car currently has burnt out resistors on the heater blower motor so I can either have full blast or nothing. Meh, that's basically all I ever used anyway.

Oh, and the gearing on the flap which switches from hot to cold air has burnt out. Meh, I just take off an inspection hatch around May and flip it by hand to cool and then in September flip it back to hot.

I would replace them but that means taking the whole of the front end of the car off again and it was such a pain in the arse last time I did it I'll leave it until I want to do another suspension upgrade.

It's called character. :)

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normiss

British?

stoopid 6v systems with horrible wiring.



6 Volt, he he, someone is giving away their age.
I bet you still remember positive earth and dynamos.

And it was the Italians that had the horrible wiring, and they still have.

Just found the original context.



Lucas smoke

Gone fishing

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Zep

***British?

stoopid 6v systems with horrible wiring.



6 Volt, he he, someone is giving away their age.
I bet you still remember positive earth and dynamos.

And it was the Italians that had the horrible wiring, and they still have.

Just found the original context.



Lucas smoke

I had a 1979 Fiat 2000 Spider I bought 1981 used in Florida after I got out of the USAF and went home to go to school. Most screwed up shorting out POS I ever owned.. I managed to resolve the issue by buying a replacement wiring harness made here in the US... The stock one I took apart and the cheap ass copper in the harness was all corroded and green powdery crap in some places. Great car mechanically.. dual overhead cam if I remember right.. but the wiring.... POS from hell.

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CanuckInUSA

Quote

Thats why the Ariel Atom was invented



I'd love the opportunity to turn some laps in with an Atom on a race track.


I did one of those touristy track day events for my birthday in a Supercharged Atom. It was cracking fun. Like a giant go-cart! Windy though... :D

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The British also used to have a large motorcycle industry. I once read an interesting book on its decline, and had assembled some quotes from it.

Since there may be some industrial issues in common between British cars and motorcycles, I thought it would be fun to post those quotes:


Quote


Yet chinks in the armour were showing. Brian Slark was service
manager for Norton for many years and later an employee
of the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham, Alabama.
“A lot of machine tools were from the 1920s,” he said. “If
you had a man working on the same machine tool for 30 years,
he knew exactly how much wear there was, and he’d compensate
for it. If someone else would work on the machine, there was no
way he’d know what to do. It was just worn-out machinery. It’s
not like today where you just press a button and everything
comes out perfect.”
Michael Jackson, another long-time industry insider, recalls
similar makeshift practices at various British motorcycle factories.
“People would use cigarette wrappers which were probably
two thou, and they’d jam it in a machine to make it work,” he
said. “When the tools were sent to another factory, nobody
could make them work.”


Quote


Don Brown says factory managers in Britain talked about
the need for investing in new equipment and conveyors, but the
rule of thumb was that they had to recoup the cost of expenditure
within one year. “My goodness,” he said, “the Japanese
already were in a two-to-five-year mode for recouping investment.”


Quote


Joe Heaton, a University of Birmingham (England) doctoral
student, recently developed his own creative analysis to explain
the industry’s low reinvestment rates. He noted that low depreciation
rates for old capital expenditures mandated by antiquated
tax and accounting methods in Britain provided a disincentive to
industry to invest in new equipment: that is, tax laws rewarded
companies for holding on to old capital investments and punished
them for making new capital investments, which clearly
hurt their competitiveness and productivity in the long run.


Quote


It’s clear the industry also suffered the usual problems with
labour. “If you wanted to introduce a new machine, you could
not introduce it without a renegotiation of the piece work rate
which might take months,” said veteran motorcycle journalist
Frank Melling. “If you wanted to modify the overhead track,
you couldn’t do that. You had to negotiate that.”
BSA factory employees were prompted to “down tools and
walk out on strike” after a commercial photographer dared to
plug in his own lights for a catalogue shoot of new models in the
late 1950s — only a union electrician was allowed to do that.



The book noted that plenty of other factors were involved too, such as the large domestic scooter & motorcycle market in Japan that helped their rise.

Source:
Shooting Star- The Rise & Fall of the British Motorcycle Industry

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All true, now only really Triumph and Norton left (and to a much lesser extent Ariel and now Brough making niche, expensive, boutique machines). All have been down and out but revitalised, but Triumph especially is making some bikes at the top of their class and others that are as good as anything out there.
Never try to eat more than you can lift

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My 1946 MG has had one generator, one voltage regulator, one wiring harness, one ignition switch, one ignition coil and one light switch in its 70 years of existence. All are still working well. I did replace the starter motor when it was 64 years old, due to worn out brushes.

This is a rather better record than I had with my 1981 Chevy Cavalier or my 1989 Toyota Camry, both of which were lemons. The 'entertainment center' steering wheel switch panel on my 2011 Subaru has also failed.
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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Dude, the Barber motorsports museum is a helluva place. One of those can't miss destinations, a definite must-see. It also overlooks the Barber motorsports track, which is a world-class facility.
"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

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riggerrob

Riddle: Why do Brits drink warm beer?

Answer: they have Lucas refrigerators!!!!

Lucas: the Prince of Darkness




Now that's funny. I don't care who you are.:)
Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossilbe before they were done.
Louis D Brandeis

Where are we going and why are we in this basket?

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When I got my 52 XK120 a guy told me. Now you'll know why god invented Sundays.: So you can work on your English car, so it will run for the rest of the week.
he wasn't lying
U only make 2 jumps: the first one for some weird reason and the last one that you lived through. The rest are just filler.
scr 316

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jackwallace

When I got my 52 XK120 a guy told me. Now you'll know why god invented Sundays.: So you can work on your English car, so it will run for the rest of the week.
he wasn't lying



TRUTH.... I spent more than just Sundays working on my 60 XK150S Roadster great fun to drive but way too much work even for an "enthusiastic enthusiast":ph34r::ph34r:

More shit could vibrate off that car then I had time to retighten the bolts I did manage to get the carbs to stay in sync.. a couple touches of brazing rod once the Unisyn got em right.:)

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Amazon

***When I got my 52 XK120 a guy told me. Now you'll know why god invented Sundays.: So you can work on your English car, so it will run for the rest of the week.
he wasn't lying



TRUTH.... I spent more than just Sundays working on my 60 XK150S Roadster great fun to drive but way too much work even for an "enthusiastic enthusiast":ph34r::ph34r:

More shit could vibrate off that car then I had time to retighten the bolts I did manage to get the carbs to stay in sync.. a couple touches of brazing rod once the Unisyn got em right.:)

Would your 150 do 150mph? I was told that's what the numbers meant. I got mine to 140 once running with an XKE. Wind buffeting was huge!!!
U only make 2 jumps: the first one for some weird reason and the last one that you lived through. The rest are just filler.
scr 316

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jackwallace

******When I got my 52 XK120 a guy told me. Now you'll know why god invented Sundays.: So you can work on your English car, so it will run for the rest of the week.
he wasn't lying



TRUTH.... I spent more than just Sundays working on my 60 XK150S Roadster great fun to drive but way too much work even for an "enthusiastic enthusiast":ph34r::ph34r:

More shit could vibrate off that car then I had time to retighten the bolts I did manage to get the carbs to stay in sync.. a couple touches of brazing rod once the Unisyn got em right.:)

Would your 150 do 150mph? I was told that's what the numbers meant. I got mine to 140 once running with an XKE. Wind buffeting was huge!!!

I never took it over 120 indicated... It could have used some new shoes..... and I was a big chicken to go any faster in it on the out of tune wire wheels ... not that there was any tread showing but I was Po Folk at that point... and a new set of Pirelli's was a tad above my pay grade at the time..... :)

And it gets a bit breezy in that open two seater when you pass the century mark..

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