New parts can stick out like a sore thumb in an. . . aging. . . engine compartment. Those shiny new parts might restore the function but sometimes ruin the look. Want the best of both worlds? Here are a couple tips to make new parts blend in without losing the function.

Of course, these tips are highly dependent on the goals of your project. Not everything deserves or needs restoration. In fact, the desire to keep things looking well-worn or authentic to the rest of the car can keep the whole operation from looking half-finished and more like a survivor. No one needs to know that survivor has had a heart transplant.

Don’t use new parts at all

Known good used parts can sometimes be found cheaper through a junkyard, eBay, or other resellers than new parts. If the right look matters it could be worth going through the effort of gutting a new alternator and putting all the important bits in the “seasoned” housing, yielding restored function without the look of restored parts. Win/win.

Flat clear or paint match

For items like suspension and steering, there isn’t the option to only use the good bits to make the part right again. Since almost everything new comes slathered in gloss black paint it is easy to make them blend in a bit by simply knocking the gloss off by spraying a flat clear coat over the new shiny parts. This will instantly put a bit of age on without removing any of the corrosion protection of the factory paint.

If you want to get even fancier, lay down a coat of matching paint. Most automotive paint stores can mix a custom color into an aerosol can. Take in the old part, have them mix up some paint, and before you know it that new piece will disappear—but in a good way.

Careful cleaning

One of the things that gives away where I have been and haven’t been is the clearly defined line of where I stopped cleaning. A spotless section of the car right next to 50 years of built-up road grime sticks out like a sore thumb. By cleaning only the absolutely necessary bits and areas to ensure safe and proper function it will create a less obvious fingerprint as to where repairs happened.

“Curated wear”

Call it fake patina if you want. A few carefully placed scratches, dents, or smears of oil can go a long way in transforming something brand new off the shelf and camouflaging it into the larger picture. Some Scotchbrite, steel wool, or sandpaper can take the paint off an area to match an old piece that has lost its paint after years of wear. Alternatively, a little bit of polish to brighten one spot on a dull part can accomplish a similar result. Is it slightly disingenuous? Sure. This technique can also look quite tacky if done poorly, but when done well, this is a real option for keeping the right feel to your vintage ride while also keeping it in top running condition.

Reuse hardware

Even if the part is new, the bolts and nuts don’t have to be. Shiny new hardware is a dead giveaway of where a mechanic has been to those who know where to look. Shiny new grade-5 bolt heads from the local hardware store will stick out immediately. If your old hardware can be cleaned up and reused it will hide most repairs far better. Focus on the thread with a wire wheel or thread chaser to ensure the hardware works like it should but leave the head alone for maximum sneaky factor.

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Supercharging has interesting roots (pun intended) in the automotive world. The idea of pressure-feeding air into an engine for a car is only a few years younger than the automobile itself. The first production examples were available on Mercedes models in 1922, and it has only become more popular since. As with many examples of technology, there were some interesting attempts at supercharging that didn’t last and ended up on the side of the long road that is automotive history. One such example is the Latham axial flow supercharger.

Supercharging an engine relies on the crankshaft to drive on a compressor that forces air into the intake, effectively increasing the volumetric efficiency of the engine by cramming more air into the cylinders than it would pull in on its own during the vacuum created by the intake stroke. The most common forms of superchargers are centrifugal, roots, screw, and scroll. Before the market settled on the common types we’re familiar with today, there were several efforts to create the next best thing. Norman Latham of West Palm Beach, Florida, hoped his new product would be a must-have performance bolt-on.

Latham’s idea was to create an axial supercharger. This is essentially a turbine, where the supercharger housing contains “fans” that can create positive manifold pressure. Latham’s design went into production in 1956 and was sold until 1965. It was radically different than a roots or centrifugal supercharger, yet also combined a few of the better parts of each. A centrifugal supercharger was a bear to tune 70 years ago because carburetors were still the most popular way of mixing the air and fuel entering an engine.

Carburetors rely on the incoming air to pull in the fuel into the airstream from the float bowl. If the throat of the carburetor is under pressure rather than vacuum, that fuel draw doesn’t work very well. This made centrifugal superchargers finicky. Roots-style blowers could more effectively be set up to draw air through carburetors, but the size and location made packaging tough. Latham used the long and low design of the axial supercharger to put the blower low and further forward with the carbs off to the side, keeping a lower profile. The air and fuel are drawn in through two or four carbs, depending on the model, before being compressed through the turbine and then fed into the intake manifold.

The problem is that axial compressors tend to be less efficient than the more popular styles of supercharging. Their peak efficiency orrurs during a very narrow window and prefer steady-state running at that speed rather than changing RPM quickly like most automotive engines tend to do. It was a solution, but we know now that it was not the best solution.

The design still caught people’s attention though. After an eight-page spread in the June 1956 issue of Hot Rod things seemed to take off. Over 600 Latham superchargers were built and are now highly sought after. The company was sold in 1982 and transitioned to producing a modern interpretation of the axial design. The vintage units stand as an interesting reminder of the times when its innovation was almost as rapid as the cars it was going into.

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James writes:

Hello, last year during one of my morning walks I passed a nearby home where an S-Class Mercedes was parked on its driveway. As I approached, the silhouette was that of an early 2010’s Mercedes S-Class with noticeably flared wheel arches. As I passed by I observed the model identification on the left side of the trunk. Instead of the anticipated S 550 badge, it displayed a CLS 550 badge.

I did eventually meet the owner, an elderly man who could not provide any information about his car. And by this time he had replaced this “CLS 550” with a newer S 580 Mercedes. I did research on the internet, but no luck with a possible CLS 550 S Class.

I am fairly certain with my identification that this vehicle is at least an S-class Mercedes. (As a previous owner of a 2014 CLS and a current owner of a 2022 CLS, I have some familiarity with Mercedes models.) So, are the trunks of this S-Class and the CLS Class of this era interchangeable, and a junkyard CLS trunk was used to repair a damaged S-Class trunk? Or, the S-Class Mercedes needed its trunk repaired and the repair shop put the wrong model identifier on the repaired trunk?

I seriously doubt there ever was a CLS 550 S Class Mercedes. What do you think?

Sajeev answers:

Dang, I really would love to see a photo of this machine. But I share your doubt, and I suspect someone with an S-Class Benz bought those CLS 550 emblems from a place like eBay to be cheeky.

I get the vibe, however. Both the W221 (2007–13) and W222 (2014–20) bodies of the S-class have a distinctly sleek, curvilinear CLS flavor to them. Once the CLS hit the ground running, all sedans (save for Rolls-Royce) had to re-think their position as being staid and stately. Perhaps the CLS offered the sedan a lifeline to coolness in the wake of CUV/SUV dominance. Even the S-class can’t be immune to this trend.

Adding a body kit to the S-class also aids in the CLS-ification of these flagship Mercs. But let’s focus on the phrase “flagship”, as that answers your other question. Sheetmetal on a flagship isn’t interchangeable with cheaper models from the same brand. Not that the CLS is a bad car, but it’s based on the smaller E-class: That trunk lid is unlikely to have the same hard points as an S-Class.

Even if it technically could bolt up to an S-class, the surfacing and cut lines would make absolutely no sense. There’s a good chance you saw an S-class with an aftermarket body kit that made it look sleeker, and the owner decided that it became a CLS in the process.

And the W221 makes a rather awesome CLS-daddy. It’s hard to tell what’s an actual “wide” body kit on these cars, as this era of S-class came with flared-out rear fenders from the factory. But there’s also the issue of looking at 2-D photos on a computer screen, which is my current conundrum.

What say you, Hagerty Community? Did James see a widebody S-class, a CLS-class, or just some CLS emblems on that big-body S-class Mercedes?

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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Buying tools is an addiction to some. The seemingly endless utility of these objects designed to enhance our lives and abilities can be intoxicating. Hence why even when we don’t need them, new (and new to us) tools find their way into passenger seats, truck beds, and backpacks as the artfully organized cache in my workspace grows and grows. I could probably just name my toolbox Audrey II, though my garage is only occasionally full of horrors, and the ‘box feeds on tool steel and carbide rather than human flesh.

My toolbox is not overflowing, but that only speaks to my self-restraint and judicious control over how often the solution to a problem is using the credit card versus my brain. We all want to own one of every tool. They are just fascinating. But even with one of everything, we would likely still want more. Some jobs simply require duplicates. Or at least I have convinced myself that occasionally having two of the exact same tool is the solution to my problems. Whether the logic makes sense or not, here are seven tools that I must have two of inside my shop:

Vice grips/clamps

Despite years of trying and a few consultations with my doctor, I have yet to grow a third hand. Something about evolution taking millions of generations just really puts a damper on me getting the extra holding power I could use most days.

Luckily, not only does a solution exist, but it’s affordable and easy to store. Years ago I resigned that anything that is locking or clamping should be purchased in pairs. This realization followed a discussion with a fabricator friend who hammered into me that it is impossible to have too many clamps. He was right.

Screwdrivers

To be clear, I’m dialing in the discussion of duplicates to exact duplicates. Two of the same tool. My drawer full of screwdrivers is surprisingly full when you consider there are relatively few popular styles and a minimal number of usable lengths.

Maybe it’s my use, but I always fear damaging a screwdriver tip just as much as damaging the hardware. A damaged screwdriver stalls a project as once the head is stripped the options for removal get destructive quickly. A spare screwdriver is a security blanket I shouldn’t need, but won’t wrench without.

10mm

You thought I wouldn’t include a 10mm joke? Impossible. A lot of my projects these days were built in countries that believe in base 10 measurement systems. If you have a more American bent to your tooling needs this might be the 1/2″. Regardless, not having a 10mm socket or wrench could easily stop a few of my projects in their tracks, thus duplicates make sense.

Extensions

The easiest to justify on this list might be the extensions for a socket set. Stack them on each other to reach the depths of the engine bay that was previously reserved for engine-out services. It’s also convenient to have multiple to so I’m not constantly disassembling my tooling mid-job.

Wire brushes and cleaning supplies

Cleaning parts is one of the tasks that I do not seek out and only after some time have I figure out that any tiny roadblock in the process will flip the switch in my brain that says “not worth it. Just reinstall the part as is. It’ll be fine.”

But I want to do higher quality work than that, so having a surplus of cleaning supplies and materials has helped eliminate the feeling that cleaning things has a barrier that must be met. I keep these brushes and supplies around to not only remove the perceived barrier but ensure that it does not return unexpectedly.

Flashlights

Having worked on cars in situations ranging from ideal to downright dangerous, I’ll say one thing I have never heard is, “Wow, it’s too bright. I can see everything I need and it’s frustrating.” No, more light is often a cure for frustrations while working on cars. Small LED flashlights have gotten downright cheap, so a few in various sizes, shapes, brightness, and magnetism are just downright handy. It’s a struggle to work on something you can’t see, so light up your project.

Drill bits

They break and dull, and when you need one there is pretty much nothing else that will do the job. Drill bits are wildly affordable for the function they serve and having a duplicate set, or even just a few of the most commonly used sizes in your shop, allows a certain peace of mind that your projects will move forward even if an unfortunate happenstance breaks a bit. Good setups and usage will make drill bits last a very long time, but it’s not if things go sideways, it’s when. Preparation for that takes a lot of frustration out of your projects.

This is just the list for my shop and, of course, every shop is unique. I typically only have one major project apart or being worked on at a time and the tools go back into the box after each working session. In a larger shop or for someone with many projects running it might make sense to duplicate common tools just so things don’t get lost in the shuffle. What tools do you have to have duplicates of in your toolbox?

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Keeping classic vehicles up and running isn’t always easy, and these days, that’s just as true for shops as it is for DIYers. I recently talked to four owners or operators of restoration shops to find out what their top business challenges are in 2024. Some of the answers I received were not a surprise. Frankly, everyone has been talking about finding qualified labor in almost every field. But some of the answers I got were eye-openers. 

Every independent restoration shop operates differently. Some shops are very well-established with a long track record, and a few have major national or worldwide concours wins under their belts. Some are more focused on their local area, building a reputation as well as a customer base. Many shops also tend to specialize in a particular field, such as engine and transmission rebuilds, paintwork, or a specific type or decade of cars. In 2024, even full-service shops tend to utilize independent rebuilders or repair shops for specific skills such as radiator repair and rebuilding, powder coating, or rebuilding clocks or radios.

The repair, not just restoration business is also thriving at many restoration shops. Those services that might have been handled by a local service station 20 or 30 years ago—tune-ups, hose and belt replacement or air conditioning repairs—now represent part of the day-to-day work docket of many restoration shops.

Adam Hammer, owner of Hammer and Dolly Automotive Restorations LLC in Traverse City, MI, sees the value in doing many of the small jobs alongside the full restorations that they also perform. The “small work adds more volume, and helps to make sure that everyone in the shop keeps busy” says Hammer.

Hammer, a graduate of the McPherson College Automotive Restoration program, has been in business as Hammer and Dolly for 13 years, has 10 employees and offers services ranging from full restorations to maintenance. Challenges include increasing costs for parts and equipment, as well as labor. In addition to increased cost, backorders for those parts is also an ongoing issue. Hammer also mentioned environmental challenges, as some regularly used compounds such as paints and solvents are no longer sold, making substitutions, often seen as harder to work with, a necessity. As to finding qualified workers, Hammer says “find the right person with aptitude to grow the skills, and we can teach the skill.”

Husband and wife Ed and Melissa Sweeny are the co-owners of Proper Noise, LTD, a restoration shop located in Mount Penn, PA that specializes in both postwar British and Brass Era cars. In business for seven years, there are six employees including the Sweeneys. They specialize in the mechanical side of a restoration, and will outsource paint as well as some other areas of restoration if needed. When asked about current challenges, Ed focused on a few areas such as the quality of parts that they source from vendors. The issue is serious enough that Sweeney has turned in-house to scanning and 3D printing parts when necessary. Another challenge? Finding correct tires post-pandemic for those cars that use odd sizes, including many of the Brass Era vehicles he works on. “No one can go into production for just a small amount of tires, making it too expensive for the supplier, it becomes impossible for them to make any money,” says Ed.  

Another problem facing all of these small shops? “It’s always hard to say no to clients, but sometimes scheduling work can be very tough.” Sweeny is talking about “job creep”, where a car comes in for brakes, for example, but, upon inspection, tie rods and shocks and more are needed, turning a few days repair into a week, or longer.

Mechanical Arts, located in Tenants Harbor, ME, is owned by Philip Reinhardt, also a recent McPherson College graduate. In business for four years, the shop has three employees. Specializing in repairs and restorations of pre-1980s vehicles, with a sweet spot for cars of the 1930s through 1960s, Reinhardt is facing another common problem in the restoration world: Running out of space to work on client’s cars. Their 3000 square foot shop is overwhelmed with customer cars, forcing staff to “play musical cars.” Although he characterizes this as a “good problem to have” Reinhardt hopes to expand soon, with plans to more than double the size of Mechanical Arts. Reinhardt also sees the “job creep” on client cars which can make effective scheduling tough. “Maine doesn’t have a State Inspection for older cars, so a car coming in for a routine service can have a completely worn out front-end” said Reinhardt. This type of problem is especially important to owners who are new to the old car world, some of whom have grown up in an era when going 10,000 miles between services is expected.

Finally, Eric Peterson is the manager of Leydon Restorations in Lahaska, PA, a shop that has been in business for just over 50 years. Peterson has worked there for 16 years, and been manager for 13. Leydon is known almost exclusively for mechanical restorations, which you can expect to see (or hear) at concours lawns around the globe. Peterson has a bit different take on finding talent. With the advent of television “rebuilder” shows and pop culture expectations of the mythical 30-minute total restoration, occasionally managing expectations of potential new hires is a challenge. “The realities of the work-a-day life at a shop is much different than what some might expect. You can’t have someone who is only interested in the glitz and glamor side of  the restoration.” That said, Peterson reminds us that good people are an investment, and that he feels very fortunate to have a great crew aboard.

Like other shops, Peterson laments the quality of parts that are currently available. “The quality keeps getting worse. I have one car that has had three ‘bad from new’ condensers. Few things are of the lasting quality (that we used to see). Manufacturers are just looking for the cheapest way, the least expensive supplier. Charge us more the first time if you have to, but give us a part that works!” 

Peterson also brought up a theme that ran through just about all of my discussions with restorers. Perhaps the biggest problem facing restorers in 2024 is simply finding the right specialty shop that can do the smaller jobs that used to be easier to farm out. A town that used to have three, four or five radiator shops might have one remaining. The owner is usually older, too, and often looking for someone to take over. It’s the same deal at a radio repair facility or that automobile clock repair shop. Finding someone who can reline brakes, grind cams or even make replacement keys is becoming increasingly more difficult.

The takeaways are twofold: For the consumer, understand that constraints are tightening for the shops that keep your ride on the road, so once you’ve found a good one, be patient with them. For the entrepreneurs who might be reading:  Perhaps you should set your focus on becoming a specialty supplier. Find a need and fill it. And do it soon, because the demand is strong.

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There are seemingly endless secrets in land-speed racing, which makes sense considering we have been running cars as fast as possible in a straight line for over a century. Beyond the obvious wisdom about adjusting for the environment (temperature, air pressure, race surface) and minimizing aerodynamic drag, there seems to be a very deep well of knowledge filled with solutions to other problems unique to land-speed racing. Case in point is the video below, which dropped into my feed a few days ago.

Sometimes the YouTube algorithm is terrifying. It knows me better than I know myself, and I see the proof when it serves up a video with just a few thousand views from a channel that has only posted that single video. I won’t pretend I haven’t wasted a lot of time-consuming piles of content on the internet, but low-view videos aren’t typically what draw me. But the thumbnail image of a massive chunk of billet aluminum with the text “555mph” sang a siren song. I clicked, expecting the video to be clickbait.

It wasn’t.

The video was posted by Traction Products, a business started in 1963 by Peter and Albert Weismann to engineer and produce solutions for high-performance drivetrains. One such problem is the transaxle for a car that is about to attempt a land-speed record. That component is exactly what is discussed here, from the mechanical sequential shifter to the extremely narrow axles to the fascinating reason Traction Products chose not to use a ring-and-pinion setup to turn the power 90 degrees.

The common solutions for multiplying torque and transferring power work really well up to a point, and that point is well under the sort of output and top speeds that this team is working with: 500 mph and thousands, not hundreds, of horsepower. No, that wasn’t a typo: It takes big power to get a vehicle most of the way to Mach 1 on the ground. Multiplying that power through a dozen gears that can be power-shifted is an interesting solution in itself, but even more interesting is that the gearbox serves as the mount for the steering rack, which does not transfer power ring-and-pinion style to the axles.

A ring and pinion setup creates a lot of force and, as I learned from this video, that force is transferred to the chassis of the land-speed race car. That means the car would be fighting itself just as much as the conditions of the race course. So the Weismann transaxle uses a bevel drive to turn the thousands of horsepower, a decision that keeps the twisting force inside the billet case of the transaxle. Voilà: the chassis works like it should rather than fighting itself.

There are all kinds of problems in racing, yet few people get to chase solutions with the mad scientist minds that Traction Products does. It’s fascinating to see a company share its ideas and experiences so freely and we can only hope for more videos and stories from this shop in the future.

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Phil writes:

I have a beautiful 1956 Ford Fairlane Victoria Town Sedan. I would like to get the car re-chromed, but cannot locate a service provider in Maryland. I’m trying not to drive the car too much, because I am not interested in adding a huge amount of mileage to something with 31,000 original miles and great paint.

Sajeev asks:

What a beauty!  Sedans don’t get enough love in my book, and I am glad you are caring for this one. Would you be comfortable removing the chrome and shipping it to a business? That might help me with your answer.

Phil answers:

My current mechanic is dealing with health issues, so I’m not sure he could help remove parts and ship them off for re-chroming. The car is in phenomenal condition, and perhaps I’m just being picky.

I’m happy with this car so please do not spend a huge amount of your time on this.

Sajeev concludes:

Here’s the perk about emailing pistonslap@hagerty.com with your automotive questions—it’s my job to spend a huge amount of time on this! And if there ever was a car to go out of my way for, this is definitely it!

But the term “huge amount of time” is relative. I’ve already discussed the need for auto enthusiasts to embrace the Google Near Me search, and Chrome Plating Near Me is no different. When I click on the second link in my last sentence, my preferred plating shop in Houston shows up first on the Google Maps, and is the second website in its list of suggestions. The reviews are overwhelmingly good (but not five stars, as that’s often a red flag). Their website gives you the right amount of insight into the work they do, the company history, and how they operate as a business.

So I did the same search, except for a chrome shop in Maryland. One company ranked as high as my shop in Google search, so I was immediately intrigued. Their website has the right amount of content, and they seem willing to get the ball rolling (i.e., send pics of your chrome issues) via their contact page.

Another good website served up to me by Google was this one. While they have five stars, that’s not really a red flag because they only have six reviews collected. So you have at least two options in your area, but you can scroll down the “near me” search and see if other shops work better for you.

In case it needs to be made clear, I am not specifically naming or recommending any shop, as I can’t verify their work from my position as an armchair quarterback. This is where I pass the ball to you, so you can send them photos of the trim, and see what vibes you get back. Tell them your needs and concerns, and see how good they are at reassuring you. My biggest concerns would be quality and turn-around time, so you might ask pointed questions about those in particular.

If these two businesses aren’t as rock-solid as you’d like, expand your search by using the zoom feature on the Google Map or enter a different location in the “chrome plating near (location)” search.

Now you need to find someone willing to remove the parts from your Ford that you can trust. Is a Classic Car Mechanic Near Me search also in order? (Same principles apply, quality and turn-around time is important, because you don’t want your classic put on the back burner while they work on newer cars.)

Best of luck in your hunt! Or maybe just “happy motoring,” if these flaws aren’t worrisome enough to address? Sometimes they aren’t, especially on a car so original.

Have a question you’d like answered in Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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There’s never been a better time to be a steward of the obscure, rare, and obsolete. The steady rise of 3D printing seems to have followed an inverse path from the trickle-down of tech in decades past; while major automakers continue to utilize it on a relatively small scale, the democratization of the technology has led to a massive hobbyist community. Within this, automotive enthusiasts lead a collaborative, grassroots movement in spinning up all manner of tools and componentry for collector cars at every level.

Indeed, it’s the professional restorers, speed shops, and small-batch manufacturers who appear to benefit the most from 3D printing. In some ways, restoration and modification is the same as it ever was; metal fabrication and OE parts sourcing is as relevant as ever, but as cars once considered “modern” begin to slip deep into “classic” territory, a vast amount of plastic components—both vital and superficial—are only becoming more brittle and faded with each passing year.

And as much as we hoped modern production technology and OEM classic support from automakers like Porsche and Mercedes-Benz would guarantee an unbroken line of quality OEM replacement parts, a major European and Japanese parts shortage is brewing. And, when these parts reserves run out, some cars might be jerry-rigged lest they be permanently put on jackstands. 

This is hardly a new phenomenon—dwindling support has required creative solutions from generations of enthusiasts, and while 3D printing has been around for a long time, in its early days it showed more promise than result. To wit, Steve Dibdin, co-owner of Additive Restoration (AR) and one of the foremost experts on 3D printing in the automotive space, has seen the technology evolve from the get-go. He’s used 3D printing since its relative adolescence in the mid-1990s, when he says the end product could only be used for prototyping. “The early ones were incredibly brittle, and very expensive. I remember working on a product, it was a small plastic part—about three inches by four inches by half an inch—and it cost [about $2,000] in the 1990s,” he laughs. “I remember putting it on the table, and it just shattered!”

The tech has come a long, long way in the decades since. One of his first projects under the banner of AR was a twin-spark rotor arm for an OSCA MT4, a component that leaned heavily on 3D printing for both prototyping and actual production. A week after the first rotor arm was installed, the recipient OSCA was shipped abroad for a successful 500-mile endurance rally. 

AR still offers that OSCA rotor arm for sale on its website with a $750 tag. Hardly cheap, but as Dibdin explains, the alternative is your MT4 running poorly, or not at all, not to mention the actual production cost of the part is higher than you might think. OSCA built an estimated 72-79 MT4s between 1948 and 1956, and given these were hard-lived race prototypes, quite a few were lost to both time and tragedy. Prior to AR’s work, most OSCAs just “made do,” either with adapted off-the-shelf ignition or with time-consuming custom-fab parts. Dibdin says previous efforts from enterprising owners include a small batch of rotor arms hand-dremeled from a block of Bakelite.

With so few cars in existence and traditional means of parts production, it hardly made sense to produce even a limited run of production rotor arms. Economies of scale mean a minimum order for this part might have run into the hundreds, if not thousands of units, necessitating a unit price far, far beyond AR’s $750 ask. “We do a lot of one-offs, of course. But below between 1,000 or 2,000 parts, there’s this gray area that’s been difficult to make things efficiently, especially in plastics—until now.” 

He holds up a small, blue plastic component on our video call, apparently a 3D-printed prototype for a carburetor linkage for a Sunbeam Tiger. As he tells it, the nylon doodad is likely stronger and will last longer than the original part while maintaining the same appearance. I ask him if that’s the case for many now-ancient plastic parts. “Absolutely! Take the column switch repair kit for [Ferrari 330s]. If you have one of those, there’s a good chance your indicator stalk is going to fall off at some point.” He mentions poor injection molding done in-period that that produced a plastic part that was weak, brittle, and full of inclusions. 

“It was destined to self-destruct at some point. With 3D printing, we can make sure we don’t have those [imperfections], and I can predict exactly how something is going to fail,” he explains. “The technology we have both on the design side and the implementation of that is far advanced from where it was even 10 years ago.”

So, at the current state of the art, proper implementation of 3D printing produces components that are often better and far cheaper to produce than it was when it left the factory. For the smaller parts, is there still even a need for traditional restoration methods? “Machining still has its place,” he says. “What [3D printing] does is take out much of the man hours and required expertise of actual production. The design and development time is still the biggest expense.”  

Shucks—I was rather hoping each hobbyist 3D printer came with a button marked “Press here for 1950s Maserati wheel cap,” but I digress. Of course, plastic isn’t always the answer. “If we’re doing something like suspension or brakes that’s safety critical, we’ll machine it from billet,” Dibdin explains. “We can get parts printed in 3D metal, and they’re very good. But, there are significant considerations.” He mentions post-processing is a large part of the current output of 3D printed metal, both aesthetically and structurally. And you’re limited in the material and application, whereas machining is settled science. 

“When you machine something from metal, you know the material, you know the process, and the tolerances are far, far tighter,” Dibdin continues. “Though they can sometimes 3D print in metal or other material and then throw it on the CNC to finish it off.” The best of both worlds, then. 

Still, even modern material cannot out-maneuver poor design. Dibdin mentions a previous project involving 3D printing a commonly failed part found in a Ferrari 550 seat. After a full development period, AR’s recreation part failed a short while after installation. “You have to know where the technology is appropriate and compatible. It’s the difference between getting a microwave-ready meal versus going out for a sitdown meal,” he laughs.

Dibdin was keen on stressing that 3D printing, no matter how advanced it may be, is still just another tool in your workshop. “It helps us get to a point, but it’s still very much about human interaction and understanding how things go together. It’s sort of sexy with lasers flying around, but to get to that point, someone spent time developing a product, going through iterations, prototyping it, testing it, and making sure it’s suitable,” he says. “At the end of the day, it’s just a fancy hammer.” 

So, things are looking way, way up for micro-scale production of better-than-factory direct replacement components. But 3D printing has also irrevocably changed the aftermarket, especially when builds turn both restomod and big money. 

In a similar vein to Icon 4×4 and Gateway Bronco, Texas-based Vigilante 4×4 thoroughly modernizes and powers-up your choice of SJ-platform Jeeps, including ‘70s family truckster hotness like the OG Cherokee, Gladiator pickup, and Wagoneer. These are serious builds, and with a price tag starting at $300,000, each build is incredibly detail-rich, with little touches the Vigilante team says wouldn’t be possible without 3D printing.

Actually, the whole enterprise likely wouldn’t exist. “It’s important to say that it’s a very critical moment for us, as Vigilante is about modern technology, and we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing without 3D printing,” says co-owner Rachel van Doveren. “A lot of other vehicles can order [modern] parts straight from a catalog. Jeeps don’t have that luxury.” 

Like most shops that utilize the tech, Vigilante primarily 3D prints test components as part of prototyping ahead of machining. “As of right now, we have an FTM printer in-house that we prototype everything from handles to brackets before we machine the metal part to make sure it looks right and fits correctly,” explains 3D printing specialist Nick Douglass. But, where there is no old part to restore or modify, and the component sits more-or-less behind the scenes, Vigilante will create something wholly new. 

Jeep never installed rear air-conditioning ducts on any SJ-chassis vehicle, so some clever 3D printing ensures rear passengers are either frosty or toasty. Among Vigilante’s signature details are the repositioned (and modernized) air-conditioning controls, now made to look entirely original via careful post-processing. “We start with determining the need for the custom solution,” says Douglass. “We ask, ‘Are there factory parts we can restore and reuse?’ When there aren’t, we begin the process.”

It could be as complex as the A/C or as simple as a tiny bit of trim. “Take for example the clip that holds the sun visor in place. That’s not a complex piece. It just had to do its job and look good,” Douglass says. “Trying to get a factory piece sanded, repainted, and installing it with a screw without cracking that plastic can be a huge challenge.”

I ask Douglass about what developing 3D printing advancements he’s most looking forward to. He mentions metal printing, and material with integrated carbon fiber. Then, he pauses for a moment to reflect, thinking back on our discussion. “I wonder, personally, when it will become so hard to find a decent donor [body] panel, that the technology for sheetmetal reproduction will become more popular,” he muses. “There is a technology I’ve seen videos of, where a CNC-type machine uses a hammer-type object to form sheetmetal panels almost like a 3D printer, working a layer at a time. I wonder if that’s going to be the only option in the future.”

A fancy hammer, indeed. 

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I often think about the bare minimum number of tools required to do a job. Not the ideal tools. Maybe it comes from watching Saturday morning TV shows, where everything took 10 minutes and fit together flawlessly. Watching those projects take shape encouraged me to pick up tools and try my own. But what do you need to just get started? 

If we waited until we had a full toolbox to dive in, none of us would ever get anything done. We’d just be sitting around staring at tools. Instead, let’s take a look at the tools that compose the minimum kit required to safely and successfully tackle a project on a daily driver—or at least allow you to do most of a job and then rent or borrow any specialty tools needed for to complete specific tasks. These don’t need to be fancy tools; in fact, this might be a list of items that are best purchased at garage sales, flea markets, or secondhand stores.

Jack and Stands

Sure, there are a lot of projects that do not require lifting a vehicle, but sooner or later you’ll need to do it. I’ve done oil changes by putting the front wheels on a curb to get enough clearance to roll under and access the drain plug and oil filter, but that practice doesn’t work in all situations. A jack and stands do. These are the right tools for every job that requires lifting a vehicle. That’s why they are something to get early in your wrenching journey.

Screwdrivers

Applied properly, screwdrivers have thousands of uses. We would never tell you to use them improperly, of course, but in a pinch a screwdriver can be used for all sorts of stuff that might very well render them one-time-only tools that, for better or for worse, will get the job done. Screwdrivers also can last a very long time if well taken care of, so adding these to your toolkit early will make for a solid base that rarely needs replacing, which leaves you with funds to buy more specialty tools to grow your kit—or you might just get through a handful of jobs without buying anymore tools at all. That’s a great feeling.

Socket Set

There is a reason every “mechanics toolset” sold in parts stores or home centers has sockets and ratchets as its main component. Ratchets and sockets are a highly efficient method of removing hardware without damaging it. A basic kit is enough to get started, and you can easily add bigger or longer pieces as needed.

Hammer

You thought I wouldn’t include the hammer? It’s an inarguable necessity. Judicious use will make for a better wrenching experience, but when force is required, a mass at the end of a stick is just the right tool for the job.

Multimeter

“If you can’t fix it with a hammer it’s an electrical problem” is a good joke, because occasionally it’s based in fact. Electrical issues are more common than ever as cars feature more and more sensors and connections. To be a mechanic and not a parts replacer requires diagnostic tools, and diagnosing electrical issues is difficult to do consistently with only your eyes and hands. A good multimeter—and understanding how to read it—is vital.

Drain Pan

Want to do an oil change? You’ll need to catch the used oil somehow. Even a makeshift catch pan is good idea, but many of the drain pans designed for automotive projects are affordable and have features that seem trivial, until you are without them: A pour spout makes emptying the pan easier, and the ability to seal the fluids inside for transport is helpful, too. An open container of used oil is just waiting to be knocked over. Or it’s a magnet for tools or parts or worse, a spark. A good drain pan makes jobs cleaner and safer.

Penetrating Oil

Cars are built from a couple dozen different materials and the vast majority of them are susceptible to corrosion. Penetrating oil helps limit the need for big tools like impact drivers. Is an aerosol can technically a tool? Maybe not, but a good can of penetrating oil should be something you reach for before grabbing tools, so we are going to say it’s a critical part of the toolkit. Besides, if you’re limited on tools, you want to be able to stack the deck in your favor, and that means trying to break fasteners loose using science rather than force.

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The latest research available on the new-vehicle transaction price pegs it at a substantial $47,218. And while that may be down 5.4 percent over the market peak in December of 2022, it’s still prohibitively pricey enough to convince a lot of motorists to hang on to vehicles they already have.

But for how long, though? According to research by S&P Global Mobility, the average age of cars and light trucks in the U.S. has risen to a new record of 12.6 years in 2024, up by two months over 2023.

That means the average car or truck on today’s roads was new in 2011.

“With average age growth, more vehicles are entering the prime range for aftermarket service, typically from six to 14 years of age,” said Todd Campau, associate director of aftermarket solutions at S&P Global Mobility. “With more than 110 million vehicles in that sweet spot—reflecting nearly 38 percent of the fleet on the road—we expect continued growth in the volume of vehicles in that age range to rise to an estimated 40 percent through 2028.”

That should guarantee plenty of work for auto mechanics for a long time. Indeed, according to research posted on Consumeraffairs.com earlier this year, there are approximately 592,000 auto mechanics in the U.S., and the number has been falling, even as the need is growing. “There is an urgent need to recruit and retain new auto mechanics in the coming months and years, as car maintenance and repair will always be a necessity for vehicle owners. Currently, there are approximately 56,000 auto mechanic positions available, and by the end of this year, over 1.3 million technicians will be needed to keep up with demand.”

Certainly there are plenty of vehicles out there. According to S&P, the size of the U.S. fleet was 286 million vehicles in operation (VIO) in January of this year, up two million over 2023.

And the distribution of vehicles by age is changing. Vehicles newer than six years old accounted for 98 million vehicles in 2019; today they represent fewer than 90 million vehicles. “Vehicles six-14 years of age, and even older vehicles, are expected to represent about 70 percent or more of VIO [growth] for the next five years, which will serve as a tailwind to aftermarket service opportunities.”

A specialty in working on trucks and SUVs would be beneficial to new mechanics, as sales of cars, as we all know, is suffering. S&P research bears that out by citing vehicle “scrappage” rates. Since 2020, more than 27 million cars were scrapped, replaced by about 13 million cars. The number of trucks and SUVs scrapped was just over 26 million, while 45 million new trucks and SUVs were registered.

As consumers keep their vehicles longer, proper maintenance is ever more important, as is finding someone qualified to work on your older vehicle. A recent report by the non-profit TechForce Foundation, which is “committed to the career exploration and workforce development of professional technicians,” said that the demand for automotive technicians remains an ongoing issue. “As in past years, the demand from occupational separations far outpaces the demand from new growth. For example, between 2023 and 2027, 406,000 positions will be needed due to operational separations, while only 60,000 will come from new growth.”

But there may be reason for hope. TechForce’s report says that for the first time in 10 years, the number of graduates in the automotive maintenance sector has slightly increased. “We are beginning to close the gap in the transportation technician shortage,” it says.

But that will take a while. Our best advice: Be kind to your current mechanic, if you have a good one.

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Jay writes:

I’d love to hear Sajeev’s thoughts on the changes passenger vehicles have undergone pre-1967 to today.

Of course, these changes include complexity, i.e. safety/emissions/reliability etc., but also the nature of passenger transport. Vehicles are no longer point-to-point transportation, but a living room on wheels.

Sajeev answers:

Jay, your point about cars being “living rooms on wheels” resonates with me. There’s a parallel between where we live and the inherent designs of our vehicles, and I bet it’s one that many folks can appreciate. Put another way, while it’s true that vehicles have permanently altered the landscape of the cities we live in, cities have also forced changes to what automobiles get made and which never see the light of day.

So this won’t be a Piston Slap article about the car itself, because we can’t possibly live in a vacuum this time ’round.

One of the biggest reasons why cars don’t live in a vacuum is urban sprawl. Sprawl has made life better for many, but no far-reaching plan is without consequence as the decades march on. Sprawl incentivizes travel, and luckily, cars improved over time. Cars have filled in the gap between one’s place of residence and place of business.

And cars have become roomier, faster (higher compression engines, overdrive gearing on the highway), have better NVH controls (padded materials, asphalt/butyl insulation, etc.), and justified their existence via reducing smog when urban density and increased populations became a concern. That extra speed from punchy 1950s small-block engines also brought about increased safety since 1967 (collapsible steering columns, airbags, ABS brakes, etc.) making for safe and comfortable personal transportation. All good stuff.

With my rant about Malaise Era engineering in mind, remember that vehicles are always exposed to the latest technology of their time. Cars from the 1930s were influenced by Streamline Moderne products that cleaned up their airflow at speed, space travel and small block V-8s were common themes for the 1950s, and computer science (ironically) underpinned neoclassic style in that 1970s Malaise Era.

The advancement of the automobile was once a progressive dream come true, but these days it feels more run-of-the-mill. Platform sharing means SUVs are actually sedans, and your engine can get replacement parts anywhere from the UK to Southeast Asia. No matter the country of origin, everyone adapted by making bigger, quieter and faster vehicles, at any price range.

Perhaps that is expected at such ridiculous asking prices in today’s market. Not designing a car that can effortlessly cruise at 85 mph with a plethora of airbags, handling nannies, active cruise control, a great stereo and a quiet interior for five occupants, means your business will be run out of business. (Unless you’re in China, but that’s a whole ‘nother ballgame.)

But cars do not operate in a vacuum; rather they are a byproduct of the available technology, financial constraints, consumer feedback, and city/state/federal government input. Where we live tends to dictate our automobile purchases, so I apologize in advance for projecting these wide-ranging impacts into a single city—one that might not represent your specific location.

Yes, I am talking about the urban hellscape that is my hometown of Houston, Texas. I remember when there was a national 55 mph speed limit, and it didn’t seem like a big deal in the city. Congestion wasn’t terribly bad most of the day, nobody knew the term “road rage,” and we were all taken aback when they were building a second loop around the city. Perhaps I was naïve in my youth, as I thought urban sprawl would end at this second loop.

Now we have three loops, some of the worst congestion in the nation, 80+ mph speeds on the freeways that are a daily occurrence, and the roads are getting kinda dangerous for pedestrians and motorists alike. I’m not suggesting that correlation equals causation, but one likely reason Houston motorists behave this way is because we’re stuck in our vehicles for a disturbingly long time. We are the embodiment of the city with living rooms on wheels.

Houston is likely an edge case, too extreme for other parts of the country. But odds are you have seen how urban sprawl changes your landscape, either as it encroaches on your property or how your tax dollars are spent maintaining/expanding all these roads you never use.

While technology, economies of scale, and innovative design continue to advance the automobile as Jay suggested, I can’t help but think these are both needed and encouraged by the way we, as a society, live. And as our commutes get longer thanks to urban sprawl, we absolutely need the aforementioned living room on wheels.

But my thoughts are never the end of the story. What say you in the comments section, Hagerty community?

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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The post Piston Slap: Urban Sprawl And the Living Room on Wheels? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Adding tools to a home shop is a never ending affair. There are staples though and a drill press is one of them. It’s handy for a whole host of reasons other than just being more convenient to use for drilling compared to a hand drill, and if you follow these five tips you will find that you might use your drill press even more.

Not just for making holes

Jacobs chucks and the spindle bearings in a drill press are not designed for the kinds of side loads encountered when attempting to mill with a drill press. Even with the limitations, chucking a wire brush into your drill press can be very helpful in cleaning up small parts and hardware. This has gotten me by without owning a bench grinder with a wire wheel for years, though a wire wheel in a drill press is slower and less efficient.

Check your table for square

Drill presses are great in the way they eliminate the human error that creates wonky holes when drilling with cordless or corded drills. Well, it should. If you haven’t taken the time to adjust the table and ensure all the parts of your drill press are correct it’s likely not much of a step up from hand drilling.

It’s easy to check that the chuck is square to the work table is with a short section of round stock. Bend the stock into a pointer and hold it in the chunk then rotate it by hand to check where it does and does not contact the table. Adjust until even. It might be tempting to use a bubble level or similar, but the key here is that the chuck and table are positioned properly to each other, which a bubble level cannot tell you.

Get used to changing speeds

We know most people put the belts on the spindle to set the speed in the middle of it’s range and use that speed for everything from 1/8″ holes in aluminum to using large Forstner bits in wood. Does it work? Kind of, but proper speeds and feeds make for better and safer results. Maybe you shelled out big bucks for a variable speed machine, but most of us are getting by with a well-maintained vintage piece that has a belt and pulley system for changing the spindle speed.

It can be slightly cumbersome to swap out the belts and shuffle everything just to drill one or two holes and switch the belts again. That’s why it’s best to practice a few times on how to do the switch and make sure you keep the space avaliable to make the swap easier.

Get a decent vise and use it

As tempting as it is to leverage the “constantly set up” nature of a drill press by just putting a bit in the chuck and making a hole in your project, that comes with a surprising amount of risk. Bits can and will grab workpieces which can whip them out of hand and cause damage to the drill press, the stuff around it, and you. A simple vise will make drilling precision holes easier and safer. Even cheap import vises like this one are better than nothing if you are still searching for the right vintage one.

Consider upgrading chucks

The Jacobs chuck is all but ubiquitous for drilling, especially on vintage equipement. The design makes grabbing tooling quite easy but the need for a special key can be annoying while also opening up safety risk when users leave the key inserted in the chuck. Accidentally power up the machine with that key hanging on the chuck and it’s going to be a bad day.

Think about upgrading to a keyless chuck. Most drill presses use a Morse taper to hold the chuck in place, meaning swapping the chuck out for a keyless one that is easily tightened and loosened by hand take no more effort than knocking the keyed one out and matching the machine’s taper to a new chuck. No key to lose or forget, plus ease of use.

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Alan writes:

I have an original Ford Taurus SHO from 2010. Your recent comments on cheap plastic parts hit home. Within about three years, I noticed that the “chrome” surrounding both taillight lens covers were peeling.

On later models, Ford didn’t bother with this detail, apparently it just wasn’t worth it.

The chrome peeled about halfway around the taillights, then stopped. The part that remains sticks well and won’t come off, so I’m left with an ugly taillight that is rare and low enough volume as to be considered an orphan. Is there an option to re-chrome plastic?

Sajeev answers:

The short answer is yes, some chrome shops are equipped to re-chrome plastic trim. While you might not find one locally, there’s always the option to pull the offending item off the vehicle, stuff it in a box, and ship it off to a specialized shop.

But the short answer is also the wrong answer, in the case of a 2010 Ford Taurus SHO. I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer a better alternative.

Take it from this NOS Ford parts huntin’ fool with a Project Valentino: Finding Ford replacement parts online or from NOS parts vendors is a wiser move. Just because the dealership says it’s no longer available doesn’t mean the parts aren’t collecting dust elsewhere. They are hidden in remote corners of the internet, while the intended recipients are depreciating themselves right into the junkyard. It is the opposite of low volume, high demand vehicles like a Porsche 911: I still feel a smidge guilty for speaking this truth in another Hagerty article, as it feels like rubbing salt in their wounds.

The first thing you need is a part number, like BG1Z13404A for the right side tail lamp. Plop that into a search on eBay Motors. If you don’t find what you need (at a fair price) immediately, make that a saved search in your account and get notified for new inventory by email.

We got lucky with this particular part. Only $90 with free shipping for a bit that’s new in the box? Sign me up, and never think about re-chroming again. You can expect freshly plated chrome to be more than double the price, and that might be me being generous.

But let’s say eBay Motors brought you no joy. It’s then time to check the NOS vendors just waiting for you to Google them. Here’s the link, and you’ll find the most luck if you scroll down to Green Sales, Inc. first. They have the most stuff, and are a well-kept secret for Ford nerds. (Sorry about that, Ford nerds.)

Here’s the important thing to keep in mind: This advice changes if Alan was restoring something like the little chrome strip around the top of the dash of a 1969 Dodge Charger. But for a 2010 Taurus SHO owner? The world is your oyster: The Internet will serve up just about anything you need. From there all it takes is a phone call or a few mouse clicks to seal the deal.

I’d wish you good luck finding new tail lights with fresh chrome, but I have a feeling you don’t need it!

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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The three critical systems of a car, in order of importance, are: Steering, brakes, and the drivetrain. If you question this ordering think no further than how many times you have heard someone tell stories of driving a vehicle with no brakes. I’ve never heard a story of someone intentionally driving a vehicle that had no steering.

Now that we agree that steering is critical, we therefore also all agree that maintaining your steering components is important. For those of the DIY proclivity it is a relatively simple system to understand and work on. To get you started, here are five tips for tackling the system of tie-rods, drag links, and idler arms, steering boxes, and pitman arms.

Check your threads

There aren’t many areas on a car where left- and right-hand threads are mixed together in an assembly. Steering is one of them. With modern impact tools capable of twisting the threads right off a nut or bolt, going the proper direction is important because you might not get a second chance. Trace the threads with your finger or a pick to confirm if “righty tighty, lefty loosey” still applies.

Careful with your castles

While it sounds like advice pulled from a Dungeons and Dragons rulebook, it’s also true for cars. Castle nuts get their name from the crenellations cut into the top which allow the use of cotter keys to keep the nuts from turning. They work well too, but unfortunately, they are often relatively delicate. Failing to get a socket fully seated can easily strip a castle nut, and a misplaced hammer blow can deform it enough that it will be difficult to remove. If you need to use a hammer for persuasion on one of these, remove it completely, flip it over, and thread it back on. This gives you a flat surface to hit with a hammer that will also not damage the threads.

Get the special puller

There are a couple of tight-fitting joints on the steering components. This means getting things apart can be frustrating—but it doesn’t have to be. Buying a proper ball joint press or pitman arm puller can be a steep investment considering this work is not done weekly or even monthly for most at-home DIY’ers.

Luckily most chain auto parts stores are happy to rent the special tools to people like you and me. This often requires putting down the full price and getting a refund upon returning the tools, but compared to the frustration of using the wrong tools the hold on some of my cash is very much worth it. Be sure to find proper instructions on use online as the rental tools rarely include them.

Match the new tie rods to the old ones

Nearly everything in your steering system has some form of adjustment, and the most critical and obvious are the tie rods. While it is possible to just assemble them and ignore the horrible toe in or out just long enough to get to the alignment shop, your alignment guy is going to like you a lot more if you take the minute to thread the new tie rods together to roughly the same length as the one being removed. This puts the adjustment in the ballpark and also makes the drive to the alignment shop much more pleasant.

Assemble with anti-seize

The hardworking components of your steering system are sitting on the underside of your car under constant assault from every size and type of road debris. Water, road salt, dirt, rocks, and radical temperature changes can supercharge the hold of corrosion on threaded parts. A dab of anti-seize goes a long way in keeping this at bay. It will also help the parts last longer as there is the option of doing a second alignment later. Ask anyone who has argued with stubborn, crusty tie rods and you’ll learn that anti-seize can be the small difference between a routine job and testing your patience while mangling tie rod sleeves.

Don’t forget the cotter pins

Torquing hardware to spec determines both clamping pressure and helps keep things from loosening up. Because many of the parts in a steering system see a rotational movement that could potentially loosen the threaded fasteners, many steering components have the additional positive retention of a cotter key going through the bolt and castle nuts to keep them from turning. Aligning the castle nut to the hole through the bolt can be annoying, but it’s an important step to keep your steering from unintentionally coming apart. No one wants that.

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Danny writes:

Sajeev,

Last spring I bought a 2005 Volvo S60 with transmission issues for $550, thinking it would be an easy fix and flip that would provide a little extra spending money for my other car projects. At first, I installed a used transmission from a salvage yard, and the car drove well for a few weeks, then it wouldn’t move at all. The ATF looked like someone mixed chocolate milk into the fluid, so I returned that transmission and got my money back.

I then took the original transmission (Aisin AW55-50) to a rebuilder, who has had it since September. It took ages to source good rebuild parts for decent pricing, and now I’m still waiting for the transmission to be rebuilt, as the shop is backed up with other customer projects. My questions are:

• Do I remain patient while this car takes up space in my garage?
• Will the rebuilt transmission prove trustworthy?
• Should I instead part out this extraordinarily clean (though boring) sedan, cut my losses and get my shop space back?

Sajeev answers:

The one perk of Danny’s situation is that there’s no wrong answer: buying an “extraordinarily clean” car for $550 means you don’t have a lot of money tied up into this investment. Hauling it off to the junkyard would be a net loss, but parting it out and selling the good stuff on eBay/Facebook Marketplace will likely earn you money.

Parting it is the smart move for your checkbook. But that kinda stinks, as most car folks prefer to save a clean car from doom. We enthusiasts are usually aware of a wide array of repair options, but unfortunately they all have pitfalls.

Danny’s experience hits on common problems with both local junkyards and local transmission rebuilders: accessibility to the right part at the right time is almost always a crapshoot. It’s not a big deal if you need a gearbox for a vintage Ford or Chevy, but it gets dicier the further you get away from a C6 or a TH400. I reckon your bad gearbox from the junkyard, and logistical issues with local rebuilders, is far from uncommon. It doesn’t help that this particular transmission from this era of Volvo doesn’t have the best reputation, either.

The superior alternative might be buying a low mileage, used transmission from an online parts aggregator like Car Part, or the publicly traded junkyard juggernaut known as LKQ. LKQ seems to get the best quality/age/mileage stuff for modern automobiles, shelves it in their warehouse, and makes it stupid easy to purchase. I’ve had reasonably good luck with clicking around LKQ’s website (or buying from them on eBay Motors) and just waiting for the stuff to arrive at my door.

Their warranty is pretty decent (especially if you pay a mechanic to install it) and sometimes they deliver the parts straight to your door. That’s what I recommend to Danny, and even though it’ll cost more, paying a shop to install it might be the smartest path given the warranty scenario. That’s the type of servicing that really helps on resale too, which I expect you’d do with this Volvo sometime in the near future.

Let’s step back and list all the choices in this particular automotive conundrum, with their pros and cons laid out for all to behold:

• Local Junkyard: Limited selection, but sometimes you find a diamond in the rough for dirt cheap.
• Local Rebuilder: You’re at the mercy of their level of staffing/customer service, but the convenience can’t be beat.
• Online Junkyard: Parts will generally cost more, but you aren’t limited by local inventory and can spend more for something with less mileage.
• Online Rebuilder: Can have a better quality product and customer service than a local, but it can cost more, and take more time when factoring in a local mechanic’s time for installation.

Odds are I’ve missed a few options in Danny’s sketchy transmission scenario, so I hand it over to you, esteemed members of the Hagerty Community.

Bonus! A Piston Slap Nugget of Wisdom.

Our very own Eddy Eckart brought up a compelling alternative for this particular application. So let’s get right to it:

“The Aisin five-speed autos found in these Volvos can be problematic. Sajeev has good advice above, and I’d add that finding the newest transmission that’s compatible with your car will help, too, as incremental changes were made over the years. Also, manual swaps are also an option, and they’re more reliable than the automatics in those cars. I have a 2001 V70 T5, and though I have been fortunate to make it over 160K miles on my original automatic box, a five-speed manual swap has always been on my radar if the need ever arose. Parts for the swap can be wrangled together for under $1500, and the car will need a tune. I’d be hard pressed to think that taking the automatic to get repaired would be any less.”

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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The most basic understanding of an engine centers around how air flows through it. Air gets drawn in, compressed with fuel, then pushed out. The idea is simple enough, but the physics behind it are incredibly complex. Decades of debates have turned half-truths into facts, and Banks Power has swooped in to correct the record and clarify a few of the myths, specifically about exhaust, that have been parroted for a long time.

I know these myths exist and can catch anyone, because I have been guilty of saying things like “an engine needs some exhaust backpressure” with a straight face myself. I’ve since learned better but the books that taught me aren’t as illustrative and clear as this Banks video breaking down the ins-and-out of exhaust backpressure.

Backpressure is created by any restrictions or impediments to the flow of exhaust gases on their journey from the combustion chamber to the tip of the tailpipe. Some are necessary, like bends in the exhaust to route around suspension or running gear, while others are not required but sure are nice, like mufflers or turbochargers. Backpressure is nearly unavoidable but can also be leveraged for our benefit. The force to push exhaust gas out from the combustion chamber comes from the power stored in the crankshaft, and short of somehow creating a vacuum that pulls the exhaust out (we’ll get to scavenging in a minute), there will always be a little power loss from expelling exhaust gases.

Which means the attempt might be to eliminate backpressure but the reality is trying to minimize it. Maybe that is where the myth of needing a little resistance comes from. Banks theorizes that the myth started with exhaust salesmen in the 1950s who were tasked with selling mufflers that were more restrictive than stock and said anything to make the sale. Could this have worked and worked well enough that people are still repeating it 70 years later? Maybe. We may never know.

What we do know for certain is that backpressure is not needed and cleaning up the path of exhaust flow is a relatively easy way to free up some horsepower. A well designed exhaust will actually use the pulses of hot gases to help evacuate other cylinders which allows even more efficient running. This is called scavenging and is actually negative backpressure. It can be great, but takes a lot of engineering to achieve. Log style manifolds will never have this, and most affordable header designs don’t do it either. Banks has a great bench-top demonstration of how a header can scavenge.

So, is backpressure needed? Short answer, no. It’s not always the lowest hanging fruit to freeing up power, but if you get into tuning your engine on a long enough timeline you will probably end up thinking long and hard about your exhaust. I know I did and am currently enjoying an increase in performance along with the great sound.

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I admit to being a bit of a romantic when it comes to inventors, particularly independent ones who are pursuing their dreams without the resources of a large corporation, government agency, or university. There’s something special and quite human about seeing a connection that others don’t see and keeping at it. Clessie Cummins made more than 3000 prototypes while developing his fuel injector for diesel engines.

Sometimes the story ends up in failure and obscurity, other times in generational wealth and celebrity. More often than not, the success lies not in business or fame but rather in increasing human knowledge. Of course, sometimes you learn that something simply doesn’t work. For most inventors, that’s not a reason to give up but rather to consider alternative solutions. Like Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

About 50 years ago, engineering professor Gary Waissi was teaching a course in physics, and during his lecture he doodled a sketch of a disc mounted eccentrically on a shaft and realized that a piston could push directly on the edge of that disc, converting linear motion to rotational motion. Eliminating connecting rods and much of the crankshaft would have advantages in terms of reducing friction and weight in reciprocating-piston combustion engines, possibly making an engine based on the concept more efficient than conventional designs.

In the mid 1990s, then at Arizona State University, Waissi started working in earnest on the engine concept, based on a horizontally opposed two-cylinder design. The two pistons are linked together and move in tandem as they push on the disc and it rotates. Compared to a conventional engine, where forces from the connecting rod tilt the piston at an angle to the cylinder walls and create friction, the ganged pistons travel perfectly parallel to the cylinders. Later refinements put a circular ring around the “crankdisc,” upon which the pistons acted and within which the crankdisc spun. Additional development determined that flattening the sides of the annular ring that are in contact with the pistons further reduced friction.

You can read Waissi’s technical description at bottom.*

To be honest, it’s easier to understand it with drawings and animations, but the bottom line is that it’s a very elegant idea.

Ten years ago, Waissi came to the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress, where he displayed drawings, animations, and some engine parts, but the engine had not yet run outside of the digital domain. Since then, he’s built two running versions of the engine, with the current motor, which Waissi describes as “Version 1.9999 repeating,” being the sixth-generation design. That engine is now on display at this year’s SAE convention, and I got a chance to discuss the project’s progress and trajectory with the professor.

The concept will work with both spark (gasoline) and compression (diesel) ignition. I didn’t ask but I’m guessing it will work with Atkinson as well as Otto cycles.

The project has been pretty much self-financed and now reaches into six figures. Waissi Engines is a two-man operation. Gary Waissi is now retired from teaching and devotes much of his time to the project, with son Robert, also an engineer (who works in audio by day), helping. Gary says that the annual outlay has been between $10,000 and $20,000 a year, depending on what components they need to have made.

Anyone who has owned a Honda motorcycle or a car with an air-cooled OHC engine will recognize the cylinder barrels and heads on the prototype. As a matter of fact, that’s what drew a Honda engineer to the Waissi booth, texting photos of the motor back to Hamamatsu. Engineers from Ford, General Motors, and a handful of Chinese automakers also expressed interest. The overhead valves are operated via chains driven by auxiliary shafts geared to the main shaft. The animation above also shows some counter-rotating weights, also on auxiliary shafts, which Waissi said were intended to prevent rocking of the engine but in practice were found to be unnecessary.

As shown by the use of production Honda components, the Waissi engine is compatible with current automotive industry manufacturing and assembly methods. There are no exotic materials used, and all components unique to the engine can be made with conventional manufacturing processes.

Waissi says there have been “nibbles” from major manufacturers. Beyond its applicability as a primary powertrain component, because of its compact size and light weight, the Waissi engine could see duty as a range extender in a hybrid system.

Personally, I think he needs to put it in the back of a vintage VW Beetle as a publicity stunt. Waissi has given some thought to possibly powering a VW-based dune buggy with the opposed-piston “V-180 degree” twin. With just 677 cc of displacement, the 175-pound engine is calculated to put out about 80 horsepower, though that figure remains to be tested on a dyno. Eighty horsepower out of less than 700 cc displacement is impressive in terms of specific output. What I found even more impressive is the fact that the engine can run at 10,000 rpm or higher.

While the Waissis have not yet run emissions or fuel-efficiency tests, it’s still a piston-based, overhead-valve engine with a more or less conventional combustion chamber, so unlike thirsty and relatively dirty Wankels, it should be as clean and at least as fuel efficient as conventional piston motors. Even if those specifications are only equivalent to conventional engines, it would be cheaper to build, as it has fewer parts to assemble.

Since the most powerful engine that VW put in the Type I weighed 244 pounds and put out just 60 hp, a Waissi-powered Bug or dune buggy should probably scoot pretty well. Actually, a production version of the Waissi engine would likely weigh even less than 175 pounds, as the prototype crankcase is milled from a big rectangular billet of aluminum, with no attempt made to reduce the finished weight.

The Waissi engine isn’t the only new take on piston-driven combustion engines to have been displayed at the SAE World Congress in recent years. Nautilus Engineering showed a novel compression-ignition engine with multiple combustion chambers, intended to improve the emissions performance of lawn equipment, but the company appears to be defunct, and the domain name for the company website is for sale.

When Gary Waissi had his minimalist booth at the 2014 SAE convention, Scuderi Engine had a large and expensive open-floor display with a cutaway example of its split-cycle engine inside a plexiglass case and another version mounted in a midsize sedan. Scuderi Engine was founded by the children of refrigerant compressor pioneer Carmelo Scuderi about 20 years ago to develop and license the engine that he patented. Scuderi Engine released a video of the engine running on a test bed in 2012, but the company has been mired in legal difficulties with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and with Toyota’s Hino division. As yet, the Scuderi engine has not come to production. The company still exists, apparently to manage a portfolio of hundreds of patents. A related company, Scuderi Clean Energy, rebranded as ESG Clean Energy, is ostensibly in the business of selling power generation while putting a lot of emphasis on the carbon capture market. The combination of the lawsuits, the emphasis on patent management and licensing, and buzzwords like “carbon capture,” coupled with ESG never publicly showing a running version of the engine (to the best of my knowledge and research), have made a few people skeptical about the Scuderi ventures.

Compared to Nautilus, which had a team of engineers and backing, and Scuderi, which worked hard at selling stock, cultivating investors, and putting on an impressive show, Waissi Engine is a modest venture. The LLC doesn’t even have a website. At 75, Gary Waissi doesn’t seem to be looking to make a fortune off of his idea, but rather to make a working engine and prove his concept. At this point, he seems to be succeeding. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned from that.

Asked why he’s devoting his time and not insignificant amounts of his own money to developing a new internal-combustion engine at a time when the industry, amid considerable government pressure, is moving quickly to battery-powered electrics, Gary Waissi said that ICEs will still be around for a long while.

“We have to consider the entire life cycle of an electric vehicle and its total environmental impact (from mining to electric grid to use to heavier impact on roads to replacement of batteries to disposal, etc). I think the future will not be one or the other, but some combination of technologies, and the internal-combustion engine will be in that mix. Also, alternative fuels and their research (including hydrogen, etc.) show great promise.”

Words of Waissi

*GW: In the earlier version, we allowed the bearing ring (a perfectly circular ring) to slide under hydrodynamic conditions (oil pumped from inside the main shaft through channels inside the disk to under the bearing ring) on the top surface of the crankdisc. We noticed that allowing the bearing ring outer surface to slide/roll against the piston base created a higher-than-calculated (and expected) friction between the outer perimeter of the ring and the piston base. So we decided to change the outer perimeter ring shape to have a flat (or convex) surface against the piston base flat (or concave) surface and pump oil through the ring to that outer surface. This created a hydrodynamic condition between the outer part of the ring (non-rotating ring) and the piston base. This lowered the friction to the same level as friction inside the bearing ring against the crankdisc (to similar level and conditions as in the main journal(s) of a common crankshaft with cranks and piston rods). Theoretically, the inside surface of the bearing ring serves the same function as the big end of a piston rod; and, correspondingly, the outside surface of the bearing ring against the piston base serves the same function as the small end of the piston rod. The rigid piston structure does not allow the piston to tilt, and the piston side supports distribute the force against the cylinder walls over the combined length of the pistons, whereas in a regular combustion engine, the piston rod pushes the piston, in an angle, sideways against the cylinder wall. Our design significantly reduces all these main friction components.

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“The number of vomit emojis has definitely gone down,” laughs Marc Davis, founder of Moment Motor Co., about the business’s social media attention. I guess you have to learn to laugh at stuff like that, especially when you’re doing something as drastic (and new) as putting electric motors into old cars. Plus, car people on the internet are quick to judge no matter what you do. The response Davis gets now, though, is a lot more positive, and it’s indicative of the changes in public perception since he started swapping EV powertrains into classic cars in 2017.

Indeed, those changes came big and they came quick. On the new car market, EVs have gone totally mainstream, and electric’s performance and maintenance advantages have become clearer. On the old car scene, the arguments for electrifying classics made by Davis and people like him, mainly that these conversions keep classics on the road long-term and help bring new people into the hobby, have gained more traction and acceptance. As for the electric powertrains themselves, they’ve improved and have become more readily available, while the process of converting a car is now easier. To see how all this happened as well as what the steps are for “de-ICEing” and electrifying a classic, I visited Moment’s shop on South Congress Ave. in Austin, Texas.

Then, to find out if EV swaps are really “soulless” like the skeptics say, I drove three of Moment’s finished builds: A Mercedes-Benz 280SL, a 1966 Jaguar E-Type, and a G-body Porsche 911 Carrera.

Davis’ first career was in the tech industry, but he’s a lifelong car guy who spent weekends tinkering in his garage and building relationships in the classic and hot rod communities. He still love cars of all types, but saw electrification as something new, exciting, and part of the future. Experience from his professional life combined with the passion in his personal life in 2017 when he formed Moment, and there’s a clear overlap between tech and cars. “Our team is mostly made up of either engineers from the tech industry who are passionate about cars or performance cars builders who are excited to work with these new drivetrains,” says Davis. “Everything we do is tracked in modern project management software…Progress is tracked with pictures, hours, descriptions, and detailed updates to the client the whole way through.”

While plenty of shops specialize in a fairly narrow range of makes and models, the goal with Moment from the beginning was being able to convert any classic car to electric power. So far, Moment has completed about four dozen builds, ranging from Porsche 356s and Alfa Romeo Spiders to Chevy Blazers and Toyota pickups. Being versatile was key since Davis knew the market for what they were doing was relatively small.

The technology, even less than a decade ago, was also limited. The first builds were, “and I hate saying this, mostly repurposed golf cart and forklift kind of stuff. It worked but was low-power and simplistic.” There were of course new EVs on the road in 2017, namely Teslas and Nissan Leafs, but the manufacturers wouldn’t sell their powertrains to anybody. The workaround was that as those Teslas and Nissans hit salvage yards, their drivetrains could be removed and repurposed. Even from wrecked cars, these were better than anything else that was available and became Moment’s preferred source of powertrains from later in 2017 until 2021. Then, more recently, as the rest of the new car industry has caught up, there are EV powertrains and components that are functionally equivalent, warrantied, and widely available. That’s what goes into Moment’s builds today.

The facility is located near the end of Austin’s trendy South Congress Ave., and one thing is striking from the moment you arrive there: Despite the ’60s and ’70s vehicles outside and all the cars in various states of assembly inside, the place is quiet. The floors are clean. All the tools you’d expect to find in a place that takes apart cars and puts them back together again are there, but so are wiring, diagrams, a humming 3D printer, electric motors, and batteries lining the workbenches. As for the cars, the sights and smells you expect from a jacked-up Austin-Healey 3000 with its hood wide open simply aren’t there. Neither is this Healey’s tall 6-cylinder engine, nor any drips of oil. In its place is a compact electric motor nestled under the tunnel where the four-speed gearbox used to be.

On the other side of the shop, a 1963 Corvette Split Window rests alongside a ’68 Mustang fastback. Both look like they just got back from a Pro Touring meet, but they’re electric, too. There are also a couple of 911s and an Alfa GTV, as well as several W113-generation (1963-71) Mercedes-Benz SLs. Moment has converted enough of these W113 builds that their process has gotten both quicker and cheaper. Which isn’t to say that any of their builds are quick or cheap. Each takes months, and the cost ranges from $50K–$150K, not including the donor car. Even so, Moment currently has a nine-month wait list.

The wide range of cars in the shop suggests that Moment has a wide range of customers, and they do. Many are traditional car collectors who “see what we do as a way to rejuvenate and enjoy one of their classics in a different way.” They also see clients who have long had an affinity for classic cars but for one reason or another “never had the confidence or desire to keep up with the maintenance,” Davis says. These could be people who inherited a classic car from an enthusiast relative and see electrification as a way to enjoy and preserve a car that’s been in the family, or it could simply be someone who fell in love with a classic and sees electrification the only way to realistically use and enjoy owning it. Other clients are simply very new to classic cars altogether. “They drive new cars and like the simplicity of them; they’re primarily EV owners. Then, they see a perfect old Mercedes or vintage pickup and literally fall in love, but then find out they can own one with a modern electric drivetrain.”

Builds like these, then, bring new people into the old car world. What’s more, they keep old cars out and about in regular use. Many of them might ordinarily sit and suffer neglect if they were left stock. Despite the massive changes and updates under the skin, Davis says “ultimately we’re about preserving these things. We want these cars to be driven, not sitting in the garage. We want to give someone the ability to just go out and go whenever they want.” There’s simply far less to worry about and check for than with a ’60s-era, carbureted gas engine. “In the end we’re putting cars back on the road, driving.” It’s hard to argue with that.

When someone brings a car in for conversion, Moment fully inspects everything and addresses any necessary fixes. “We aren’t a restoration shop, so if the car needs metal work, paint, or repair, we partner with other shops to handle that stage of the process.” Then, they de-ICE the car, removing the drivetrain and fuel systems.

What happens to the old engines? Many owners want to keep them. Many don’t. “We can try to sell them, but you’d be surprised how hard it is. I have a storage unit with far more of them than I expected.”

Next they 3D scan the car, mainly the engine bay, transmission tunnel and trunk to determine where all the new components and drivetrain will have to fit. One challenge is weight distribution, as they want to keep the balance and driving dynamics as close to the original design as possible. Another is simply where to fit everything, as the space under the lines of a ’60s sports car was never meant for things like rectilinear battery boxes. This effort often requires designing and test-fitting brackets, platforms, and mounts to hold everything in place. Meanwhile, the team figures out where to route the high voltage cabling and coolant lines. Understandably, when they’ve converted the same type of car a few times, like Mercedes 230/250/280SLs, the process gets quicker and easier.

After final assembly, Moment tests and tunes the car, sorting out everything from throttle response curves and thermal systems to squeaks, creaks, and rattles—these are still old cars, after all. After enough test miles and tweaking, the finished product goes to the customer, while any new parts created through the process go into a library of chassis-specific components to make future builds easier.

So, how does the finished product actually drive? Of the three electrified classics I’m driving during this visit, the Mercedes-Benz 280SL makes the most sense as a candidate for EV conversion. It’s not surprising to learn that more W113-generation (1963-71) SLs have gotten the Moment treatment than any other car.

The 2.8-liter, 180-hp, fuel-injected, single-cam six that powered this car out of Stuttgart in the ’60s is a fine engine. It’s smooth, stout, well-built. But it was never the star of the show. It doesn’t make a memorable noise. Nobody ever bought a 230/250/280SL for what was under the hood, and most U.S. buyers ordered theirs with an automatic, anyway. Instead, they bought it for the looks—arguably designer Paul Bracq’s magnum opus—as well as the clever “pagoda” hardtop, and the classy, comfortable interior. This was a car for leisurely cruising at moderate to high speed and looking good while doing it, and that’s still the main appeal of the W113 for classic car buyers today. What does an EV swap take away from that experience? Nothing, really. It arguably makes it better.

“I think if you went back to the Mercedes folks in 1967 and said you had this silent, smooth, powerful drivetrain, they’d probably think it was perfect for a car like this,” Marc says as we slide into the SL’s springy seats. And, from the driver’s side, the W113 platform and the electric motor complement each other well. It rides like a normal SL, and it steers like one. In fact, everything feels like the original, except, of course, for the much deeper reserves of power and torque, which push you forward no matter how fast you’re going. The way this example is geared makes low speed acceleration swift but not savage, while speeding up from 60-80 mph is accomplished surprisingly quickly. If any “soul” or “character” has left this SL, I’m not really missing it.

The E-Type, I think, is a tougher sell as an EV. Yes, there was an electric E at the royal wedding, and a U.K. company even makes a drop-in EV kit for Jag’s most famous sports car, but the original XK six-cylinder engine is one of the all-time greats. It powered beautiful cars and won major races for decades. It looks great. It sounds great. Its length and heft dictated the E-Type’s long, lithe, forward-hinged hood, and the twin exhaust pipes tucked under its tail are one of the E’s more distinguishing features. To take all that away, then, removes much of the car’s character, right? Well, yes, but not as much as you might expect.

Getting in, there’s no doubt you’re in an old Jag. The leather smells right. The signature toggle switches on the dash are all there. So are the gauges, except that some offer different read-outs. For the dial to the right of the speedo, which measures kilowatts but has been cleverly designed in the style of the original Smiths tachometer. The only obvious clue to the car’s alternative drivetrain on the inside are the simple up arrow, down arrow and P (Park) buttons where the shifter boot used to be. Some of the batteries reside under the luggage area, but you’d have to lift a panel to find them. On the outside, the only obvious clue is the lack of those exhaust pipes. Somewhat surprisingly, their absence doesn’t take anything away from the XKE’s famous good looks.

A bigger surprise is just how much this car feels like a good-old-fashioned gas-guzzling E-Type on the road. I was afraid it might drive like a twenty-first century roller skate cosplaying as old English sports car, but that’s not the case at all. The tail still squats and the nose still lifts slightly under hard acceleration. Under cornering, you still feel stiffening and flexing through the wood-rimmed steering wheel.

Despite the extra heft and all the batteries distributed throughout the platform, the rear brakes are still inboard as they were in period. Because this example is geared more for highway driving and passing, acceleration from a standstill isn’t startling, but it is immediate and, especially in the ’60s setting of the cabin, feels very quick. The package delivers about 300hp and 375 lb-ft to the Jaguar rear end via a carbon-fiber driveshaft. At higher speeds, rolling into the left lane for a quick squirt of acceleration to pass someone is completely effortless. It’s almost intoxicating, in that over-too-quickly, want-to-do-it-again kind of way. This would be a fantastic car on a short road trip. I did miss that legendary twin-cam six up front, but not as much as I thought I would. A couple of times I forgot about it completely.

Finally, of the three, the 911 Carrera gives the most uneasy first impression as an electrified classic. For 60 years now, the weight of a flat-six mounted in the back has been the most consistent part of a 911’s makeup. But not in this one. This car presents the heft of its batteries more noticeably than the other conversions, and it’s not the traditional distribution as the tail-heavy original. As a result of packaging requirements, Moment had to locate some of the batteries up front, occupying much of the front trunk between the headlights.

The driving experience, then, doesn’t hew to classic 911 dynamics. This car feels heavy, particularly in the steering. Even at high speed, working the steering wheel through twisty bits fires up your shoulder muscles. It’s a contrast to the normally light-on-their-feet, stock 911s of this period.

Notice I said heavy, not slow. Indeed the acceleration feels very quick, and the car very planted. Throwing it into a bend requires less bravery than tail-snappy 911s of yore. Traction and power are very easy to come by. And while it’s not as good as the music from an air-cooled six, the electric motor’s noise coming up the transmission tunnel from behind and between the seats is not unpleasant, and emits more of a growing mechanical whir than the high-pitched electric whine I was expecting.

Speaking of the transmission tunnel, what’s hiding underneath it is this EV Porsche’s party piece. The G50 five-speed that originally came in this car is a fantastic gearbox, so Moment kept it right where it was and adapted it to the new motor. It does take some getting used to—you only really need to accelerate from a stop in second gear (doing so in first is borderline violent and correspondingly brief) and around town or on country roads you can have almost all the fun you want in third or fourth, but it remains fun and satisfying to shift. Also, while you do have to use the clutch pedal to go from gear to gear, you don’t have to do anything with your left foot when you come to a stop because the gearbox isn’t hooked up to a constantly rotating ICE engine. No stalling uphill from a stoplight here.

Like the Jag, the Porsche sacrifices plenty through losing its ICE engine. But it gains plenty, too, and it certainly put a smile on this skeptic’s face.

EV swaps are not for everybody, but I can see why this type of conversion is getting more popular, and Davis sees the future in its as well. “At this point the only downside is cost and perhaps range, but both of these things will only get better over time.” Davis also foresees greater standardization across this corner of the industry, and even complete EV-conversion kits for certain vehicles in the near future, like components specifically designed for electrifying a Tri-Five Chevy or VW Beetle, to name a couple.

No matter what kind of emojis you’re posting when an EV conversion hits your feed, it’s hard to deny that the classic car industry is going through big, quick, interesting changes. Shops like Moment are not only driving those changes, but also keeping the hobby going, and even growing it.

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Carrol writes:

I replaced a bad driver’s side telescoping sun visor on a 1982 Corvette. The problem I had was that the little retainer clip that fits over the spring keeps breaking (I’ve gone thru 2-3 clips) as I tried to install it. It appears that the replacement clips are thin aluminum and break easily while the old one, which I was able to resurrect, is steel. I need to replace the sunvisor again, but I need good retainer clips. Any suggestions?

Sajeev answers:

I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest a workable replacement could be available at a hardware store, an industrial supply company (like Grainger), or one of thousands of online retailers on eBay or Amazon. All you need are some measurements from the old washer and a handy chart like this one from McMaster-Carr.

What you are looking for is called an “internal toothed lock washer” made of stainless steel, not aluminum. Stainless steel is significantly stronger, so it should hold that little spring nicely, and make your sun visor stay in its happy place against the windscreen.

So choose your hardware vendor, measure your current lock washer carefully, but feel free to buy a few different sizes if you have concerns about the accuracy of your measurements. The big concern is getting the correct outer diameter to fit into the C3’s windshield frame. The inner diameter likely won’t matter as much, because it gets crushed around the rod that holds the sun visor. Just get as close to the factory part and you should be good to go.

What say you, Hagerty Community?

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

***

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A properly running car is a finely tuned system of parts working in harmony. Any component, then, can make the difference between a running and driving machine and a coughing, spitting garage ornament. If one critical component is a bit persnickety, it often earns a bad reputation it may not deserve. If you know (or are) someone who’s into old cars, you probably know the love/hate affair with carburetors.

We all know the holy trinity of engine worship: Fuel, air, and spark. These three elements must exist in the right proportions for an engine to run. Because “holy quaternary” just doesn’t have the same ring to it, compression gets shoved off into the corner, to be discussed only by those who have ascended to a higher tier of diagnostics beliefs, like that guy with the long beard who is still remarkably adept at spark plug reading. He diagnosed a distributor gasket leak from across the parking lot once. I was there.

Maybe I’m misremembering, but it’s precisely that kind of guru mechanic people picture when want someone to work on their carburetor. It doesn’t take a wizard to have a great-running carbureted car, however. Just about anyone can have it. To get there and stay there takes a little bit of care, but the basics boil down to five things.

Use Clean, Non-Ethanol Fuel

Although ethanol-blended fuel does have big power potential, it is also the root of more than a few headaches for those of us with a vintage bent. Gasoline will evaporate at the temperatures most of us like to cruise in, and that means the gasoline disappears and leaves the residue of the ethanol behind. It clogs the multitude of precision passages that make a carburetor function. Most carb tuning and advice is rooted in pre-ethanol times, so even using jetting and setup advice can be tough, as ethanol fuel behaves differently compared to “pure” gasoline.

A Well-Tuned Choke

Listen to the arguments against carbs, and cold starts are oft cited as being a runaway victory for fuel injection. It’s a fair point; fuel injection has won the smooth-running game handily, but a well-tuned choke on a carb works really well considering how simple it is. After all, it carried us through when our hobby cars were simply daily drivers.

Thermostatic chokes often use a bimetallic coil, which is just two different metals bonded together that expand differently when heated or cooled. Pump the throttle once before starting the engine to set the choke, and the engine should start and set at a high idle. Consult your shop manual to get exact settings. Tuning a choke can be finicky, but when it’s all sorted, there is nothing quite like a smooth start-up on a crisp fall morning.

Happy Distributor

A professor of mine from college once told me “90 percent of your fuel problems are ignition.” People will be chasing “carb problems” for hours before realizing the damp spark plug that seems to be running too rich is actually just a plug getting weak spark or not firing at all. Keeping the ignition in top shape helps to keep many other components running smoothly—and it also assists with diagnostics for rough running.

Smooth Linkages

Binding linkages can make chokes stick and accelerator pumps function inconsistently. It’s wild to think that the carb’s exterior cleanliness is just as critical as its cleanliness inside. Road grime is attracted to oily or damp surfaces, and it only takes a small amount of oil mist from an open breather or leaky gasket to attract a surprising amount of junk, which will damage small seals or gum up finicky linkages.

Clean Air

It seems there are actually three sides to a carburetor: the fuel side, the air side, and the outside. Does that make sense? Maybe. Regardless, the air coming into an engine is the easiest pathway for all the stuff that should stay outside of an engine to get inside of it. Dirty throttle blades and intake manifolds can cause interesting problems in both carbureted and fuel-injected engines. All the delicate and small air passages that help keep carbs balanced and flowing can get clogged quickly. Keep an air filter on the intake, and your carb will be happy for a long time.

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There are few things as frustrating and dangerous as not being able to see the road you are driving on. Our beloved vintage rides do occasionally get caught in the rain, and especially if you are typically a fair weather cruiser in a vehicle that lacks modern wipers, that water can really put a damper on your vision. Luckily there are plenty of modern chemicals designed to help keep water off your windscreen, but do they all work the same, and is there one that works better than the rest?

Glass alone might be plenty smooth, but that does not mean it’s also hydrophobic. Water can still sheet up and cause all kinds of optical problems. Inclement weather often comes with dark skies, bright headlights, and the stress of just trying to survive the thunderdome of the roadways to get your beloved vintage ride home. Windshield wipers have advanced significantly over the years, but retrofitting modern wipers onto vintage cars has yet to catch on, so we are left figuring out other solutions to keep up.

Many years ago I was told that slicing a potato in half and rubbing it on the windshield would help water bead up and slide off. That tricked worked when I got caught in a storm and my motorcycle helmet visor was not shedding water fast enough to keep my vision clear. After that day I came to believe in hydrophobic coatings, the same ones that YouTube channel Project Farm just put to the test to see which is best.

The name recognition of Rain-X is hard to beat, but apparently the function of Rain-X is not nearly as unassailable. Of the nine different coatings tested, several had far better water shedding properties, but also came with finicky multi-step application process. That amount of prep work did seem to correlate with effectiveness when tested with a hose, though two wipes with some windshield washer fluid to simulate cleaning a windshield between storms and suddenly a few proved to be fairly delicate. Even more cleaning with car wash soap of bug and tar remover left all but four still shedding water like new.

Is this perfect real world testing? Not really, but it does give us some insight into a few products that can help us enjoy driving our vintage cars with more visibility. Personally, applying some type of hydrophobic coating to the windshield is part of my pre road trip checklist. Several of the brands across all price points in this test performed admirably, and buyers can make their call based on budget and how much rain their classic is likely to see.

Will these coatings making driving in the rain fun? Maybe not, but it can at least give us a chance at making it home safe and not missing our exit because that sign was just a green blob on the other side of the windshield right up until it wasn’t. Between keeping a windshield clean and using a water repellent like those mentioned in the video above, driving in the rain doesn’t have to be a horrible experience—but cleaning the car afterwards might still be.

And if you were trying to figure out what the car in the feature image is, it’s a 1957 Zundapp Janus. Kudos if you got it right.

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Adam writes:

Sajeev,

Thank you for your response (regarding the need for repair manuals)! I followed your directions exactly and also reviewed the newly arrived shop manual, and everything looked up to snuff. I checked the door wiring and also around the pedal assembly and couldn’t see any chafing, etc. and no wiggling of the wires in those areas—seemed to all check out fine. Meanwhile, at the same time, I also had an issue with the 4WD transfer case motor. The motor was binding, and sometimes it would go into 4WD and sometimes it would not, and it would rarely illuminate the 4WD light on the dash.

I took it to the dealer to have them look at the transfer case, as I wasn’t sure if it was an internal failure of the case, the transfer case motor, the switch, or relay. The dealership called and said it was the transfer case motor, so I told them to replace it. When I went to pay for it, they said:

“Oh, we noticed your power mirrors were not working. We checked and the fuse was blown, so we replaced it and its working normally now.”

I explained to them the trouble I’ve been having with the fuse and they said, “Well, it worked fine for us—we road tested the vehicle, ran all the power accessories, and it still works fine.” I’ve checked it daily since I got it back and the mirrors are still working. Although I do doubt my ability to replace a fuse, and doubt that I bought a batch of bad fuses. I’m going to try not to obsess about it. It did force me to spend the money on the shop manual while I could still get one cheaply. So it’s a win in that way. Thank you again for your help!

Sajeev concludes:

I am glad I could help … sort of? Armchair quarterbacking is a pitfall of this series, but I’d like to think this was a learning experience for many of us.

Your quandary points to something I learned years ago, something we tend to ignore: Our eyes often lie to us. Be it a match on a dating app or a fuse with a hairline fracture, the reality of the situation might not be accurately reflected in what’s before our eyes.

The fractured fuse above became my problem about 11 years ago. It took out the headlights of my UK-import Ford Sierra, but the untrained eye believed it still had a good fuse. Luckily, the Sierra is a famously easy-to-service vehicle, so I pulled the wiring harness at the headlight and tested for voltage. When I found no voltage, I replaced the fuse. Care to guess what happened?

We should do ourselves a favor and only test fuses with a multimeter and the exposed metal bits (video above) present in all (most?) fuses when installed in a fusebox. We may not always have a multimeter, but if one is handy, do not remove them and trust your eyeballs for an accurate decision.

What say you, Hagerty Community? Yank and look, or test with the proper tool?

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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Preserving and collecting automobiles has a fascinating side effect: Preserving and collecting all the of the other ephemera that surround our cars. The original sales brochures, shop manuals, and other promotional materials are often a fascinating window into another time. Then there are the promotional items that literally had windows cut into them so we could see the future. One such example was this Red Ram Hemi V-8 cutaway spotted on Facebook Marketplace by Barnfinds.com recently.

The engine is said to be part of promotional material that introduced the public to the idea of the Hemi engine and the combustion chamber shape that gave it that name. The 1950s saw pretty rapid innovation, and lots of manufacturers began to roll out overhead-valve V-8 models into production cars. The Hemi had not yet become the legend we know today, but it seems like someone knew what was on the horizon and kept this piece of memorabilia for the future.

The engine is sliced and diced to show various internal features that are nigh impossible to put eyes on when assembled any other way. Liberal use of a bandsaw aside, this model also has a motor tucked inside, and when the cord hanging out the back is plugged into a 110v wall outlet, a number of lights illuminate the inside and set the crankshaft in motion. The valvetrain cycle through is cool to see from the valve cover side, but to see the actual timing vs piston location is really something.

The seller claims this model is one of three and, per Don Garlits, the only one that is kinetic—the others were just stationary models with other chunks of the engine relieved for sight. That would be something worth researching more before putting in a bid or signing the check for the $22,000 asking price. The seller believes this to be one-of-one but there is evidence of at least one other moving cutaway that was used in a promotional film starring Groucho Marx.

The difficulty of making a clean and functional operating cutaway makes this a really cool bit of kit. That this one has survived over half a century only furthers the wow factor, and the idea that it should be enjoyed well into the future. If your garage or showroom needs something but you just couldn’t find the right thing, this could be it. Also be sure to ask about that cutaway transmission sitting just behind this engine. The seller says he has decided to include it with the sale price—in case you needed any more reason to check your bank account.

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The engine is considered the heart of a car, and while the analogy does work, it starts to fall apart once you get beyond the superficial. The human heart is a relatively boring necessity that is at its best operating with no interesting quirks, flutters, or rhythms. I don’t want my heart to have much personality. My engines on the other hand, well, those had better be interesting. That desire got me thinking about what defines the character so many of us seek from our power plants.

Engines are just a bunch of parts interacting in a way that produces motion. Over the years engineers have discovered ways to make engines more efficient, more powerful, and more reliable by fiddling with a number of factors. Consider each of the items below as a slider on a sound mixing board, able to be turned up or down, or on and off, and how every engine is unique in how these 10 factors are set on every engine out there.

Aspiration

How an engine breathes is critical to how it makes power. Naturally aspirated engine rely on the vacuum created as the engine rotates to draw the air and fuel into the cylinder. Forced induction pressurizes the intake and crams more air and fuel into the cylinders. Forced induction also affects throttle response—looking at you turbo lag—and sets other parameters that the engine must adhere to. In addition to initial responsiveness and power delivery, induction noise plays a huge role in an engine’s character—some can’t get enough of the whoosh a carb or individual runner throttle body setup provides, while the boost and purge of a tuned turbo setup is hard to ignore.

Camshaft profile

The camshaft determines the opening and closing of the valves that flow air and fuel through the combustion chamber. When and how much the valve opens can radically change the behavior of an engine. Opening the valve more can allow more flow through, and thus a higher power potential, but it takes time to open and close the valve. Modern engines are tight enough tolerance that if a vlave is open when it should not be the piston will hit it and that is a bad day. Even making adjustments within that window can radically change the power delivery of an engine. Big camshafts have distinct sounds and often move the peak horsepower high in the engine RPM range, while smaller cams enable smoother power at low rpm but lack the lope that turns heads when you arrive at a cruise night.

Cylinder count

How many cylinders do you need? How many do you want? The answer is often different to those two questions, and that’s okay. A V-8 just has something unique about it that a V-6 just can’t live up to, and an inline-6 charms in a way that an inline-4 can’t. More cylinders often means smoother running since the power pulses on the crankshaft are closer together throughout a rotation. Cylinder count also impacts how the intake and exhaust are routed, creating the signature sounds that accompany many popular platforms but also limiting or boosting performance based on flow characteristics. While more cylinders often run smoother and have more linear power delivery compared to fewer cylinders, 48 might be too many.

Displacement

How big of an engine do you want? More accurately, how big do you want the inside of your engine to be? The cumulative swept volume of the cylinders is how we determine the displacement of an engine, and that also aids in determining a lot of the character. Larger engines often have a higher power potential because they can pull in, burn, and exhaust more air and fuel on their own. Larger displacement also means larger and therefore heavier pistons, which can make for a slower-revving engine.

Crankshaft

The crankshaft converts the reciprocating motion of the pistons into continuous rotary motion we can use, but not all of them are built the same. Many V-8 Ferraris, along with the most recent Mustang GT350 and Corvette Z06 feature flat-plane crankshafts, which facilitate higher and quicker revving compared to a cross-plane crankshaft, which is heavier due to the counterweights required to keep everything in balance. A crossplane design tends to help low-end torque though, something far more usable in a street-focused car.

Cylinder arrangment

With the parameters above picked, it’s now time to decide how you want the engine to be packaged. Anything from boring or pretty wild is available here. From horizontally opposed to a W arrangement that sets up multiple banks on tight angles, there is no end to the options. That said, there are reasons V and inline arrangements dominate production these days. Ease of production and durability win out, but these also tend to be fairly efficient designs.

Compression

Air and fuel will create a small amount of power if burned uncompressed, but that power is fractional compared to compressing the mixture before applying spark. When the fuel burns, it expands and acts on the piston to create power. Achieving maximum squeeze means maximum power, but be careful: Compressing air and fuel too much can cause detonation if it lights off before the spark plug arcs. Low compression engines tend to be slower revving, while high compression lends itself to being snappy but often requires an adjustment to the…

Fuel type

There are four popular octane levels available at most self-service stations: 91, 89, 87, and diesel. Fortunate states get 93, too. The octane rating roughly correlates to the fuel’s resistance to detonation. Diesel fuel is compression ignition rather than spark ignition, so that doesn’t really have an octane rating, but instead uses a cetane rating to describe the fuel’s qualities.

Fuel delivery

How the fuel gets into the engine is also something that has a lot of effects. The smooth pickup and running of fuel injection can be quite nice, but carburetors still get the job done and when properly tuned can be smooth and powerful. So long as the fuel is atomized well, it’ll burn right, but it’s the adjustable choke point for the air that can really affect feel. That’s why the last item is…

Throttle activation

The earliest cars didn’t even have a throttle as we know it today. Engines ran wide open and a clutch and transmission allowed that to be turned into useful power. As engine design improved it became necessary for driver-controlled throttles. Mechanical linkages like rods, levers, and cables were popular until electronics took over engine controls and drive-by-wire became the norm. A physical connection to an engine can be felt be someone with a well-calibrated foot, but drive-by-wire has its strong points, as there will basically never be slop in the linkage and a few clicks on a laptop can tune throttle response.

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We are running low on questions for this series, so for the sake of all readers, put your thinking cap on and send me an automotive question at pistonslap@hagerty.com.

Charles writes:

Hi Sajeev,

I enjoy your contributions to Hagerty. I am in Alberta, Canada, and I need to replace the driver and passenger door handles of my 2008 Lincoln MKX. Where can I get compatible or a used ones?

On mine, the silver is peeling and my wife doesn’t want to drive the vehicle. I have tried twice on Amazon, but the wrong items were sent.

Sajeev answers:

Your Lincoln Mark X—sorry, MKX—shares door handles the Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan, Lincoln MKZ, and probably even more Ford products. What was wrong with the ones from Amazon? Did they look right and just didn’t fit correctly?

Charles answers:

Thanks for the response, Amazon did not have the driver and passenger inner handles. 

Sajeev concludes:

Ah, that narrows down the problem: Inside door handles, not outside! That changes everything, as the MKX does not share door handles with the Ford cars I mentioned. Instead, they interchange with the Edge SUV, its sister ship from Ford.

From what I see online, part number SET-REPF462185C gets you a pair of aftermarket door handles that work. If you bought these and they did not fit, try from another vendor using the Google search I made in the above link. Using eBay might also help. But what if it does not?

Buy them used, either from a junkyard in Canada or from a used parts vendor on eBay. It looks like the handles on the rear doors interchange, so you can likely get a set of (barely used) rear ones and slap them up front. There’s another perk to buying used door handles from the rear doors of an MKX or Edge, and that’s worthy of some bonus content.

Bonus! A Piston Slap Nugget of Wisdom

Let’s talk about quality, as I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve preferred to buy used OEM parts in lieu of new aftermarket bits. There’s a chance that the quality of new aftermarket bits are just as good as their factory counterparts, as I once bought a Duralast (Autozone’s house brand) switch only to find a Motorcraft (Ford) part in the box. But that’s the outlier in a general trend.

Low prices are often there for a good reason. And these aftermarket Ford Edge/Lincoln MKX door handles remind me of the quality issues present in aftermarket replacement chrome grilles for modern cars and trucks. These chromey-plasticky bits rarely last as long as the factory plasti-chrome grilles. (Not that the factory stuff lasts long enough, as manufacturers don’t make ’em like they used to in that regard.)

It’s hard to know for sure, but for body parts like door handles, I defer to my experience with aftermarket chrome grilles. Going to a local junkyard will likely net you a set of OEM Ford door handles (from the rear doors of a Ford Edge) for the same price as the aforementioned aftermarket replacements. And that money is better spent, because they will likely last longer.

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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While it may seem like the car has been unchanged for decades at this point, with only bold new shades of gray and larger screens creating selling points and “value” for would-be buyers, the fact of the matter is there has been so much innovation over the years. However, much of it is taken for granted because just about every driver on the road today has little understanding of just how far the automobile has come. To provide a little perspective, here are six parts of a car that were revolutionary when they first debuted, but are now so common that they go entirely unnoticed.

Hydraulic lifters

The way a lifter works by interacting with a camshaft to transform rotary movement into reciprocating movement is an under-appreciated aspect of an engine in my opinion. The forces, tolerances, and speeds involved are often difficult to grasp. Tolerances between the pushrod, rocker arm, and valve stem are tight enough that there needs to be a part that can take up the expansion and contraction that comes with the difference between cold and running temperatures.

Hydraulic lifters take that space up to help keep wear down and also make for a smoother and quieter-running engine. They are powered by the oil pump and hold oil pressure in them. Some lifters can leak down while in storage and make quite the clatter on startup until oil pressure builds fully. It is a price worth paying for not having to get the feeler gauges out every few oil changes.

Insert bearings

The many rotating parts inside an engine all need some type of bearing surface to maintain proper friction or lack thereof. When cars were overbuilt, it was common to pour the bearings into the block and connecting rods, making large and relatively soft bearings once machined to final dimension. It’s a time-consuming process though, and requires a lot more material than a comparable insert bearing.

The insert bearing is a much thinner shell of similar material that snaps into the engine block to create the perfect surface for the crankshaft to spin in. They’re also much easier to assemble than poured bearings, which is always appreciated.

Tubeless tires

Modern tires are amazing; More durable with more traction than sometimes seems physically possible. The durability of a tire with no inner tube is a given these days, but certainly wasn’t always. Tubeless tires have been the standard since the mid-1950s, though the idea had been attempted earlier than that. The materials and design did not really work until the mid-1940s. The fact that tubeless tires only took a decade to become standard should say a lot.

Platinum spark plugs

Platinum and other rare earth materials changed the ignition world with their durability. Previously, the metal of choice was copper, which would erode from the arc and would often wear out in just a few years of regular driving. Platinum or iridium plugs, on the other hand, can last up to 100,000 miles.

Longer service intervals, and to a point separating the driver and mechanic into two people, were a side effect of better materials and processes being used during production. Modern cars can go tens of thousands of miles without even opening the hood, and that is mainly thanks to modern ignition systems and oils.

Cruise control

The concept of a self-driving car has likely been around since the second drive of the first car, although even a century later, that has proved to be a difficult problem to solve. However, engineers were able to at least remove one part of the equation and make long drives easier by having the vehicle hold speed on its own.

Early automobiles like the Model T Ford have cruise control baked in by how the machine operates; the throttle is a lever on the steering column that does not return to idle unless the driver moves it. Now systems incorporate a rife of sensors that not only hold the throttle input steady but also match that to vehicle speed and engine load which can make for a much more relaxing road trip.

With how interconnected the systems of modern cars are, cruise control is a matter of software today, not hardware. That usually makes it cheaper to incorporate on cars, which is why it’s now standard pretty much across the board. Once a luxury, now commonplace.

Disc brakes

Brakes are all about the relationship between friction and heat. More friction makes for quicker stopping but also creates more heat that needs to be dissipated. The wooden block pressed against a steel-rimmed wheel didn’t create a ton of friction, but it was better than nothing. Drum brakes were a massive step up, but disc brakes are the clear winner when it comes to balancing the two forces noted above. With modern materials, we have continued to evolve the design to the point that disc brakes are the standard on everything from economy cars to race cars at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

There are certainly more, so tell us what you think is an amazing piece of technology that often gets overshadowed in modern cars. Leave your favorite in the comments below.

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Plenty of car parts have an effect on the handling and ride characteristics, but the damper is critical in a properly functioning suspension. We all know the basic premise: A piston moves in a pressurized cylinder to help control compression and rebound, but do you really know what’s inside or how it’s built? Let’s take a look inside the Bilstein factory in Germany and find out.

The plant employs 180 workers and manufactures a whole range of products that start as raw materials before they are sorted and distributed within the building to various stations for processing. The facility is large enough to handle the entire process of turning raw materials into finished pieces, but too small to store many finished parts. That means delivery and pickup operations happen five times a day to keep everything running smoothly.

The assembly line is broken into three parts: pre-assembly, main assembly, and final, before finished parts head out the door to the warehouse. The pre-assembly area is where a lot of the dirty work gets done, including welding and machining to build sub-assemblies that will be fit together as they move through the process. Before that can happen, some testing is required, though: a special machine tests the freshly-welded damper tubes by filling them with helium. A green light tells the technician that the part can move forward, but if the part fails the test by leaking, the testing machine itself removes the piece to eliminate the chance that a bad part would end up in assembly.

There is no shortage of high-tech equipment to handle a lot of the plant’s operations, but there’s plenty of human presence, too. Bilstein staff visually inspect pieces between steps and ensure the product is as expected. It’s also human hands that tackle the delicate work of assembling the shim stack, or the small, precision, washer-like pieces that set the characteristics of the damper and how it flows fluid during use. Each type of damper has its own “recipe” for the shim stack and that means it is easier for a person to assemble as they can adapt to changes more quickly than a machine.

The final step is applying the recognizable yellow paint. The paint line is comprised of seven different steps that vary from washing off any oil residue from the filling just one step prior, to drying and ensuring the paint is fully cured before the final touches.

This detailed process highlights just how complex many of the pieces of our cars can be. Getting the massive assembly of parts we call vehicles to operate properly is very intricate business, and nothing shows that as much as looking at the effort that goes into making just one part of the thousands required.

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Adam writes:

Sajeev,

I have a 2011 Ford Ranger Super Cab 4×4 4.0 Sport with 52,000 miles on it. I bought it in 2014 with 7000 miles, so I know its history pretty well. Recently, the power mirrors stopped working. I checked the fuse, and the 5 amp was burned out. I replaced the fuse, and the power mirror started to work again. However, when I started up the truck, I immediately heard the 5 amp fuse blow again.

I checked, and it looks like the power mirrors are the only thing on the circuit, per the wiring diagram on the Internet, so I know I have to take that with a grain of salt. I decided to unplug the power mirror switch and replace the fuse. I thought the switch could be the cause. When I went to get back in the truck (the fuse box is on the passenger side footwell) I swear I heard it blow again as soon as I opened the driver’s door.

Do you have any suggestions on how I could track down this issue? I have Googled several videos, but most find dead shorts like this due to body damage or a wiring harness that was compromised due to corrosion or something really wild.

I saw a YouTube video on the South Main Auto channel where the fuse kept blowing on an Altima and after replacing the throttle body. A new fuse box and it was brought to him to replace the ECM. He decided to run down the wiring and traced it down a comprised wire in the cowl. Apparently, the factory did not clip in the wiring harness, and it was resting on the wiper armature and eventually cut through the one wire that controlled the throttle body.

Besides something crazy like that, any thoughts of what it could be?

Thank you,

Adam

P.S. I do have an official 2011 Ford Ranger Work Shop Manual and Wiring Diagram I ordered off of eBay last night.

Sajeev answers:

No, that wiring issue you saw on YouTube is not a “crazy” thing to happen. A short to ground fault is likely your issue, but before we go there, I suggest wiring problems are downright commonplace with modern cars.

There are plenty of fail points in a modern supply chain, so you have to be ready for anything. The factory can forget to fully push in a retainer, install a clip, etc., which eventually causes a wire to chafe on something else. Or perhaps a wiring harness vendor can forget to add said clip or retainer at a specific location? Sometimes the automaker even “forgets” to design it into the wiring harness in the first place!

This is why I am glad you bought the shop manual and wiring diagrams, since you absolutely need them. And since this might one day apply to my 2011 Ford Ranger, I dug into my wiring diagram to see what should be done. At least in theory.

Page 124-1 suggests you need to check a BR-RD wire (Brown with a Red stripe) from the fuse box, inspecting its entire length for a problem. The first connector (C527) to check for damage is the one at the switch that you already disconnected, so it’s probably not your issue. But look at the condition of the BR-RD wire at the plug, and examine the harness for signs of damage.

The second connection for the BR-RD wire at C210, inside the dash, above the pedal assembly. The BR-RD wire at C210 is the first pin in the harness. (Look at page 150-26 of the manual to see what I see). Inspect and disconnect C210 and test again. This is also a good time to note there are better tools for testing a short to ground than a handful of new fuses.

This video will get you the rest of the way, but usually a short to ground happens when accident damage repair, aftermarket parts, or general sloppiness in labor causes a wire to wind up in a place it doesn’t belong. Best of luck to you, though it should be quite easy in a vehicle this simple.

Bonus! A Piston Slap Nugget of Wisdom

YouTube is a great motivator and educator, but nobody ever pulls up wiring diagrams to show you wire colors and locations of where you need to go. I mean nobody. Who would be that detail oriented in a YouTube video?

Well, except for this dork who can’t even hold a phone while making a video. What an amateur!

Bottom line: Use Facebook Groups, YouTube Videos, and even car forums for the advice to set you in the right direction. But when its your turn at the problem, getting factory shop manuals and ESPECIALLY wiring diagrams are mandatory for any do-it-yourselfer. They aren’t cheap, but they pay for themselves after a few repairs on most any vehicle in the last 30-40 years.

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

***

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There are a lot of ways to get things done when working on project cars, but few methods are as handy as leveraging heat to do work for you. Whether disassembling crusty things or creating new pieces by joining metal with the heat of an electric arc, the judicious use of heat can unlock new avenues and techniques of solving common problems faced by DIY enthusiasts everywhere.

First off, let’s make something clear: We aren’t really talking about heat itself in most of these, we are talking about the powers of temperature differential. It’s that one part heated or cooled to a temperature different than the other parts creates advantages for the task at hand. For instance, it’s not the mere fact that the bolt is hot that helps you, it’s that the material of that bolt expands when heated. But we are getting ahead of ourselves: Here are five ways heat can help unlock your superpowers in the garage.

To Diagnose

There are a lot of moving parts in an automobile. Friction is the universal enemy of almost all of them. When friction starts winning the battle, it often shows in the form of heat buildup. This is also true for electrical connections and relays too. When something doesn’t feel right even though it all passes visual inspection, it is easy to start poking around and seeing what is warm. A prime example is diagnosing wheel bearings on trailers.

Small infrared heat guns are a really handy tool now that the prices are nearing novelty purchase territory. Even just feeling things by hand can be telling sometimes, but using non-touch methods allows much more capability, as you would burn the heck out of your hand if you wanted to confirm if a particular cylinder was running right by checking header temp. There’s a tool for every job.

To Break Corrosion

Cars are built from a mulitude of different materials. In modern manufacturing, the usage of appropriate fasteners and hardware is figured out during the design process to ensure that they will not react adversely with others in the assembly. We often aren’t working on vehicles straight off the line though, and the facts of life tell us that everything corrodes, it’s just that some things resist it better.

For rusted hardware, heat helps break the bonds between that surface corrosion and the base metal, allowing things to move freely again. To prove the point made earlier about temperature differential, those who have the ability to freeze hardware rapidly know that can be just as powerful as an oxy-acetylene torch. The key to making it work is that the subject metals expand or contract with big swings in temperature. It works for breaking the bonds of corrosion but we can also leverage that fact…

To Aid in Assembly

The other day I needed to press eight bronze valve guides into two aluminum cylinder heads. The setup instructions for the parts called for .0015″ to .0025″ press fit, and with everything prepared and reamed to size, the guides were put in the freezer overnight and the heads were put in the toaster over at 200 degrees for 20 minutes. I used a special punch to align the guide and took light taps with a hammer to set them home. When the metals normalized to the 60-degree garage temps, everything was pressed and secured solidly.

The exact physics of it are a bit murky to me yet, but luckily you or I don’t need to understand that to know exactly what to expect from heating things. Thermal expansion coefficients can be looked up in resource materials like Machinery’s Handbook, or the internet—whichever is more handy.

To Add or Remove Hardness

The materials we work with are fascinating when you get down to it. Even as at-home mechanics, we have the power to alter the properties and behaviors of steel or aluminum. This can be great for making tools, fabricating, or even reusing parts. Annealing a sheet of aluminum makes it much easier to form, and also works for copper gaskets or washers to help make them a little more malleable and thus seal small imperfections better. The process involves heating to high temperatures then cooling either rapidly or slowly and controlled in a heat sink material like sand.

To Weld

Add enough heat to a part or material and it will likely liquify. Doing so in a very controlled method with the addition of a filler material gives the ability to create a strong bond between what was formerly two different parts. Welding is a garage superpower that comes with great responsibility—mainly that we be realistic about how good we are at it. A great weld is extremely solid and strong, but a mediocre or bad weld is downright dangerous in the wrong spot or place. Know the limits of your skills, machine, and materials in order to utilize welding in the most effective way possible.

Heat is a superpower in the garage that we can use for all these things, and quite a few more. There are a multitude of methods to add or subtract heat which range from totally normal to unconventional, but they’re all effective. Regardless of what method you use, know that heat can be your best friend if you know how to use it.

***

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In the last seven decades, General Motors has bestowed 113 million small-block V-8 engines upon us—nearly one per American household. Given this engine’s phenomenal success, it’s no surprise that its fundamental architecture and pushrod-actuated, two-valve technology have been stretched and transformed into ambitious projects far exceeding original displacements and cylinder count. A few of these engines have been featured in high-profile builds or found their way into boats or airplanes, but all of them displayed serious ingenuity.

V-12s Then and Now

After running Andy Granatelli’s Indy racing engine program and then collaborating with Carroll Shelby for several years, Ryan Falconer opened his own shop in Culver City, California, in 1966. That year, the Ford Racing V-8 he built powered Graham Hill to an Indy 500 victory. In 2011, Falconer relocated to Chino Valley, Arizona, where this 83-year-old motor maestro is still at it.

Falconer unveiled his V-12, based on the first-generation Chevy small-block V-8, back in 1990. A Corvette powered by this engine topped 200 mph, and another Falconer V-12 propelled the Thunder Mustang, a ¾-scale P-51 aircraft. Prices started at $85,000.

Falconer retained Chevy’s 4.40-inch bore spacing, single camshaft, and pushrod-operated two valves per cylinder. His block and heads were cast aluminum, limiting weight to 520 pounds. This V-12’s crankshaft was machined from a chunk of billet steel and secured in place by a girdle incorporating all seven main bearing caps. A few of Falconer’s engines were supercharged or turbocharged, and dry-sump lubrication was also available. Displacements ranged from 8.6 to 9.8 liters, with naturally aspirated power outputs up to 640 hp at 4500 rpm. One supercharged 8.2-liter V-12 produced nearly 1000 hp in a marine application.

In addition to their power potential, every V-12 has perfect primary and secondary harmonic balance. The only flaw in V-12s descending from 90-degree V-8s is their unequal firing intervals. Instead of a power pulse every 60 degrees of crank rotation, the cylinders light off every 30 or 90 degrees. The Dodge Viper’s V-10 also suffered from this fault, though it never stunted that rabblerouser’s personality. Of course, GM understood the virtues of a 60-degree bank angle, which is why that arrangement was used in V-12–powered GMC trucks in the 1960s.

Over 35 years, Falconer built and sold 55 of his V-12s for auto, marine, and aircraft applications. Currently, he’s focused on selling the Falconer L6, a 5.0-liter DOHC 24-valve inline-six originally built by GM for motorsports.

The V-12 from Down Under

Proving that excellence can have global reach, two Australian entrepreneurs have taken up where Falconer left off. In 2018, Matt and Shane Corish’s Race Cast Engineering in Melbourne began offering V-12s based on GM’s fourth-generation small-block LS V-8. This March, one of their engines sparkled at Detroit’s Autorama under the hood of the TwelveAir sports coupe built by Kindig-It Design of Salt Lake City, Utah. Owners Dave and Tracey Maxwell, of Saltsburg, Pennsylvania, carted home the $10,000 Ridler award won by their TwelveAir creation.

Shane Corish notes, “GM’s superb small-block V-8 provided the perfect starting point for our V-12.” Race Cast uses modern 3D printing technology to cast its blocks in aluminum or iron. (The latter is preferable for boosted applications.) While standard GM 4.40-inch bore spacing is maintained, extra head bolts have been added for improved durability, and the sides of the cast aluminum oil pan are a full inch thick to increase this V-12’s longitudinal stiffness. A Haltech Nexus electronic control unit runs the ignition and fuel injection, while induction air flow is regulated by a standard GM throttle body.

The Aussie V-12s are available as a $49,300 engine builder’s kit, with the block, heads, crankshaft, camshaft, and gaskets included. A smaller-bore aluminum block can be had for an additional $5000.  Power outputs range from 750 hp in the base naturally aspirated 9.5-liter (580-cubic-inch) V-12 up to 1000-plus hp with a 3.90-inch stroke that increases displacement to 9.9-liters (607 cubic inches). Consider this merely the starting point, because Race Cast’s customers have begun toying with boosted engines. One has a quad-turbo build under way, and another has added a pair of Magnuson superchargers.

Small-Block–Based V-16s

Around 2000, GM realized that clever engineering could double its small-block V-8 into a viable V-16. In 2003, the Cadillac Sixteen concept bowed as the center piece of that division’s Art and Science initiative. This effort to nudge Cadillac’s prestige upward evoked the V-16 limos the brand sold from 1929 through 1937.

Tom Stephens, GM’s powertrain operations vice president, guided the XV16’s design and development with an eye toward production. Prototype castings were sourced in Germany, and Katech Performance, the Corvette racing program’s venerable partner, conducted the dyno testing. The goal was a nice round 1000 horsepower and 1000 lb-ft of torque. To reach these lofty heights, the 6.2-liter LS3 V-8’s bore and stroke were both increased 6mm, yielding a 13.6-liter/830-cubic-inch V-16 that weighed a reasonable 695 pounds.

In addition to batting 1000 in output, GM’s XV16 could run on regular fuel and featured “displacement on demand,” which allowed it to cruise on as few as four cylinders. Given full boot, it was allegedly capable of smoking the rear tires of a GMC Yukon durability test vehicle … in three gears.

Unfortunately, GM’s fortunes turned downward shortly after the Sixteen’s arrival. Imports thrived at the domestic brands’ expense. What GM needed more than a Rolls or Bentley beater was a better Chevy Cavalier to fight entry-level Japanese cars. In mid-2009, GM filed for bankruptcy, acknowledging debts twice its assets. By then the remarkable XV16 was but a fond memory.

Another Unhappy Ending

At two 2017 Dubai International motor shows, a budding enterprise called Devel unveiled a sports car prototype called the Devel SIXTEEN with over-the-moon aspirations. Its powerplant was said to be a 12.3-liter V-16 equipped with four turbochargers, boosting output over 5000 horsepower while producing 3757 lb-ft of torque.

The feeling, according to Devel, was that of a road-going jet fighter with a 300-mph top speed. While the flagship car was not intended for road use and no price was attached to it, two additional versions were also planned for production: a $1.6-million 2000-hp V-8 edition and a $1.8-million quad-turbo V-16 delivering 4000 horsepower.

According to Devel boss Rashid Al-Attari, the SIXTEEN’s molded carbon-fiber body would be provided by the Italian coachbuilder Manifattura Automobili, and Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus in New York would construct the space frame chassis. He also credited Steve Morris Engines, a firm located in Muskegon, Michigan, as the engine supplier.

SME has been in business since 2010. Boss Morris filled us in with a few details: “We built and tested a prototype engine which shared the 4.40-inch bore center dimension and basic configuration of GM’s Gen III LS small-block V-8. With a mild camshaft and 20 psi of boost, it produced 3006 horsepower. With 30 psi of boost, it topped 4000 horsepower. Upped to 36 psi, it made 4515 hp, which was all our dynamometer could handle. More than 5000 horsepower was definitely possible here.”

There is video footage of Devels running 100-or-so-mph on test tracks but those prototypes were fitted with Corvette V-8s, not the anticipated V-16. Notes Morris, “Our experimental engine has never been fitted to a car. Unfortunately, Devel seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. From our engine-development perspective, the project ended the same year it began—2017.”

While Devel’s V-16 stretch appears to be unrealistically ambitious, let us ponder two alternatives. The Corvette ZR1 due later this year will build on the Z06’s LT6 5.5-liter DOHC 32-valve V-8 by adding two turbochargers and intercoolers. That new LT7 small-block will bring an estimated 850 hp to the party.

And to all the wildly creative engineers in the audience, we suggest you aim your most advanced CAD/CAM weapons at what we’ll code name LT12 and LT16: engines rising out of the inherent greatness of the Corvette’s LT7 V-8. An 8.2-liter V-12 should produce 1300 hp, while the quad-turbo 10.9-liter V-16 should make 1700 hp … without straining. All the horsepower addicts pondering Devel worship will surely prefer these heavenly alternatives.

***

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I’ve made many references over the past 18 months to my back issues. It’s nothing acute—no smoking-gun bulged discs showing up on the MRI—just the usual 65-year-old-man-stuff of easily-triggered low back pain and sciatica. But it’s annoying as hell.

A four-month-long stint of physical therapy to strengthen my core has helped enormously, allowing me to reach the point where I was able to do all that wrenching on the recently-purchased Nissan Armada without reinjuring myself. However, I feel like I’m always one bad decision away from a relapse, so I try not to make those bad decisions. I lift very little without help (as difficult as that is when you’re used to being a lone wolf working by yourself in the garage), and I don’t yank on things when I’m in a bent or crouched position.

The winter/summer wheel swap has become a bellwether for me—e.g., if I can’t do this, I can’t do anything. When my back issues reemerged in 2022, the combination of rolling a floor jack, skooching down to properly position it under the car, working the jack handle to raise it, cracking the lug nuts, dismounting and mounting the wheels, and using a torque wrench in a bent-over position was difficult enough that I was beginning to think that this part of my life might be over. Fortunately, there are back-saving tricks that allow me to cruise through wheel-swapping. Yeah, I know, this sounds like that “one weird trick” online clickbait. But trust me.

First, let me offer a warning that is crucially important. My college physics professor was killed when the car he was working on fell on him. That’s all the more tragic considering he was my mechanics professor, which, in addition to “mechanics” applying to both the physics as well as to working on cars, has the unbearable irony that mechanics is the study of how physical objects move in response to forces on them, and part of mechanics is “statics,” which analyzes the forces on stationary objects that keep them from moving. Ever since that horrible tragedy, I have been assiduously careful never to work under a car that isn’t properly supported by jack stands and a floor jack as backup. Swapping wheels is a gray area where many folks argue that they’re not technically under the car, so they feel that they can jack up one wheel without taking the time to set that corner of the car on jack stands. I see garages and tire-change shops do this all the time. I’ll admit that there have been times when I’ve done it myself, but in what I describe below, it’s absolutely imperative that you support the car on stands, because there’s no question that part of you is under the car, and you don’t want to get your legs crushed if the jack slips.

I’ve identified four aspects of wheel-swapping that are problematic in my AARP years. I’ll address them each below.

Moving the wheels

I keep the off-season wheels for both my and my wife’s daily driver under the back porch, which is on the opposite side of the house from the garage. Both are slightly downhill from street level. So wheel-swapping both cars requires rolling eight wheels up and down the path a total of 16 times. This bending-while-rolling effort eventually triggers back pain. For a while I was asking my kids to do it for me while I grumbled, “You mean I can’t even do this?” but I found that by keeping my back straight and doing a Groucho-Marx-like duck walk (for those old enough to know the reference), I can keep my dignity and move them myself.

Jacking up the car

I have a mid-rise lift, but it’s usually not worth using it for a simple wheel swap. In the first place, there’s always another car parked over it, often in mid-project. Plus, it takes time to position a car on the mid-rise. The vintage cars get lifted by their frames, which allows a lot of slop in their placement, but it’s difficult to lift my daily-driver 2003 5 Series BMW by anything but the jacking points on the rocker panels, and there’s perhaps two inches of positioning leeway for the lift’s arms and sliding jack pads to be able to reach all four. Plus, as I’ll get to below, the low-back-pain key to all this is keeping the car as close to the floor as possible, so the added height capability of the lift is a detriment, not an advantage.

That means that I swap wheels the old-school way—on the garage floor with a floor jack. In the past, I’d raise the nose of the car by putting the jack in the middle of the front subframe, swap both front wheels, then do the same in the back, but for back-pain reasons, it’s easier for me to do one wheel at a time and use the jack points at the corners. That way I don’t need to crouch down to get eyeballs on where the floor jack is contacting a point deep under the car.

Using the jacking points on the corners of the wheel wells has the added advantage that the lever arm of the floor jack is well-clear of the body of the car, which lets me pump it up and down using my foot. This is another big wear-and-tear savings on my back. I can also do this if I use my long-reach floor jack on the middle of the front subframe, but it probably weighs four times as much as my small aluminum jack.

The back-saving key is to raise the wheel just enough to set the corner of the car on a jack stand and swap it. Don’t put the car up any higher than it needs to be.

Loosening the lug nuts

Before you jack up the wheel, if you don’t have an impact wrench, you need to crack the lug nuts the old-fashioned way with a breaker bar. By all means, save your back by putting one foot on the end of the breaker bar and standing on it, but be careful not to lose your balance and twist funny when it lets go. An air-driven or electric impact wrench is a major back-saver, as you can position yourself directly in front of the wheel and zip the nuts off. Leave one nut on finger-tight.

Finally, the “one weird trick.” When you mount or dismount the wheel, don’t ever lift it with your hands, arms, and back—lift it instead with your knees and legs. With the corner of the car safely supported by a jack stand, sit directly in front of the wheel and slide your legs around it. Then slide your feet toward you and raise your knees until some part of your legs contact the tire. It could be your shins, knees, or thighs. Whatever feels comfortable to you. Loosen the last lug nut and tip the wheel onto your legs. Then slide your feet forward, lower your knees, and roll the wheel onto the floor.

Removal is easy because you have gravity working for you. “The trick” is far more important on installation—roll the wheel onto your legs and pull your feet toward you to raise your knees to get it onto the hub. If the hub has studs, rotate the hub or the wheel to get them through the holes. It’s a little tricker if the hub has threaded holes and the studs are part of the lug nuts. Most hubs have a raised ring in the center that the bore in the wheel sits on. You need to use your knees to maneuver the wheel onto it, then rotate it to line up the holes and spin the nuts on.

Use your foot on the torque wrench

Get the lug nuts seated with a ratchet wrench. If you have an impact wrench, you can put it on its lowest setting and give a quick blip of the trigger to snug each nut down. Then lower the car, set a torque wrench to the appropriate setting, and use your foot instead of your back to torque the nuts down. You can hear and feel the click of the torque wrench just as easily as if it’s in your hands. You still need to bend down to move the torque wrench from lug nut to lug nut, and with five per wheel, four wheels, two cars, even this needs to be done with care if your back is sensitive, but it’s still way less wear-and-tear than forcing your upper body to crank the torque wrench.

Although I didn’t have to swap seasonal wheels on the Armada, I did have to pull the front wheels off and put them back on to do the front struts. They’re 20-inch wheels, a full three inches bigger than anything else I’ve ever owned. Using these steps, I got them off and on again without so much as a sidelong glance from my back.

I hope some of you find this as helpful as I have.

Dealing with those four transmissions under the porch, though, is another matter.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

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I never expected a rambling notion I published over a decade ago could have this much staying power. But we’re indeed talking about upgrading an analog car phone with digital guts in the year 2024, and the person behind it shares his efforts across platforms for creators (like GitHub) and enthusiasts (like his YouTube channel) with pride. Thankfully, this generosity also includes an update for Piston Slap readers! —SM

Jeff writes:

I have a big update for my car phone project: everything now fits inside of the original car phone, making it fully functional on its own. There are no external adapters, and no visible signs of modification.

I’ll probably also make a new full tour/demo video in a few weeks when I take my car out of winter storage, but I couldn’t hold in the excitement. I had to share this news with someone that would appreciate it. (I am glad you didn’t hold back! — SM)

I spent the winter learning how to design custom PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) and developing a new version of my adapter. This completely replaces the original electronics in the car phone’s transceiver, instead of previously piggybacking off of it. In addition to being able to hide everything inside the original car phone, there are some technical benefits to being in control of power supply/management:

• I’m in control of when the phone turns on/off, which means I was able to replicate original behavior where the phone remains on if you turn the car off during a call. The phone then automatically powers off when the call ends.
• I’m using modern rechargeable Li-Ion cells (3 AA-sized cells) for portable power instead of the original giant NiCd battery pack (10 A-sized cells). The original battery packs are all long dead by now and would need to be rebuilt with new NiCd cells (expensive and tedious) if I stuck with the original car phone’s power supply and battery charging circuitry.
• Total weight is reduced by 12.2 ounces.
• The original Mitsubishi transceiver is no longer wastefully consuming power itself in addition to powering my Bluetooth adapter. This particularly helps with battery life in portable mode. Even though the batteries I use have a lower capacity (1100 mAh) than the original battery pack (1400 mAh), battery life is now better than the original phone:
• There’s about 20 hours of “standby time” compared to the original 14 hours.
• Probably most impressive is the roughly 5–6 hours of “talk time” compared to the original’s 50–80 minutes.

I have documented my progress on this new phase of my project in a forum thread. Towards the end of the thread, you will find many photos of the new adapter installed in the car phone, comparisons to an unmodified phone, etc. Unfortunately, I have not yet finished updating my GitHub project with new designs/code/info/documentation, but I should have that updated within the next few weeks.

After more testing and refinement, I plan to offer either a conversion kit or a mail-in conversion service (details/pricing TBD) for anyone who has a Mitsubishi DiamondTel Model 92 phone and is willing to accept the risk of purchasing amateur prototype-quality electronics with no warranty. (Better buy a donor phone while you can, before Jeff’s hard work raises their asking prices! – SM)

I expect it would also work for the Mitsubishi Model 1500, but I need to get my hands on one to confirm it. Conversion is unfortunately not “bolt-on” easy. It requires transferring a couple connectors from the original transceiver (de-soldering and de-pinning) and grinding a bit of metal from the inside of the transceiver case for clearance.

Sajeev concludes:

I’d like to once again thank Jeff for keeping us in the loop with his progress. I look forward to Part VII of this series, showing off this consumer-friendly option for upgrading a Mitsubishi cell phone with modern Bluetooth technology. We truly live in an amazing world, don’t we?

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

***

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“I think I cross-threaded it.”

The voice on the other end of the phone was sullen. It belonged to a friend who had just emerged from under the hood of his 1999 Chevrolet pickup. As he was putting the #4 spark plug back into the aluminum cylinder head after performing some maintenance, the plug had bit and started threading at a slightly wrong angle.

Nobody wants to deal with damaged threads, but with a little prep and know-how you can save the thread, the part, and your sanity.

Threads are a critical part of the assembly of pieces we call automobiles. The spiral-incline plane that creates a bolt, nut, or threaded hole allows for easy disassembly and generates a strong, durable clamping force. The effectiveness of threads relies on a smooth and well-fitting assembly which means any bit of corrosion or damage can be a big problem.

When—not if—some damaged threads appear on your project, there is a lot going through your head: Everything from horror stories of drills and threaded inserts to tales in which the hero was a wire brush. In the middle of the chart of options is chasing the threads to clean them and remove damage. You might be tempted to reach for your tap and die kit … but that might not be the best idea.

When I dropped by my friend’s driveway for moral support, we pulled the inner fender and got a decent look at the reality of the problem. Luckily, my friend has a good feel for how spark plugs start, and the thread was only barely miffed. However, the idea of getting the plug started correctly and powering through to make it fit again was just not on the table. We needed to chase the threads.

Method #1: Use a Tap

I had an appropriate M14-1.25 tap that would theoretically match the aluminum heads on his engine—a 5.3 LM7—but there is always the chance that whatever tap you have is slightly different than the one that originally cut those threads. Any differences between the two would be settled by force, and in our case the hardened tap would easily bite a chunk out of the aluminum cylinder head to declare victory. We were not interested in that.

Method #2: Buy a Thread Chaser

If you’re looking at that thread chaser and thinking, “Kyle, that looks an awful lot like a tap,” you’re correct. It does, but a couple key features are hiding in plain view that make a chaser different than a tap—and better for this situation. The first is right on the nose: A pilot section, which helps align the tool into the thread bore. Taps lead with a cutting edge in most cases, which means if the tap starts slightly crooked, you’ll have a harder time feeling the misalignment. If you try multiple times, you will start to remove material. Remove enough, and the chance of stripping the thread increases significantly.

Notice that, behind the pilot, the threads do not have the same lead-in as a cutting tap. Again, since a chaser is only meant to restore damaged threads, the design is just less aggressive overall. Using a chaser means less chance of swarf falling into your project, too, and we certainly didn’t want any aluminum in the combustion chamber of my friend’s 5.3. Just to be cautious, we coated the chaser with grease to catch any debris it might loosen.

We got real lucky: The threads got reshaped perfectly and the plug threaded in and tightened up nicely, a reminder that using the right tool always makes a job easier. A good quality set of thread chasers is under $100 and covers a variety of pitches.

This is actually the first thread chaser I’ve purchased. It’s a tool that has always been on the shortlist, but it was never in the cart come checkout time. Any time I need a thread chaser, I usually just make one.

Method #3: Make Your Own

Making a thread chaser is not difficult, and the skill is a nice trick to have up your sleeve. Just take a grade 8 bolt and file down the first few threads to create that pilot and lead-in threads. If you are really motivated, use a hacksaw or small cutoff wheel to create a few reliefs that can collect any debris that will be forced out of the threads as it re-shapes and cleans them.

Next time you are in the middle of that project and miff a set of threads, you are prepared to handle the problem the right way … or at least understand the risks of doing it the other way. Like I said, there is a place and time for each, and having more skills and understanding of what you are doing is always a good thing.

***

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Roger writes:

Hi there, I am fighting this issue with my 1962 Ford Fairlane Sport Coupe: On a shift (say, first to second gear), if I keep my foot on the gas, it shifts hard but not obnoxiously, but if I let off the pedal it shifts with a … WACK!

It shifted so hard the first time I thought I’d been hit from behind! But this happens on any shift, if I let off on the gas pedal, although not so much on downshifts. My garage diagnosed it as a sloppy differential backlash, and they said it’s all good now ($450 later). But I drove her home, and it was exactly the same!

Here are the specs on my driveline:

• Ford 302 stroked to 347 cubic inches by a pro builder.
• Ford C-4 built to handle 450-500 hp.
• Attached to the C-4 is a Gear Vendors overdrive.

In the springtime, I took her to a garage that only works/builds/repairs classic cars, from Ferraris to Camaros. Other than changing fluids/filters, they told me my problem is the stock Ford convertor (which stalls around 1200-1500 rpm) and that an aftermarket convertor with at least 2400-2800 stall will “slip” enough to stop those too-hard “BANG” shifts. I know they are on the money about a higher stall convertor, because my engine builder also said I should install an aftermarket convertor.

Do you think this will stop my issue with these horrible shifts?

Sajeev answers:

Yes, I think that’s the ticket! The stock converter shoulda been dumped the moment a stroker small-block and a built transmission were planned. That’s an exaggeration, but you see my point. For the transmission, you normally need the following done with any performance engine rebuild:

• A fresh rebuild.
• A shift kit, shift improver, or an internal upgrade unique to your transmission (a la Ford J-MOD).
• A higher stall speed, “looser” than stock torque converter.
• A standalone transmission cooler, usually plumbed in series with the factory cooler in the radiator (for double cooling).

The fresh transmission rebuild is obvious, since new clutches, gaskets seals, etc. are needed just as badly as a new engine. Not doing so kills the current transmission sooner, and yanking it out while the motor is absent generally saves money in labor costs. Take it from someone who has seen this via building three high-performance transmissions, including a Ford C6 chronicled here at Hagerty. (This may not apply to axles/differentials, especially if you aren’t running racing slicks, and have no interest in doing gnarly burnouts.)

Next is the shift kit: a logical upgrade, as you want quicker shifts to go with your perkier motor, but there’s a catch: Sometimes a shift kit must be specced to work with a specific stall speed in your torque converter.

Installing a looser converter can help holeshot off the line, and fix shifting issues much like what Roger’s experiencing in his Fairlane. Unless the vehicle has a performance-tuned automatic from the factory like a CVPI Crown Victoria, AMG Mercedes, etc., the torque converter stall speed is generally too low for performance driving. Low-stall converters are designed for smoother, less CVT-like performance and more fuel efficiency.

Speaking of factory-perfected tuning, a high-performance powertrain should never be in a situation where one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. The critical components to discuss with your rebuilders are the camshaft choice, the torque converter stall speed, and possibly the steps to dial-in a shift kit. I reckon Roger’s assertion that the stock converter is 1200-1500 rpm is right, and a 2200-2500 rpm stall converter is needed to fix the shifting behavior.

But I have no clue what cam is in Roger’s new motor, perhaps an even more aggressive stall (i.e. 3000+ rpm) is needed. This is precisely why your engine builder needs to be included in transmission work. Get a torque converter with the blessings of both engine and transmission rebuilders and your throttle off upshifts will be delightful.

Advice from professionals like this is priceless, but it’s also part of their service. I have yet to meet an engine or transmission rebuilder that wasn’t thrilled to share more information with a not-rude customer. So ask them for confirmation, as you have nothing to lose. Rather, you have everything to “loose” in your converter.

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

***

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Readers: I have failed you.

In June 2020, I wrote a story about a 1978 Citroën 2CV that I bought for about 300 euros, used as a daily driver, and parked when it no longer passed inspections in 2012. Since then, I’ve dragged it from house to house, like you might drag a piece of furniture that’s been in your family for three generations and that you can’t bring yourself to get rid of. Sometimes the car would sit in a garage; other times it wasn’t as lucky, and it would sit under an olive tree.

“This is the year I return the favor to my 2CV,” I concluded, in that 2020 article. I meant it! I got the car running by replacing small parts like the coil, the spark plug wires, and the fuel pump, and I reached out to a local, 2CV-only shop with an excellent reputation called Maison de la 2CV about the body repairs.

In hindsight, 2020 was the perfectly wrong right year to make promises or return favors. Maybe 2021? Nope, that wouldn’t be the 2CV’s year, either. In late 2021, as society carefully resumed moving after careening off its tracks, my own world went boom like the valves hitting the pistons when a timing belt decides to take its last spin. At 32, I found myself adapting to living alone for the first time since I was 20. In the months that followed, nearly every aspect of my life changed.

The small collection of classic cars that I had meticulously assembled since my early 20s—in some cases, I had waited for years to buy the right car—became an encumbrance. I didn’t have the time, the money, or the motivation to deal with any of it. At best, the cars were parked; at worst, they were sold.

Maybe it’s the other way around, actually. “Best” and “worst” are relative terms; I suppose the cars might argue it’s better to be sold than parked, if they could voice an opinion. They can’t, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Regardless, in 2022, I put fewer than 50 miles on my 1979 Mercedes-Benz 300D, fewer than 10 miles on my 1972 Volkswagen Beetle, and the 1972 Mini 850 franken-zombie departed to start its third afterlife somewhere in southwestern France. Three other cars also left my fleet. I don’t like selling cars—they always seem to end up in the wrong hands—but it felt good to offload some of the ones laced with fragments of my past that I wanted to catapult out of my mind.

One of the few things that remained was the 2CV. It was still there, a decaying monument to both Citroën’s genius and a life I’d long left behind, like one of those faded statues that you see in big cities of a random bald guy with a sick-looking pigeon shitting on his head. It was still parked under a tree (a cypress, this time), it still had four flat tires, and it still needed floors, rockers, and a frame to pass inspections. Hail had poked dozens of holes through the soft top, so that needed to be replaced as well, as did whatever else had managed to dry out, seize, rust, or otherwise fail from what was now about 10 years of not turning a wheel on a public road. And yet, the flat-twin engine still started. Sometimes I’d move it a few feet to mow and joke, “At least I’m keeping the mileage low.”

That’s not to say I had a plan to get the Citroën back on the road; I didn’t. For all I knew, and admittedly for all I cared, it could sit for another 10 years. Selling it wasn’t an option—the 2CV has a lot of sentimental value—but fixing it wasn’t on my radar. I had other things to worry about and far bigger problems to solve.

Life’s surprises aren’t always ugly. I randomly ran into the guy who runs the 2CV shop I’d contacted in 2020 while halfway through my third beer at a county fair-type event in a tiny village up in the mountains. I’d paid for the beers using the worn, blue plastic coins of a local “currency” created specifically for the event. The conversation turned to my car. Yes, I still have it; no, it hasn’t been fixed yet; sure, it’d be neat to get it going again sooner or later. He told me there were several cars ahead of mine in his restoration queue, but that he would pencil me in and reach out when its time came.

Suddenly, and unexpectedly, I had laid the foundations of a plan for the car. I also had a goal.

The length of the restoration queue wasn’t a surprise. It had taken me a while to connect the dots, but the shop’s owner, Felix Hoffmann, is the son of Wolfgang Hoffmann, the German coachbuilder who made a name for himself by turning 2CVs into full convertibles. The black and gray example that appeared on Jay Leno’s Garage? That’s the family business. Felix’s knowledge of 2CVs approaches the surreal. That his shop happens to be about 10 minutes away from my house in France is an inconceivable stroke of luck: I’m from Salt Lake City, Utah, and he’s from the Munich area.

When the call came, I had to figure out a way to take my 2CV to the shop. I’ve always kept it insured, but it wasn’t registered and I didn’t trust it to make the three-mile journey under its own power. Felix kindly offered to let me use his trailer, and I started looking for a tow vehicle … which I found in my garage. My trusty 300D has a hitch and aftermarket rear air springs; the elderly couple I bought it from in 2014 had used it to tow a camper in the 1990s. I didn’t like the idea of pulling such a heavy load with the Mercedes, but I didn’t have a choice, and the sedan didn’t miss a beat. It also made for one hell of a picture.

I started hanging out at the shop after work and on the weekends with Felix and Seb, a mutual friend who is also a walking encyclopedia on anything flat-twin-powered. I enjoyed spending time with like-minded enthusiasts and learning about 2CVs—I’ve forgotten more about these cars than most folks will ever know, but Felix and Seb are on another level. They’ve beat the game. They can pick a bolt off of an engine and recognize that it’s rare because it was only used from, say, July 1955 to January 1956.

On a cold, gray day in late December 2023, as everyone’s work was slowing down for the holidays, we decided to push my car into the shop. Teardown went quickly: The hood and the fenders came off first, then the headlights and the bar to which they’re attached, and finally the engine and the transmission, as one unit. I went back the following day and removed everything attached to the engine, such as the fan and its shroud, the alternator and its bracket, and the manifold. I spent hours cleaning over 40 years of sticky grime with a mix of brake cleaner and old gasoline.

As I drove home, it dawned on me that I’d gotten more done on that car in two days than I had in 10 years—more than I’d gotten done on any car in over two years. The realization was eye-opening. It produced a strange feeling, too: this little engine hauled my ass around for years, and now I was hauling it around (to move it in and out of the shop, for example). I was finally returning the favor to my 2CV.

Cracking the engine open was fairly straightforward; it likely had never been apart. I’m pretty sure the last person who saw the teeny pistons I took out was the line worker who installed them in 1978.

Once the flat-twin was in pieces, Felix and Seb confirmed what I suspected: the engine needed to be rebuilt. I knew this because when I drove the car daily it lacked power, even for a 435cc-powered 2CV, and it coughed out so much smoke that you’d think it had just elected a new pope. Maybe that’s precisely what it was trying to tell me, but the emissions people would disagree.

Working out of Felix’s shop helped motivate me to get the engine done in a timely manner. He was nice enough to let me take advantage of his space, his tools, and, crucially, his brain—I don’t want to hog a spot on his workbench for years on end. About two months after the engine came out, including the holiday break and a couple of weeks spent waiting for parts that got stuck in transit in a depot, I had the two-cylinder back together with new pistons, piston rings, cylinders, valves, and every last seal and gasket. The rebuild wasn’t finished, though. I fitted electronic ignition, replaced the flywheel (the old one was chipped), and Felix repaired a stripped thread on the passenger-side head.

As of writing, the engine is pretty much done. I need to reinstall the carburetor, the alternator, and the fan to call it a day. The car, however, is far from done.

The second part of the project started on a windy day in March 2024, when we took the body off the frame. I knew the rust was bad—the factory jack once stabbed a hole through the underbody while I changed a wheel—but it’s worse than I imagined. One of the previous owners riveted a big metal plate over the front floors, and I figured out why when I removed it: beyond the holes in the floor, most of which I could see from underneath, there is a colossal amount of rust on the inner part of the passenger-side rocker panel that was hidden by the plate. Puzzlingly, the space is filled with the kind of insulating, spray-foam sealant folks use in houses. “I can’t believe I used to drive this daily,” I thought as I took out chunks of hardened foam coated with rust. This car has the structural integrity of tofu. The suspension cylinders, a crucial part of the 2CV’s offbeat suspension design, are shot as well.

All of this can be fixed, however. I’m not making promises this time around, or even giving myself a timeline, but it’s coming along.

***

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After sealing up my recently purchased 182,000-mile 2008 Nissan Armada’s exhaust, dealing with a noisy serpentine belt tensioner pulley, squelching power steering leaks, and replacing a leaking radiator, it was time to deal with the banging in the front end and the ox-cart-like ride, both of which were likely caused by worn-out front struts.

First, a quick class in Suspension 101. Basically, a shock absorber is a simple, easily-replaceable damper held in place by a long bolt that goes through a hole at the bottom. The top can be secured by the same kind of eye-bolt or with a threaded stud that protrudes through a shock tower. The main thing to note is that shocks don’t hold up the weight of the car—there’s always a separate spring nearby that does that.

In contrast, a strut assembly is a suspension component that has a spring with a damper going through the center of it, together which bear the weight of the vehicle. A MacPherson strut is a particular type of strut assembly that’s also part of the steering (turning the steering wheel causes the front struts to rotate, and the wheels are mounted to the bottom of the struts). The MacPherson design is more complicated because the front hubs, wheel bearings, rotors, calipers, steering knuckles, and ball joints are all attached to the strut.

The MacPherson struts in my vintage BMWs have a housing that lasts the life of the car and use an integrated stub axle on the bottom, and when you buy “front struts,” you’re buying cartridges that slide into the housings. On later cars, however, the MacPherson strut housings and cartridges are a single unit to which the other components attach.

Struts always have a spring perch to hold the bottom of the spring. During assembly, the spring is placed in the perch, then a variety of rubber bushings, bump-stops, and metal sleeves and spacers slide over the that extends from the strut cartridge. The very tip of the piston is threaded, and some sort of upper-perch “hat” is slid over it and held in place with a nut. On a MacPherson strut, because the whole assembly needs to rotate for steering, the “hat” has a bearing in it, but in a non-MacPherson strut, it’s just a fixed upper perch. With either design, the problem is that during assembly, a spring compressor is needed to compress the spring while the hat is slid over the threaded tip of the piston and the nut is tightened.

The Armada doesn’t have MacPhersons—it has a double-wishbone front suspension, so the front strut assemblies are each held in by three 14mm nuts at the top and one beefy bolt and nut at the bottom. But still, to replace the struts, the whole assembly needs to be removed on both sides, then the springs have to be compressed to remove the tension on the hats, and then the springs, metal spacers and sleeves, and the rubber bushings have to be removed and and transferred onto the new struts.

Because of the supposed difficulty of compressing springs, and the ubiquitous urban legends about people who have had terrible accidents with springs or hats being launched into their face, many DIY mechanics and even some purported pros are afraid to do it. It’s really not a big deal unless you’re an idiot and try to do it using hose clamps. Just buy or rent a spring compressor.

But it’s for these reasons that “quick-struts”—pre-assembled units combining the strut, spring, hat, and all spacers, sleeves, and bushings—have become popular. The appeal is that you remove the old ones, throw them in the recycle bin, and install the new ones without ever having to deal with a spring compressor. A search on eBay shows that a pair of unbranded quick-struts for the Armada can be had for about a hundred bucks shipped. Man, that’s cheap.

One of the interesting things about becoming interested in a new vehicle is that you get to check out a new user forum and see if it, like the car, fits you. I live mainly in forums for vintage BMWs, but also interact quite a bit with the Lotus Europa and Winnebago Rialta forums, all of which are made of my sort of people—kind, patient, and thrifty but not to the point where the go-to position is installing the cheapest-possible parts in the car. So it was interesting to read that the hive-mind opinion on ClubArmada was not to cheap out and buy quick-struts but instead to purchase a proper set of Bilsteins. The Armada has a common problem with bump-steer, and the Bilsteins reportedly solve it. Inexpensive quick-struts reportedly don’t, and you get what you pay for in terms of performance and longevity. I did find some branded quick-struts on eBay and RockAuto—Monroe, Gabriel, and KYB—but several folks on ClubArmada said that after they installed the KYBs, their Armada was several inches higher in the front and looked like a boat on plane.

Now, I’m firmly in the “real men compress their own springs” camp. I own three different spring compressors, I don’t regard it as in the least unsafe, it’s not a back-breaker, the time it takes to swap the springs over onto the new struts isn’t a big deal, and there was a ringing endorsement of Bilsteins (which I use on all my BMWs when it’s suspension-refresh time) from ClubArmada. Comparing that with the low opinion of low-cost unbranded parts in general and the lack of any consensus opinion vis a vis “buy these quick-struts” on the Armada forum made it an easy choice to buy the Bilsteins.

The next choice was between Bilstein 4600s with a fixed lower perch or the more-expensive adjustable 5100s meant for lifted applications. I had zero interest in lifting the Armada, but I found a set of open-box 5100s on Amazon for a great price, even less than the 4600s. I confirmed with the Armada forum that the lowest setting on the 5100s puts the truck at the same height as the 4600s, and ordered them. I also ordered new upper hats and all the rubber bushings, sleeves, and spacers, as the odds of them being reusable in a 183K New England vehicle were slim. All-in, it was about $300, which felt great.

With parts on the way, I positioned the truck in the garage to begin removing the strut assemblies. As I explained in the article on the exhaust work, there’s no way to fit the Armada completely in the garage and jack up the nose without kicking out not one but two cars. I checked the forecast, found a stretch of several days of 40°+ degree snow-free weather, and pulled the Armada inside and canted to the left so I had clearance against the right-hand garage wall.

I jacked up the truck, set it on stands, pulled the left front wheel, began eyeballing the scene, and noticed something that stopped me cold.

The spring was broken and the bottom coil was missing.

I reflexively moved to the right side of the truck to check the other spring. It was broken, too. The banging I was hearing wasn’t due to blown struts. It was from the two broken springs. A simple look would’ve told me that before I ordered parts. Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!

The strut assemblies needed to come out regardless, but I was faced with an immediate choice of whether to buy a pair of springs, or return what I’d bought and go the quick-strut route, which was suddenly had some appeal. Had there been a well-reviewed option on the Armada forum, I probably would’ve done it. However, I found a set of Moog springs on Amazon for $88 for the pair, confirmed on ClubArmada that they’re OEM-equivalent and not lifting springs, and put them on order for next-day delivery.

So, on with the repair itself. The non-MacPherson strut configuration with the big nut and bolt at the bottom and the three 14mm nuts at the top made removal look trivial, but I immediately ran into trouble, as one of the top nuts on each side was seized, and despite soaking them in SiliKroil penetrating oil overnight, putting an impact wrench on them rounded off the corners.

In my first book, I have a chapter on “stuckness,” in which I describe a variety of techniques including heating the nut with a MAPP gas torch and applying wax to the threads, really heating the nut with an oxy-acetylene torch, hammering a smaller-sized hex or Torx socket onto the nut, and cutting off or drilling out bolts. But over and above that, over the years I’ve developed a philosophy where I look at fasteners, think “How deep will the doo-doo be if I snap this off or round its head,” and then act accordingly, and didn’t do that here, as I’d never had anything remotely like this happen to a nut that size on a strut stud. After several oxy-acetylene torchings, the nut on one side came off by hammering a smaller socket onto it, and for the other side, I had to use the trick of carefully positioning a chisel on its circumference and smacking it with a hammer to apply a tangential impact force.

Although I was basically assembling my own not-so-quick struts and didn’t need anything off the old ones, I was curious if the old struts actually were bad, so I disassembled them to check. Because both springs were broken, there was no tension on the hats, so I didn’t need to use a compressor; I could just put the impact wrench on the strut top nut and spin it off. One strut was fine, but the other one was completely blown.

Assembly of the new struts with all-new parts was very satisfying. There were numerous reports on the Armada forum of front-end banging after installation of new Bilsteins due to people misunderstanding the assembly instructions, so I triple-checked the location of all the bushings, sleeves, and washers, and made absolutely certain that I had the adjustable spring perches at their lowest setting.

Installation was a bit challenging. Though there were no stuck fasteners to deal with, the combination of the new stiff springs and the new stiff struts made the strut assemblies difficult to get into position. Even unbolting the sway bar and having one of my kids stand on the lower wishbone, things didn’t want to line up. It took some persuasion with a big lever and smacking the lower bolts with a hammer to get them in place.

With everything buttoned up, I took the Armada for a short drive on a nearby torture-track back road that I use to diagnose rattles, thunks, and clunks. The front-end noise was gone, the truck was blissfully quiet, and it rode and steered great. But when I got back home, parked the truck, and looked at it, there was no ignoring the fact that the space above the front tires was abnormally large, and the nose was high.

I checked the photos I took before the repair, and it definitely wasn’t my imagination.

Now, there’s likely a few things going on. The Armada did have two broken front springs, so it definitely was sitting lower on the nose than it should’ve. Gas-pressurized shocks and struts like Bilsteins do exert an upward force on the body of a vehicle and can make it sit slightly higher than when it’s on fluid-filled shocks and struts. I’m hopeful that it’ll settle down a bit with time and mileage. Of course, the opinion on the Armada forum about both the zero setting of the Bilstein 5100s and the Moog springs being equivalent to stock could simply be wrong. And had I gone with quick-struts, I would’ve likely selected the KYBs, and as folks reported those raised the front, it might have been even worse.

Another possibility involves the truck’s rear suspension. When I was looking at Armadas, friends on social media who do a lot more towing than I do advised me to try to find one with the tow package, as it has a shorter-geared differential, a transmission tow-mode setting, and a pneumatic suspension with air-pressurized shocks that self-levels the rear to deal with the weight of a trailer sitting on the hitch. The one I bought has all that, so imagine my surprise when, now that I own it, I find that most of the talk on the Armada forum about the self-leveling rear suspension is in regards to removing it. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me, as my BMW E39 528i sport wagon had the same dynamic. When I start up the truck, I hear the compressor running to pressurize the rear shocks, but it’s unclear to me whether it’s actually doing anything, so the shocks might be bad or a line might be leaking. I’m going to live with it for a while, then trouble-shoot it to see if anything is wrong. If it’s working, I believe you can adjust the sensor to raise the back a bit.

So we’re now close to the Armada exiting the sort-out phase of our relationship and entering the “let’s do stuff” phase. We’ll see how it goes.

***

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The act of building an engine is a rite of passage for many enthusiasts. The first startup, when something you created from parts comes alive and produces power on its own, is often an emotional moment. Of course, there are people who revel in the process rather than the result, and I have never seen a better example than this nearly full-scale replica of a Chevrolet 454 engine made exclusively from Lego bricks.

According to the builder, Evan Koblentz, this was a project he undertook in 2020 and 2021 just to see what was possible. The result is a relatively functional representation of an engine that captures many of its more complex parts, and well, at that.

It’s not a perfect 1:1 scale, but that likely would not be possible, given that Koblentz limited himself to the use of 1970s and 1980s-era “Expert Builder” bricks to achieve his vision. This meant that rounded shapes were all but out: The “pistons,” for example, are flat, square plates. The limited choice of bricks doesn’t stop the pistons from reciprocating: The crankshaft rotates, driven by small electric motors mounted to the front of the engine model.

Above the crankshaft is a brick-built camshaft that lifts a set of sixteen pushrods that actuate 16 valves. Interestingly, the distributor is one of the items that is closest to the real thing, as it holds switches that control eight small LED lights that light up as if they were spark plugs firing. The model even has electronic ignition: The sensors and LEDs that replicate the ignition system are switched on and off by a Lego control panel that uses code running on a 8-bit computer.

As if building the engine model were not enough, Koblentz also assembled a working flywheel and clutch setup, along with a four-speed transmission with reverse. The transmission shifts pretty easily through all the gears thanks to the hand-operated clutch, and the ratios even look pretty accurate.

If this whole project has you wondering when it will go into a car made of the same dimpled bricks, don’t hold your breath. In the frequently asked questions portion of his website, which is dedicated to Lego projects, Koblentz has a clear “no” next to the idea of building more parts or pieces to add to this model. Should he decide to, we suggest an 8-71 blower on top. After all, that’s the same thing we’d love to see on a real big-block.

***

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The post Big-Block, Little Bricks: Check Out This Full-Scale Lego 454 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Any car is an assembly of parts. Since bolted joints are both strong and easy to assemble, just about any service or maintenance on a car or truck requires you to remove some type of bolt. Anyone who has worked on a car for more than three minutes knows that even a larger project is not so bad if the hardware is not difficult to deal with. Those with many years of experience know how difficult corroded and stuck fasteners often give up, but convincing them to surrender requires force. How you generate that force is defined by the severity of the situation. Let’s look at the levels of bolt persuasion, from least to most aggressive, and some of the reasons why they fall in this order.

Level #5: Open-End Wrench

An open end wrench is nothing more than two parallel surfaces that meet two sides of a fastener. This often means only truly gripping near the corners due to tolerance in production of both the hardware and the tool. Sometimes, the fit is plenty tight and less than one foot of leverage is plenty. There is a reason wrenches are standard in every automotive toolkit since people started working on cars; wrenches pack light, are simple to produce, and are durable for many years if not abused. Sure, long-handle versions exist, but most of those are box-end, which means they are basically a worse version of a …

Level #4: Socket and Ratchet

The combination of a socket and a ratchet steps things up in a couple different ways: First, by providing additional contact points with the stuck fastener. Whether 12-point or 6-point, a socket provides more even contact with the fastener, and a ratchet allows us to shift the angle of the lever to maximize the force applied by our muscles. That handle can easily be exchanged for a …

Level #3: Longer Ratchet

The socket is giving us good positive engagement on the hardware, so if it hasn’t moved yet, we must add force. Long-handle ratchets are handy, because it can be difficult to reposition a long wrench multiple times just to rotate a fastener one turn. Sadly, the most helpful part of a ratchet—the rotating head—is also the weak point, and if you treasure your tool you will likely grab one with a longer handle before adding a cheater bar or hitting the handle of your ratchet with a hammer. Sure, you can buy rebuild kits for some ratchets … or you could avoid stripping out the catch pawls inside the head in the first place.

Level #2: Impact Wrench

Leaning your weight on a long lever is one way to impart force. The other is to apply it suddenly with a spinning hammer. That is the basic function of an impact wrench, which generates high amounts of force in short bursts to help break loose the corrosion that forms inside threaded joints. Better yet, impact wrenches are powered by compressed air or by batteries, not by elbow grease, making them the hot ticket when dealing with stuck stuff. The only problem is that the torque capabilities of an impact wrench are limited by design, as the motor, hammer, and anvil can go get so large before the tool becomes unwieldy. You might have to switch back to brute force and grab the …

Level #1: Breaker Bar

At the end of the day, physics always wins. While inconvenient compared to the luxury of an impact wrench, using a long bar to apply torque to a proper-fitting socket is by far the best way to put absurd amounts of torque onto a stuck fastener.

A long enough lever will snap the hardened head off every breaker bar you can find. And that is what you are often hoping for, at this point—the sweet release of tension by any means necessary. Just break already. The drill and tap set are already on the workbench.

***

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This past summer, with supply chain issues resolving and factories once again humming, electric vehicles started piling up on dealer lots. Between January and July 2023, reports the trade paper Automotive News, the “days’ supply” (an industry metric used to measure unsold inventory) jumped for EVs, rocketing from a brisk 59 days to a worrisome 111 days. Meanwhile, the inventory of internal-combustion vehicles remained relatively flat in the mid-50s, proving that there were buyers out there, just not for electrics. (As of December 2023, EV days’ supply was 114 days, versus 71 days for the total market.)

An industry that only 18 months ago was rushing head-long to expand battery manufacturing and race to market with full electric product lines suddenly nailed the brakes. Ford, simultaneously reeling from a costly UAW strike, said it will slow-roll an earmarked $12 billion in electrification spending, delaying product launches, cutting production of its Mustang Mach-E electric crossover and F-150 Lightning, and pushing back construction on one of two planned battery plants. GM and Honda likewise said they are scrapping an agreement to jointly produce compact electric crossovers.

On the front lines, Mercedes-Benz dealers were in open revolt over the factory’s unwillingness to put incentives on its slow-moving EQ line of pricey electrics, saying they are losing customers to rivals. Meanwhile, back in 2020, GM offered its Buick and Cadillac dealers a choice: Either invest upward of $200,000 in electric infrastructure for their dealerships or sell their franchises back to GM for cash. Almost half of Buick dealers and one-third of Cadillac dealers took the buyout.

Is the EV transition over before it ever really began? Probably not. The hasty 180 on EV investments likely says less about the long-term viability of electrics and more about present dilemmas. The industry is nursing fresh wounds from strikes and previous bad bets, including Ford’s write-off of $1 billion following the implosion of Argo AI and GM’s staggering $8.2 billion loss (and counting) on its Cruise autonomy division. Add in the turbulence caused by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which places restrictions on EV tax credits so that they apply only to American-made vehicles with U.S.-sourced components, and it’s easy to see why the industry is unsettled.

The ride into an electric future was bound to be bumpy. Now that early adopters have rushed out and purchased electric vehicles, sales growth was certain to slow as the industry gets on with the laborious task of convincing a wider (and more cautious) buying population that EVs are for them. The timing could be better; the market is currently suffering from high interest rates that make new-car purchases more expensive, and there’s a surplus of high-end EV offerings costing $70,000 and up.

Currently the pricing gap between EVs and internal-combustion-engine (ICE) offerings in the hot compact SUV segment is almost $20,000, with electrics retailing above $50,000 while comparable ICE crossovers are $35,000. Sure, tax rebates help close the gap, but the numbers look daunting to buyers watching their dollars. At the same time, older, more affordable EV options, like the Chevrolet Bolt and VW e-Golf, have been taken off the market and their replacements are still on the drawing boards.

Richard Shaw, a retired airline captain in Los Angeles, is an example of the disconnect between consumer demand and industry supply. Four years ago, he bought his first electric car, a new Volkswagen e-Golf, for $19,000 after rebates and incentives. “If you have two cars in the household, you’d be crazy not to have one be electric,” says the EV convert. “They are much cheaper to operate and perfect for local trips, and we find we take the electric way more than the other car.” However, the e-Golf has since gone out of production, as has the similarly priced Chevy Bolt, leaving the base Nissan Leaf as the lone sub-$30,000 electric.

Some buyers may have deferred their purchases in 2023 owing to changes in the Clean Vehicle Credit, the $7500 federal tax credit that, as of this year, allows buyers to use the credit directly as a down payment.

EV sales growth has slackened, but electric cars are still selling—at a rate of about 1 million per year. If EV sales aren’t proving to be a tidal wave, they are definitely still a rising tide.

***

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After sealing up the exhaust in my recently-purchased 183K-mile 2008 Nissan Armada well enough to get it through the second-most stringent state inspection in the country, I dealt with noise from the serpentine belt. The problem turned out to be bad bearings on the timing chain tensioner, but there was also noise from the power steering pump, which led me to fix a leak from one of the PS hoses by replacing the constant-tension spring clamp with a worm-screw type clamp that could be tightened. That wound up slippery-sloping into fixing other under-engine leaks (the power steering uses automatic transmission fluid, so I needed to be certain the leaks were from the PS and not from the transmission), and that led me to a place I didn’t expect to go.

Fluid leaks should be looked at in terms of both substance and severity. That is, for lubricants, you can grossly triage them into drips, patches, puddles, and gushes. Drips are isolated “marking their territory” dots. Patches are fried-egg-sized stains on the garage floor. Puddles are things that have enough depth that you can swipe a finger through them and actually move fluid like Moses parting the red sea. Gushes are where you actually see fluid streaming out of the car and can follow it directly back to its source. Obviously you’d be foolish to drive a car that’s gushing any fluid further than down the driveway and into the garage, but the others are more of a judgement call. Anyone who owns a vintage car knows that it’s in their nature to leak engine oil, gear oil, and transmission fluid, and enforcing a zero-leak policy may not be possible. My Lotus Europa leaks fluid from the transaxle in quantities between a patch and a puddle, and I’ve replaced the transaxle seals twice in a misguided attempt to squelch it, only to learn in the forums that, basically, they all do that, and loving the car means living with its incontinence, placing a drip pan under it, and topping it up with a frequency usually reserved for engine oil.

But substance—which fluid is dripping—is critical. There should be a zero-leak policy with gasoline. Weeping a little gas isn’t acceptable. Any fuel leak should be found and fixed immediately, otherwise you risk your vehicle burning and you dying.

I regard coolant leaks as a big notch back from fuel leaks, but they’re still unacceptable. If coolant is leaking, even dripping, something is failing, and you can be certain that it’ll get worse over time. It won’t kill you, but it can kill your car by depleting the engine of coolant to the point where it overheats and warps or cracks the head. Driving a car that you know is leaking any amount of coolant any more than around town isn’t dangerous, but it’s dumb. Don’t do it. In my BMW-centric world, where I road-trip 50-year-old cars thousands of miles and daily-drive 20-year-old cars with plastic-laten cooling systems that crack at any moment and dump the coolant, I’m hyper-vigilant about cooling leaks. The cause could be a loose hose clamp, or corrosion on a metal coolant neck not allowing a hose to seal, or a bad water pump seal, or an actual hole in the radiator or heater core, or, in a modern car, failure of a plastic component. Visual inspection with the engine running usually reveals the source. Pressure testers that screw in in place of the radiator cap can also be helpful if the leak only occurs at operating temperature.

So, back to the Armada. There were two other places where the rubber PS hoses were leaking where they’re pushed over metal lines and secured with spring clamps. The worst of them was where two lines ran through the engine compartment on top of the left frame leg. It was the lower one that was leaking, and the upper one blocked the access to getting vise grips on the spring clamp. I wound up having to remove the inner fender liner in order to get at it from the side. As with the first PS leak, installing tighten-able worm clamps stanched the leak.

The remaining PS leak took me a while to find. A drip kept forming below the steering rack on the frame. To find the source, I had to lie under the car with the engine running and watch. Unfortunately, it’s coming from where the input shaft goes into the top of the steering rack, and replacement of the seal likely requires removal of the rack, which in turn requires removal of the front differential. Further, the seal is in the middle of—get this—a seven-sided nut for which I’ve yet to locate any reference to a removal tool. Fortunately, it’s a small leak, so for now I’m going to let it go.

But while I was under the Armada’s nose, I found, to my surprise, drops of coolant at the bottom of the radiator and stray ones higher up. When I bought it, I knew about the wetness that was likely from the power steering, but the coolant leak was not something I was aware of.

It turned out to be leaking from two places. The first was from below the radiator cap, where a thin hose attaches that feeds the overflow tank. Like the PS hoses, it was leaking from the spring clamp, so I replaced it with a worm clamp, but it continued to leak from the brass fitting to which the hose was attached. At first, I didn’t understand what I was seeing—the fitting seemed like it swiveled. Then I realized that there had originally been a little plastic coolant neck there, it had snapped off (a very common problem on plastic radiators), someone had jury-rigged it with a screwed-in brass fitting and sealed it with Teflon tape, and it was now loose and leaking.

I first tried Permatex Thread Locker. That leaked, so I went to Gorilla Glue. That leaked too, so I was prepared to go nuclear with J-B Weld when I discovered a second leak.

This one was from someplace more serious—where one of the automatic transmission lines went into the plastic tank at the bottom (the radiator also acts as a transmission cooler, as it does on many vehicles). It wasn’t leaking from the hose, so replacing the spring clamp as I’d done elsewhere wouldn’t matter. It looked like the leak might be coming from a seal behind the fitting that ran through the plastic tank, but my attempt to loosen or tighten the nut only caused the plastic to flex and the leak to increase.

In addition, one of the things I read about the Armada is that the radiator’s internal transmission-cooling plumbing eventually cracks, allowing ATF and coolant to intermix. This creates the dreaded “strawberry milkshake” that causes the transmission to fail. I checked the date code on the radiator, and it was original to the car. Taking these three things together, I would’ve been an idiot to not replace the radiator, and as I often say, I try not to be an idiot. Seriously—it’s one thing for something to break with no warning, and quite another to be stranded and sit there thinking, “Yeah, I should’ve replaced that.”

As with everything I do, I looked at the cost. Folks who routinely tow big trailers install a separate heavy-duty transmission cooler. Others replace the radiator, either with the original Nissan part, or a less-expensive aftermarket choice, or an aluminum one. RockAuto has several cheap radiators, but these things are big, and with shipping they came to about $150. The correct Nissan radiator with its known shortcomings could be had on eBay for as low as $180. These days the world is full of decently-priced Chinese-made aluminum radiators. I’ve used them in a variety of cars. The weld quality varies from decent to cringe-worthy, but I’ve never had one leak. Whether or not to use one is a question of fit and vibe. I think they look completely out of place in my beloved BMW 2002s, and besides, they’re too thick to use without deleting the original cooling fan, which I refuse to do, but I have one in my Lotus Europa and use them in some of the later BMWs. The Armada forum said that there’s plenty of room for a three-row or even a four-row aluminum radiator, but fit-wise, the fan shroud needs to be fettled with.

I would’ve preferred to buy an aluminum radiator on Amazon so that I could return it cost-free if it wouldn’t fit, but the cost there was $250 for the same radiator that was $185 on eBay. Then I found a new eBay vendor with zero feedback selling the same radiator for $165 (drop-shipped from the same port in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, as nearly every other seller). There was the risk that the vendor wasn’t real, or the radiator was damaged or open-box, but I clicked and bought, and I was relieved when an intact new radiator arrived two days later in a sealed box.

As the box sat in my kitchen, I thought, “Damn, this thing is big.”

Replacing a radiator on a vintage car consists of draining it, removing the upper and lower hoses, removing the four bolts holding it to the nose, and done in 15 minutes, tops. But on newer cars, it’s typically far more complicated. On the modern BMWs that I’m familiar with, it’s like one of those interlocking rope-and-ring Chinese puzzles, where an odd dance needs to be done with the fan, the shroud, and the expansion tank. On the Armada, the fan and shroud were straightforward, but it turns out that the power steering fluid cooler and the A/C condenser are attached to the front of the radiator, so the dance involves unbolting the condenser, then tilting the radiator forward so you can unbolt the PS cooler.

Despite its size, I expected the original plastic-tanked radiator to be fairly light, but a combination of fluid remaining in it and it sticking to its rubber mounts made it a “don’t do that” to my 65-year-old back, so I elicited help from one of my kids to muscle it up and out. I test-fit the shroud on the new radiator and did some cutting to get it to seat around its upper tank.

When you replace a radiator, there’s the question of how much of the rest of the cooling system you should prophylactically replace, even if there’s nothing wrong with it. If the water pump or the thermostat or the fan clutch go south on me, I’m certainly going to be pissed that I didn’t just replace them while they were all accessible, but the fan clutch feels fine, there’s no play or leakage in the water pump pulley, and the car warms up perfectly. I did, however, inspect the hoses at the front of the engine and found that the aluminum neck to which the upper radiator hose is attached was badly corroded. I replaced the hose and cleaned the neck. The lower radiator hose looked OK, but for symmetry I replaced it at the same time.

Dropping the new radiator in wasn’t nearly as bad as removing the old one, as I had gravity on my side, but getting the cooler and condenser reattached was challenging. I dropped the condenser attachment bolts down into the nose multiple times and had to fish them out with a magnetic wand.

When the radiator, shroud, and fan were all installed, I spun the fan by hand and heard it hitting the shroud due to lack of clearance on the left side. I could’ve pulled it back out and trimmed that side, but the only bolt-on attachments are at the top, so even if I created clearance, there was nothing to hold it in place. So in true Hack Mechanic fashion, I installed a very stout zip tie at the bottom corner that pulled it where it needed to be.

I did the drive-park-check cycle a few times to be absolutely certain no coolant was leaking and the only remaining leak was the trickle from the steering rack’s input shaft, then deemed it roadworthy.

So in terms of the Armada’s punch list, that leaves the front struts. I’ll get to that next week.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

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Stephen writes:

Sajeev,

I’ve written to you before about my 1965 Falcon. Now I have a question about my 1975 Mercury Bobcat. It gets a nasty vibration around 65 miles per hour—dash and steering wheel. I have put new tires on all four wheels, had a front-end alignment, and balanced all four wheels. Twice! None of this has fixed the problem. Here’s what I am thinking to try next, in this order:

1. Balance the driveshaft and replace the U-joints.  (They are probably original to the car.)
2. Rebuild the rack. (It leaks anyway.)
3. Replace the front end, ball joints, and control arms.

Do you have any other better ideas?

Sajeev answers:

Vibrations at highway speeds are usually (always?) an issue with the driveline. I replaced all the differential bushings on my Lincoln Mark VIII back in 2004, which made a moderately annoying vibration (i.e. my rearview mirror was blurry) disappear. But the bushings were barely worn to the naked eye, with less than 1 millimeter of deflection in their mounting surfaces over new replacements. Now the car is making the same vibration again, so I know that diff bushings on independently sprung Ford vehicles have a 20-ish-year life span.

But this is a Bobcat, not a Ford with an independent rear suspension. While many suspension and driveline pieces can cause this problem, you are very wise to address the driveshaft, as detailed in option #1. Do this and I suspect the problem will be gone. If you have a manual-transmission Bobcat and want an extra dash of fun when accelerating, consider an aluminum driveshaft instead (for less rotational mass). It never hurts to do a worthy upgrade while you’re in there, right?

If #1 doesn’t work (it really should; those U-joints from 1975 are toast!), I would look at the rubber bits in the rear suspension, most notably the leaf spring bushings. Your second option of rebuilding the steering rack is also likely, but I’d check the rear suspension first.

And here’s a quick thought on your final suggestion: if you have an original 1975 suspension, steering, and braking system (i.e. rubber brake lines), I’d recommend you go in there and rebuild everything. That’s not very hard for a mass-produced vehicle from Ford or GM, as parts are plentiful and easy to get in a single place. I just scanned RockAuto, and I reckon they have everything to rebuilt your Bobcat’s steering, suspension, and brakes (lines). I started throwing Bobcat parts into a RockAuto shopping cart, and there’s a good chance you can get everything for around $500.

So take a look under the ‘ol Bobcat and see how good you’ll feel once you throw parts at every nearly 50-year-old system. Deferred maintenance isn’t just a problem for Porsche Cayennes out of warranty or depreciated modern muscle cars at a tote-the-note lot. (Or any other fully depreciated vehicle, for that matter.)

Your Bobcat is probably telling you its time to rebuild everything. Save the receipts because they will add value if/when you ever decide to sell it. And remember one final thing: When you buy once, you’ll only cry once.

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

***

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It’s that time of year again! This article was originally published in 2020, and we’re bringing it back this year to encourage ourselves—and you—to get our treasured cars back on the road with love and care. —Ed. 

The snow mounds are receding and the mercury is beginning to rise for much of the U.S., which means that many gearheads are eyeballing their currently tucked-away vintage rides. If you are giddy with anticipation about driving that long-stored vehicle, here are five steps to follow to get your next driving season started off smoothly.

Step #1: Inspect

Even if you put the car away properly, and kept an eye on it over winter, the first thing you should do is go over it with a keen eye. Grab your favorite flashlight (everyone has one, right?) and examine each nook and cranny of your car—bumper to bumper and roofline to contact patch.

Keep an eye out for cracks, evidence of leaks, worn-out bushings, or wiring that needs attention. Despite your best efforts, you might have to evict a rodent. Now is the time, however, before you tear off on the first, triumphant drive and a nest dislodges, causing even more damage. Meticulously taking stock of the car each year is a great way to ensure that deteriorating parts do not cause additional damage.

The most important system to inspect right now is the brakes. I start with a hard/harder test at the pedal. Sit in the driver’s seat and press the brake pedal as if you were coming to a normal stop, and hold the pedal down for 10 seconds or so after the pedal stops moving. Now press even harder on the pedal—more akin to a panic stop—and hold pressure again. The pedal should stay rock solid, not slowly move towards the floor. After this test, inspect the brake system once more, looking for leaks or signs of fluid escaping the system. This is a pass-or-fail exam; now is the time to find any issues, not on the open street.

Step #2: Clean

Even in storage, dirt and grime accumulate on your beloved ride. Take the time to remove all this damaging debris from both painted and soft surfaces. We have talked about good detailing technique before, and we will always recommend keeping both the interior and exterior of your ride clean.

You can perform this step at the same time as the inspection, but I prefer to keep the tasks separate so I don’t lose my mechanically oriented concentration amid a mist of quick detailer. Treat rubber weather stripping to keep the sealing intact, therefore allowing less dust inside the interior (unless you prefer to go topless). Interior fabrics should get a protectant to start the season off right and make for easier cleaning later on, when you would rather be driving or showing than detailing.

Step #3: Prepare to Start

That’s right, we’re slicing this process pretty thin. However, even when properly stored, a dormant engine can benefit from a slow awakening. Ensuring components are ready to move again will go a long way to ensuring your engine has not only a good driving season but a long, healthy life.

Engines drain oil from top to bottom, and after sitting all season there is likely very little—if any—oil at the top end of the engine. If you have the ability and confidence to spin the oil pump before cranking the engine with the start, do that. If not, grab an oil can, remove the valve covers, and oil the top end. This won’t get the main bearings, but it is better than nothing.

Hopefully, your inspection told you that the fuel lines were in good shape (if they weren’t, replace them and come back to this step) so it’s time to get fuel pressure in the system. Be prepared for anything at this point, especially if you stored the car filled with fuel that has ethanol blended into it. An electric fuel pump is great for these situations, since you can pressurize the system rather than cranking the engine for a bit.

If you don’t have an electric pump, disconnect the ignition by pulling the coil wire to the distributor and crank the engine till you see oil and fuel pressures. You’ll know that fuel pressure is adequate on a carbureted engine if the accelerator pump squirts fuel into the intake when the throttle is opened by hand. Replace the coil wire once this process is complete.

Step #4: Start

Now the fun part. While it pales in comparison to starting a rebuilt engine for the first time, starting your vintage car for the first time of the season is the pick-me-up most of us could use right now.

A few pumps of the accelerator on a carbureted engine will get some raw fuel in the intake manifold to make starting a bit easier. Fuel-injected engines will only need a turn of the key. Once running, let the engine idle for a few minutes as you look around the engine compartment for any leaks and listen for strange noises. Diagnose anything you find right away.

Step #5: Go for a Short Drive

You finally made it to the part you have been waiting for this whole time. Put the car in gear and start slowly—a trip around the block or down the street, for example. Pay attention to any noises or vibrations that seem out of the ordinary. Investigate accordingly.

Just like that, you are on the path to another great season of driving. Keep up on the maintenance on your classic and you will be rewarded with miles of enjoyment. Is there an extra step you like to take with your car? Post it in the comments below; you might help another gearhead. For now, though, get out in the garage and get your car ready to cruise at a moment’s notice.

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The last two weeks, I wrote about repairing the exhaust in my recently-purchased 2008 Nissan Armada and getting the car inspected. With it legal, its intermittent Check Engine Light (CEL) issue faded into the background, and the punch list of needs became: 1) replacement of the front struts (it banged loudly over uneven terrain), 2) diagnosing and addressing a number of minor leaks, and 3) dealing with a loud metallic rattle from the front of the engine, almost certainly associated with the serpentine belt path. As belts are part of my “Big Seven” things likely to strand a car, I addressed this one next.

The so-called serpentine belt on a modern car is a very different beast than the quaint “fan belt” on a vintage car—that old narrow V-profile belt that spins the alternator, water pump, and the pump’s pulley-mounted fan. Unless you own an air-cooled Volkswagen, where belt tension is changed by removing washers to make the groove in the pulley shallower, V-profile fan belts are manually tightened by pivoting the alternator on a tensioning track. Loosen the bolt that holds the ear of the alternator to the track, pivot the alternator to slide it on the track until the belt is snug, tighten the bolt, done. It takes maybe a minute. If the belt snaps, replacing it is trivial. You just need to pass the new belt around the fan, loosen the alternator’s tensioning bolt, put the new belt on the crank, water pump and alternator pulleys, and tension it. If the radiator has a fan shroud, it’s a little more challenging to get the new belt around the fan, but it’s still an easy roadside repair.

Manually-tensioned V-belts are simple, but they do have issues. Both the alternator and the tension track typically have rubber bushings in them, and with age, heat, and oil, they wear out, causing the alternator to cock forward at an angle, which makes it so the belt will never stay tight. At some point the belt may begin to slip, which can cause the water pump to stop spinning and the coolant temperature to head into the red. In addition, cars that had what were then luxury accessories like power steering and air conditioning typically had separate V-belts for each, whose tension needed to be adjusted individually.

In the 1980s, things swung in the direction of cars having a single, wide, automatically-tensioned, grooved serpentine belt—so called because of the snake-like path it takes through all the pulleys. Serpentine belts don’t require tension adjustment. Instead, a spring-loaded or hydraulic tensioner has a pulley that leans against the belt. In addition to the pulley on the tensioner, there may be another idler pulley that routes the belt. Generally, if a car has a serpentine belt, there’s only one and it runs everything, but there are exceptions—my 2003 BMW E39 530i has two, with the second one running the A/C compressor, and each having its own tensioner.

The big advantage of serpentine belts is that they’re maintenance-free (if by maintenance you mean manually adjusting the tension). And, because the alternator doesn’t need to provide the tension adjustment, it mounts rigidly, so it’s far less likely to cock from worn bushings. But as with most things, there’s no free lunch, and a serpentine belt creates several challenges.

The first is that the serp belt, like any belt, is a normal-wear-and-tear part that needs to be replaced, and as is the case with many things on newer cars, that’s far more difficult than with an old-school V-belt due to the tightly-packed nature of components in modern cars and the torturous path the belt often takes. On rear-wheel drive cars with longitudinally-mounted engines, the tight access makes it difficult to even see the belt, much less remove it, without first removing components like the air box.

On front-wheel-drive cars with a transverse-mounted engine, because there isn’t a belt-driven fan aimed at the radiator, electric radiator fans are used. You’d think that would translate to an advantage that the belt isn’t hidden inside a fan shroud, but on our Honda Fit, the belt is so close to the side of the engine compartment that it’s necessary to remove a wheel and the inner fender liner to access the belt and pulleys.

In addition to the belt itself needing to be periodically replaced, the tensioner pulley (and the idler pulley, if there is one) spins on bearings, and over time, they wear out. The indication often starts as a high-pitched whine, transitions into a marbles-whipping-around-a-metal-bowl sound, then settles into a screechy metallic howl as it nears failure. And the tensioner itself can fail, though that’s less common.

The third issue is that replacing the belt requires relieving the tension by rotating the tensioner in the opposite direction it’s using to tension the belt, and that’s often not easy, both because it’s not clear where or how to grab it (some tensioners have a hex-head bolt you put a socket on, others have an Allen key or a Torx socket, and on some you grab the central nut on the pulley itself), and because accessing it and being able to move a long-handled ratchet wrench far enough to de-tension the belt is difficult. You typically need to search an enthusiast forum to find out which technique your car requires.

Another thing to be aware of is that while V-profile belts always sit in the V-groove of a pulley, one of the things that enables serpentine pulleys to be so, uh, serpentine is their ability to wrap around pulleys in either direction. The crankshaft pulley that supply belt power and things that use power (the alternator, power steering pump, A/C compressor) always have a grooved pulley with the belt’s grooves sitting in it, but the tensioner and idler pulley may be grooved or may have a flat surface that presses against the back of the belt, depending on the belt routing that’s required.

I encountered all these issues on the Armada. Something in the belt train was clearly making noise, particularly on cold start. It wasn’t yet at screechy howl; it was more like a hollow metaling ringing. I used my mechanic’s stethoscope and found that both the tensioner pulley and the power steering pump were loud (the steering also groaned when cold, further implicating the PS pump). However, other things in the belt chain—the alternator, the water pump—can certainly make noise as well.

There’s a technique you can use to isolate the problem, or at least get data that corroborates that of the stethoscope. The trick is to de-tension the belt, carefully lay it to the side of one component at a time so you don’t lose the belt routing, and test each component by spinning its pulley by hand as well as grabbing the pulley and checking it for play. I did that and immediately found that the bearing in the tensioner pulley was worn to the point of noise and obvious looseness. Surprisingly, the power steering pump felt fine.

So, what to do?

When you find a bad tensioner pulley, you have several choices. You can replace only the pulley, or you can buy a new tensioner with a new pulley attached, or you can buy a kit with a new belt, tensioner/pulley, and idler pulley if there is one, and do it all. The Armada’s belt looked absolutely fine with no cracks or dry rot, and the idler pulley was quiet. I usually choose the money-saving route, but because there was a break in the weather where I could do the repair, and Amazon could get me a Gates belt-tensioner-idler kit next day for $115 (whereas the a la carte options had longer shipping times), I opted for that.

The only power steering pump I could get next-day was an unbranded Chinese-made one of questionable quality, so even though it made sense to pull the belt off and do the two repairs together, I separated them and ordered a well-priced, low-mileage OEM Hitachi PS pump from a New England recycler, knowing it would take two days to get here.

I’d already figured out how to de-tension the belt to do the component test, so removing it was easy. I first downloaded an image of how the belt routed around all the pulleys, then verified that it was correct for my vehicle. I realized that the Armada is a little unusual in that the mechanical cooling fan (and its viscous clutch) doesn’t ride on the front of the water pump but on its own pulley, essentially creating a second idler pulley, so it wasn’t my imagination that the belt path appeared particularly convoluted. Fortunately, the engine compartment in the Armada is big enough that everything was accessible without having to do anything like removing the fan shroud, so replacing the tensioner assembly and the idler pulley was easy.

What was far more challenging than I expected was getting the new belt on. I foolishly thought that, to thread it onto the pulleys, all I needed to do was pass the belt between the fan and the shroud and pull it over the fan. It took me over an hour to fully understand that the only pulley that’s “inside the fan” is the fan pulley itself, and that the fan pulley was smooth, so it needed to run against the back of the belt, not the grooved part. After several attempts, I learned that the trick to putting the belt on was to take a loop of it oriented with the grooves facing outward, pass it over the fan, then put the flat back of the belt on the fan pulley. Everything else could then be placed on its pulley.

Except, of course, the tensioner. New serpentine belts are typically much tighter than old stretched belts, requiring the tensioner to be rotated much further back than was needed to release the old belt. While I was able to release the old belt using a ratchet placed from the top of the engine compartment, getting enough clearance to put an 18-inch pipe on the end of the ratchet handle required me to do it from beneath the car. I also employed the trick of using strong clothespin-style clamps to hold the belt onto pulleys that it kept sliding off during belt routing.

Getting the belt on was enough work that I didn’t look forward to having to do it again when the replacement power steering pump arrived. Although I was certain that I needed to replace it, I gave the pump a look while I was under the car. I noticed that one of the bolts on the pump bracket was loose, so I tightened it. And, although the whole issue of fluid leaks was a separate task, there was an obvious and non-trivial leak of power steering fluid from where one of the rubber PS hoses mated to a metal line. The Armada uses spring-style, constant-tension clamps for all the coolant and power steering connections. While I understand the theory behind their use, I hate these clamps, as in situations like this, there’s no way to tighten them. I used pliers to loosen the clamp, moved it backward on the hose, took a conventional worm-screw-style clamp, opened it up, slid it over the hose, closed it, and tightened it down.

I then started the Armada. Not only was the ringy rattle from the belt tensioner pulley gone, so was the noise from the power steering pump.

No way!

I thought it was a fluke, so I waited until the following 32°-morning and tried it again.

Quiet as a church mouse.

I’m not certain whether the power steering noise I was hearing through the stethoscope was just a rattle from the bolt loose on the bracket, and whether the groaning on cold turning was due to pressure loss from a little fluid leakage, but for now there’s nothing wrong with it. I need to decide whether to spend the shipping to return the $80 used power steering pump, or put it on the shelf in the garage for when the thing really does fail.

So. Armada exhaust? Done, at least for now. Belt-and-related-accessory noise? Done, at least until the power steering pump rears its head. Next week: fluid leaks.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

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Hagerty Community member TingeOfGinge writes:

Dear Sajeev,

Your Piston Slap column never fails to entertain and educate. Here’s one for you: In what timeframe do we think the most important, most durable advances in automotive technology — and subsequently, automotive ability — took place, and what were they?

My proposal: 1953–60. We started with a 6v charging system, manual brakes, and flathead motors. But we moved to the 12v system the industry would use for the next 60+ years, power-assisted brakes, and high-compression, overhead valve ubiquity.

Now, as a millennial, I didn’t have the joy of experiencing these technological developments as they happened, but I’m sure some in the Hagerty Community did. And they have plenty of tales to tell about how X technology made their dad/uncle/brother’s “New For [insert model year]” vehicle so much better than the one it replaced.

Sajeev answers:

This is a question with multiple correct answers, and it changes over time. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the PhD-level chemists, physicists, engineers, etc. working on battery technology will one day come up with a formulation that makes our current EV frustrations resemble the machinations of people living in the dark ages. And doing so would improve the performance, price, and reusability of said EV battery at a monumental level. But that’s a future we have yet to (or may never?) see, so let’s discuss what might be the most important historical time periods for advancements in automotive technology.

Your time period (1953–60) is indeed a great one. My favorite time period is the Malaise Era (1973–83, approximately) because of the breadth and depth of improvements to automobiles and the societies that rely on them. We can and should hate this era more than any other, and trust me, I used to be one of the haters.

Here’s a little sugar to help the medicine go down: The Malaise Era ushered safer designs, better fuel economy, cleaner exhaust emissions, and superior luxury/NVH controls. And many of these benefits came from two bits of underlying technology: computers (inside and out of the vehicle) and extensive use of plastics on interior and exterior surfaces.

The photos above show the fruits of our Malaise-y computing efforts: aerodynamic modeling, interior ergonomics, and finite element analysis. I condensed all three computing advancements into a singular vehicle: The late-malaise revolution that was the 1982 Ford Sierra.

This Ford and the luxury-oriented Audi 100 were design and engineering tours de force for the time, lack of emissions controls outside of North America notwithstanding. They’d both get stomped on by a pancake catalyst-equipped, 8.1-liter Cadillac Eldorado in that regard. (The “Eldog” also had Malaise Era plastics, but the less we discuss of that the better.)

Let’s discuss in a little more depth the technology that made the Malaise Era a good (relevant?) time period in automotive history. While plastic panels and pleather interiors could owe a debt of gratitude to a singular creator, reducing Malaise Era computing to one hero is pretty easy: Meet the Cray-1 Supercomputer from 1975. According to computerhistory.org, it was 10 times faster than its competition, had over 60 miles of wiring, and drew 115 kW of power (about 10 households worth of juice). Depending on configuration, these sold for about $7.9 million dollars in 1977 (over $41 million in 2024), with a total of 80 units made.

The ring of benches around the Cray-1 was a nice touch, likely reducing uneasiness and fatigue when the malaise of a polyester-clad engineer’s work begins to rest heavy on their soul. But the folks behind Malaise Era automobiles endured, surviving the dark times, making our lives better in the process.

I’ve had a hard time finding an OEM press release that specifically thanked this electronic game changer for being the genesis of our modern automobile. But press releases of the era do suggest computer aided design was created and shared across multiple departments for faster production with fewer errors. Odds are, their rudimentary modeling came from a Cray supercomputer or three. Which is pretty cray-cray-crazy if you ponder on that notion.

While the Malaise Era may not be the best answer for TingeOfGinge’s question, it is definitely in the top 10. Maybe top 5? What say you, Hagerty Community?

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

***

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Just having some time alone in the garage is a luxury for most of us, so building our dream shop with all the bells and whistles often stays a dream as we focus on simply enjoying what we have. Just because we can’t have 2000 square feet, a mill, a lathe, and a lift does not mean we should ignore little touches of luxury that make our projects more enjoyable—or, at least, more tolerable.

A luxury does not have to be a big-ticket item, merely something that makes you look forward to your time in the garage or that makes your projects run a little smoother. With that goal in mind, here are five affordable upgrades for just about any space.

Affordable Luxury #1: Good Lights

Lighting technology has come a long way in recent history. Compact and efficient LED work lights are easy to hang, run tens of thousands of hours with little maintenance, and sometimes can even be put on a dimmer. That last feature may seem a little absurd, but I don’t particularly enjoy how surgical my garage can feel when I want to just hang out with friends.

Hardwired, battery-operated, or plug-in, lights are great options that can fit anyone’s needs at almost every price range. Consider lighting an investment. It might feel like a decent chunk of change now, but most lights will last years, and they will make working on just about anything more enjoyable.

Affordable Luxury #2: A Decent Stereo

The jury has been split 50/50 here whenever I bring up having a television in the garage, but it’s pretty much universally agreed that a good stereo is a must-have. While the Panasonic boombox purchased with Pepsi points in 1996 might still be cranking out the tunes, if you care about sound quality at all, a good set of speakers and a decent amplifier are very affordable, and they allow you to advantage of any music format you might prefer.

Obviously, no one would want to keep records where they use an angle grinder, but not every garage is focused on fabrication. After I splurged for in-ceiling speakers and a tidy wall-mounted amplifier, it became so much easier to listen to music, and the sound doesn’t change much no matter where I am in the space—and my setup cost about $200. Do what works for you, and make it sound good.

Affordable Luxury #3: Sturdy Shelves

Even the most minimal workspace must include storage. The prices of sturdy, strong, and decent-looking shelving are budget-level when you consider that it takes a lot to wear out shelves. Similar to the lighting above, good shelving is a buy once, cry once decision. Adjustable shelving can be had for just a couple hundred dollars, perfectly suited for the projects and parts you store currently. It can even leave you room to grow or change the space in the future. For the same price, you can also buy materials and build custom shelves for your space.

Affordable Luxury #4: Reels

If your garage is bigger than a closet, the addition of extension cords or air hoses is less about convenience and more about necessity: Overhead or wall-mounted, retractable reels make it easy to keep tripping hazards to a minimum. These have gotten budget-friendly as of late—just be sure the wire gauge is appropriate for your use.

Some of the low-end, cheap electrical reels can be 14-gauge or smaller, while most heavy-duty plug-in power tools are best served by 12-gauge. Roll out the length of hose or cord semi-regularly to inspect for imperfections or damage. Cables and hoses that live on the floor pick up debris and, if those bits are rolled into a reel, they become grinding compounds that can damage cords over time.

Affordable Luxury #5: Rugs

Okay, maybe not a rug. We couldn’t imagine a garage with wall-to-wall carpet, but something that people can wipe their feet on, or a standing mat at your workbench are little things that go a long way to make a workspace feel less industrial and more like a place you enjoy being in. Use them to inject a little personality into your space, if you want: Novelty door mats can say just about anything, so we won’t give you any ideas.

***

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Two funerals are now part of my car’s restoration story, a sad twist I never imagined when I started this project three years ago.

The shadow of death has marked these cars from the outset: Dino was Enzo Ferrari’s short-lived sub-brand that was named after his son. Alfredo Ferrari, nicknamed Dino, worked for his old man until he passed away from muscular dystrophy in 1956. He was just 24 years old.

In January 2021, I paid $25,000 for a 1975 Dino 308 GT4 that spent some 20 years hibernating in a SoCal garage. That 25 large was, I knew, only a down payment on this project car. I’ve had some success with previous machines and realized a long time ago that I enjoy the DIY portions and getting to know the craftspeople I hire for the jobs I can’t do, like painting and interior work. There’s the learning aspect, too—a chance to practice and improve my self-taught mechanical skills.

While the car was with a semi-retired painter in 2022, he unexpectedly passed away. I had known him for about a decade, and I always enjoyed stopping by to catch up on my car and life. One thing that I’ve learned over the years is to look for people who enjoy their craft and cars as much as I do. The shared enthusiasm brings added joy to any project.

Scrambling for another painter revealed years-long waiting lists. Through a friend, I found someone with excellent references and an opening for spring 2023. The week before I brought my car to him last March, a fire destroyed his paint booth.

Meanwhile, I’d identified a similar late-career trimmer to restore the interior. This gentleman had a one-man shop and took jobs he enjoyed rather than ones that merely paid the bills. He saw my 308 as a way to hone new skills and experiment with different interior materials. We debated colors and fabrics with vigor and I usually deferred. He took great joy in a technique he developed to replace the destroyed driver’s-seat foam. Last summer, he unexpectedly passed.

Oh, man. What is it with this car?

I’m not superstitious, but you have to wonder. My wife declared she wouldn’t ride in the car even if I finished it. Her aversion to exhaust fumes suggests, however, that the car’s potential curse might be a convenient excuse.

How does one press on? I’ve now had two painful episodes in which teary-eyed families helped me dig through soon-to-be-empty shops for car parts. How does one be respectful, but also make sure parts weren’t lost? In one instance, a shop landlord locked the doors, imprisoning my seats until the estate was worked out. I know that the GT4’s sun visors are gone. What else?

All this on top of the fact that, as regular readers may remember from my last dispatch, I had to get the engine rebuilt twice due to it burning too much oil—and smoking out my entire neighborhood in the process. Is the GT4 karmic retribution for past sins?

Last summer and fall, I waited for the new painter, who also had some family emergencies, to regroup. A June delivery date was pushed to August and then to November. I wanted to be understanding and felt like I had been, but at the same time, I was eager to get the car back. My car friends all told me to just let it ride, as the waiting is part of the game. By December, I prepared a mental script to inform the painter that I was coming to get the car in January, painted or not. I called, and before I could say anything, he told me he was painting the car next week. The pictures here were shot a week before the end of the year.

I also found another trimmer, who plans to finish the interior this winter. With any luck, I’ll drive the car this summer. Is it misguided to feel hopeful? The evidence suggests, no surprise, that I am probably the fool. My car—and some subsystems—has sat for months at various places despite assurances of reasonable timelines. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard, “In two weeks,” only for that time to come and go without even an acknowledgment of the missed deadline. To be clear, I’m not talking about every shop I’ve worked with, but at least half have operated in this way. It’s no secret that the pool of skilled automotive craftspeople is aging. One of the consequences, it seems to me, is that those who remain in the field have lots of power and the paying customer has surprisingly little. More often than not, the deadline is, “When I get to it.”

Am I simply the jerk or pushover who is repeatedly pushed aside for other projects? Possibly. I seek out the small, one-person operations because I get closer to the actual work and talent than I would with a big operation. I usually ask to work alongside for a day or two as a dumb set of hands so I can learn. I cherish those days. The downside, I now know, is that my strategy leaves me vulnerable to life events and capricious schedules.

Since I’ve never worked with larger organizations on a car project, I can’t advise on the difference. These restorations look straightforward, and maybe they are for well-known and popular cars like Corvettes and 911s. Oddballs like the GT4 truly are ventures into the unknown, so it could be that I’m merely a victim of bad luck.

I hope the car’s not cursed. I met another GT4 owner last fall and asked to drive his car, which refreshed my memory that I love the car not only for its controversial design, but also for the driving experience. That short jaunt brought back all the enthusiasm I had in January 2021 and reminded me why I had searched for the right Dino for many years.

For now, my Dino restoration experience offers two seemingly opposing lessons. On the one hand, we don’t know when life will end, so get moving. At the same time, perhaps, it’s a reminder that we should be patient—because sometimes, we just don’t have a choice.

***

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The post Curse of the Dino: Murphy’s Law Strikes Our Editor’s $25K Ferrari appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Ron writes:

Hi Sajeev, I talked to you via email a year ago about my 1954 Oldsmobile Rocket 88. I too had a piston slap noise when I started the motor. You advised me to put diesel oil in place of my regular oil. I did it a few months back and it made a big difference. The engine is much smoother now and the piston noise is to a minimum when I start it. There is a little noise when cold but it dissipates after less than a minute when the engine is getting warmed up.

Thank you again for helping me. I have owned my car since 1983 when I bought it from a gentleman in Van Nuys, California.

Sajeev answers:

I am so glad my advice worked out for you! Bear with me for a second, as there might be a lesson to be learned for all classic vehicle owners.

Too often we get caught up in problems with our cars, and cannot see the forest for the trees. This is one of my (numerous problems) with Project Valentino, and I’ve been forced to listen to my internal project manager and his need to implement a “change management” plan. (Gotta listen to him because he’s got an MBA so he like totally knows what he’s talking about.)

It’s a slippery slope to introduce business concepts in places they don’t belong. But change management has validity in our complex world of automobiles. Otherwise, you’re just banging your head against a wall. The practice requires the user to recognize a problem, note any issue(s) surrounding it, gauge possible solutions, and approve/implement a solution. If your solution doesn’t work, you repeat the process. Simple as that.

In the case of Ron’s Oldsmobile, an engine rattle only has a few logical solutions: increase oil pressure via a change in oil type, tear apart the motor to fix an issue with the oil pump and piston rings, or a full rebuild before more engine damage occurs. The simplest, most logical solution for an armchair quarterback (like yours truly!) is to change the oil first, and diesel oil is generally the best for pre-1975 vehicles.

Luckily for me, the first step in my change management strategy worked for Ron. So if you think I can help YOU, read the next paragraph to make that happen. I could always use more questions to enlighten and possibly even entertain the Hagerty Community.

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

***

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One of the most notable participants in the 2024 Detroit Autorama is a special Oldsmobile 4-4-2 build packing a rare, experimental V-8 engine. To read about the twin brothers from Detroit responsible for this “Killer” project, click here. What follows is a technical and historical overview of the so-called W-43 prototype.

The mythical Dr. Olds was GM’s self-appointed innovation guru, with mass production, speedometers, front-wheel drive, turbocharging, a diesel V-8, automatic transmissions, anti-lock brakes, and chrome plating to his credit. So it should be no surprise that Olds engineers were pioneers in the movement to cram additional valves into their combustion chambers in pursuit of extra power. Behold, the W-43 prototype engine.

Oldsmobile’s special performance packages were generally coded with the letter W. In the late 1960s, the cause was volumetric efficiency: pumping extra fuel and air into—and exhaust out of—the engine to boost torque and horsepower. Work on the prototype W-43 V-8 shown here—a 455-cubic-inch muscle motor topped with heads sporting four valves per cylinder—began in earnest in the fall of 1967, though some of its technology had been in the engine lab for years.

One-upmanship was clearly at play in the W-43’s genesis. In the mid-1960s, Chrysler’s second-gen Hemi was the scourge of street and oval-track competition. Olds strived to trump Mopar by venturing beyond the Hemi V-8’s two valves per cylinder.

For the four-valve W-43 experiment, of which at least two examples are said to remain, a single chain-driven cam between the cylinder banks activates 16 pushrods. Each rod opens one pair of valves via rocker arms. To optimize this geometry, and to trim the mass of the pushrods in pursuit of super-high-rpm capability, the camshaft is elevated in the block exactly one inch in comparison with the 455 donor V-8.

Instead of Chrysler’s spherical combustion chambers, Oldsmobile used a simpler pent-roof arrangement which tipped valve faces toward the bore’s centerline. Spark plugs are centered to minimize flame travel, a configuration that necessitated sealing tubes in the valve covers. Pistons are domed.

To expedite the development of these new cylinder heads, Olds engineers employed a flow bench that could accurately assess temporary mahogany models. Best results were achieved with 1.75-inch intakes and 1.375-inch exhausts. This yielded a 43 percent increase in valve curtain area—likely the reason that figure was selected for this engine’s code name (curtain area = valve circumference x lift).

The 455-cubic-inch block, which continued 4.125-inch bore and 4.25-inch stroke dimensions, included one notable upgrade: To assure durability, new four-bolt main bearing caps were machined from forged steel.

Test results reported by Hot Rod magazine indicated a peak output of 440 horsepower at 4600 rpm with mild valve timing and a 4×2-barrel induction system. Those figures are modest by today’s standards likely because the engine was measured early in the development process.

The late 1960s were Motown’s horsepower heyday. The Hurst/Olds specials introduced in 1968 are now highly prized collectibles. Olds engineers also built hot marine powerplants and twin-turbo V-8s intended for Can-Am racing. A spinoff design was coded OW-43. Experimental dual-overhead-cam, 32-valve V-8s were also constructed for dyno testing.

Unfortunately, doomsday lurked around the bend. In the early 1970s, the feds tightened emissions standards and OPEC triggered an energy crisis with an oil embargo. Exactly what Olds didn’t need was a V-8 which was heavier, bulkier, more expensive to manufacture, and thirstier than conventional designs.

Thus, the W-43 was shelved and never reached production status.

It wasn’t all wasted effort, however, as this fantastic footnote demonstrates: Oldsmobile’s 2.3-liter Quad-Four—produced from 1987 through 2002 and used to power millions of Chevys, Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs, and Buicks—furthered W-43 lessons from the ’60s with the addition of dual overhead cams. The Quad-Four was America’s first four-valve engine as well as the final powerplant wholly developed and manufactured by Oldsmobile.

That legacy also includes an entry in the speed records books. An Olds Aerotech streamliner, powered by a turbocharged Quad Four and driven by A.J. Foyt, topped 267 mph in an epic 1987 measured-mile run at the Fort Stockton Test Center in Texas, seizing the world land-speed record from Mercedes-Benz.

***

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There are many staples of a DIY shop or garage, but the workbench stands above the rest. Having a work surface that is not the floor can make working on projects safer, more efficient, and more enjoyable. Sadly, just because benches are ubiquitous does not mean each one is good.

Like so many other things in life, a workbench must balance budget, function, appearance, and specialization. While we can’t help you with the last one on that list, we can get you to a great starting point by calling out some of the attributes that every good workbench will have. Whether you are building a new one or checking up on one that you’ve been using for years, here are five characteristics every great workbench needs.

A Flat (ish) Surface

You don’t need to rebuild a carburetor on a certified granite slab, but you do want a surface that can be clean and smooth while not allowing parts to roll away. You’ll often need to level your bench using shims or some other method, because garage floors are not typically very even—occasionally, on purpose.

Dozens of materials can be appropriate for bench tops, so be sure to take a deep look at what kinds of projects you think you’ll tackle and choose a material that can take the amount of weight you need it to and that won’t deform during use. Butcher’s block surfaces have been great to me, though there are a few sections of my bench that have some serious dents from hammer blows or heavy parts.

Height

It might be tempting to plan your workbench around the height of a kitchen countertop (36 inches is standard), but be careful: Most kitchen tasks are less precise than most DIY projects, and food prep and cooking don’t require leverage or a large range of movement, like garage work often does. A lower work surface height is more tolerable in a kitchen, the arrangement of which needs to be somewhat standardized. Your workspace has no such constraints. Set your bench at a comfortable height for you and the work you do. That might even mean two benches at two different heights: parts cleaning is best done at a lower bench, while carburetor rebuilding is best done at a higher one, so that it’s easier to see.

Heft

A flimsy bench makes work difficult in a number of ways. If you’ve got a component plopped on top of your workbench and every time you move it or shift something for access, the whole bench moves, you won’t feel confident in the work you’re doing.

Again, be careful: You can have too much of a good thing. Nice and sturdy does not require using 6×6-inch steel tubing for legs and 1/2-inch plate for the top. There’s a place for a bench like that in a welding shop, but in most home shops, it would be more annoying than helpful.

A Solid Vise

The third hand we always seem to need, a vise is a necessity for any shop for many reasons. It can be a anvil, a press, or an anchor that can help projects big and small in a multitude of ways. Don’t believe me? Try and work without one for a while.

Like the other characteristics listed here, consider your specific needs and choose accordingly. Do we all need Wilton Bullets? No, but most people would be better served with one than with an import vise whose jaws don’t line up evenly and have a ton of slop. If you’re on a budget, consider buying an old vise to restore. It’s a fun project, and we can honestly say that cast metals aren’t what they once used to be.

Sturdiness

When wrenching on something, it’s nice to have a workbench that doesn’t move an inch to the left when trying to loosen something and an inch to the right when tightening something. Especially if you are not planning to bolt the bench to a wall or other structure in your garage, consider using an under-bench shelf for storage: It will add a nice, low weight and improve stability.

Bonus: Wheels

I’ve said it before and will say it again: The ability to bring your tools and workspace to your project is a superpower. Buy a good set of double-locking casters, put them on your bench, and suddendly it is a tool that goes places with you. The other side of the shop? Easy. The driveway? No problem. Putting multiple benches together to create super bench? Also an option! Use this power wisely.

No matter what, having a workbench is better than not having one. If you are looking to maximize your workspace and haven’t assessed whether your workbench is working for or against you, now is the time.

***

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On the way to lunch at a local Mexican joint, our marketing and business development contact Ethan Siegwart mats the throttle. The unmistakable supercharger whine of a Hellcat engine emanates from under the hood of the Jeep Gladiator he pilots. But unlike a Hellcat Challenger or Charger, which like to shift and squirm under full throttle, the Gladiator just squats and accelerates at a frightening rate.

But wait a minute. Despite the willingness of parent company Stellantis to Hellcatify seemingly everything, it never had the gumption to put the venerable 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 in a Jeep Gladiator or Wrangler.

Enter America’s Most Wanted 4×4. Located in Holly, Michigan, about 30 minutes northwest of Stellantis North American Headquarters, AMW is an outfit that has been converting Jeeps into high-dollar, big-power off-road machines since 2012.

Even before you walk in to the heart of AMW’s operation, you can tell business has been good. The parking lot is filled with Jeeps awaiting delivery to their owners. Inside, the 32,000-square-foot manufacturing facility packed tight with crate engines, suspension components, and and Jeeps in various stages of completion.   

“I dislike the word ‘swap’,” says company founder Jared Petiprin. Indeed, to call the work America’s Most Wanted 4×4 does “a V-8 swap” would be an injustice. Its turnkey Jeeps are about as close to a factory Hellcat Gladiator or Wrangler that you can get. AMW utilizes a plethora of Mopar parts—which includes the crate engines and transmissions—and adds custom-engineered and -manufactured adapters, exhaust systems, and proprietary engine calibration. Stuff that often gets overlooked in an engine conversion, like brackets, tubing kits, and bolts, come from tier 1 and 2 automotive suppliers. Think factory coatings and metallurgy, rather than hardware store specials.

Petiprin’s turnkey mentality comes from a bad experience after installing a lift kit on his 1997 TJ Wrangler. He didn’t understand why he was spending money on the vehicle for it to drive worse, and the lift kit company was unwilling to help solve the drivability problems. Thus, the goal of America’s Most Wanted 4×4 is “to produce an A-to-Z product with 100 percent reliability and accountability,” i.e. deliver a sorted Jeep that you don’t have to futz with.

Which engine AMW installs depends on how much horsepower you want. Packages range from the 505-hp, naturally aspirated 392 Hemi crate to the 1000-hp, supercharged Hellephant. The demo Gladiator Siegwart sped us to lunch in was a 707-horsepower model, which is one of the most popular packages for AMW’s builds.

The engine is only half the package for AMW’s turnkey Jeeps, however. Full-float 8-lug axles with ARB Air Lockers are added front and rear. These beefcake axles (8LUG in AMW parlance), which secure the hub with two bearings rather than the stock axle’s single bearing, are added because these builds run 40-inch tires. That extra rotational mass doesn’t play well with the factory axles on or off road—especially when your Jeep is capable of such high speeds. Eight-piston brake calipers front and rear help keep all of that power in check. For suspension, there are two options: the base long-arm setup that utilizes Falcon shocks, or a more off-road-centric, long-travel setup that uses Fox coilovers.

If this sounds expensive, that’s because it is. Turnkey builds start at $160,000. A fully packaged, 1000-horsepower build with long-travel suspension, accessories, and custom paint have neared $350,000.

If that’s too much dough for your budget, AMW offers engine conversions and suspension packages for older Wranglers, like the TJ (1997–2006), JK(2007–18), and current JL. Prices start at around $30K. These conversions have proven to be more popular than the turnkey models, in fact, with 250–300 of them completed by AMW and its 40 certified installers last year.

“I build Jeeps because nobody will pay me to build Legos,” muses Petiprin. Indeed, the process for building an AMW Jeep is a bit like a putting together a Lego set. Each new Jeep that comes in to the shop is disassembled and the body is removed from the frame. The frame is then fitted with the engine mounts, suspension, axles, and related components. Next, sound deadening is added to the body, and the seats get wrapped in Tuscany leather. The body eventually gets reunited with the chassis, and everything is reassembled and checked over. It’s a bit like an assembly line, and everything is tagged and organized, depending on what part of the process it’s in.

With the help of 52 full-time employees, over 250 hours of labor go into each Jeep. From the time the vehicle pulls in to the time it leaves the shop, 500 different parts are changed or modified.

So, who’s buying these things? The client archetype for AMW is an American owner of a construction company who wants a high-performance 4×4, but might not want to pull up to a job site in a Mercedes G-Wagen. But AMW’s Jeeps have also been sold to far-flung places like China, the UAE, and Australia. Siegwart says the clients skew more toward daily-driving their Jeeps, but also stated that many of AMW’s creations have logged thousands of miles off road. 

And in this context, the AMW makes sense. Why deal with the stigma of a G-Wagen, when you could have a more capable Jeep built with a crazy supercharged engine? Also, you’ll be less afraid to use an AMW Jeep as intended. If you bash a body panel off road, no worries, Jeep parts are cheap and widely available.

Even if you don’t have the money for an AMW Jeep, the world is a little bit brighter with these high-powered off-roaders roaming around.

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At one point in history, thermal efficiency was just a kernel of thought brewing in a would-be engineer’s brain. This led to seeking power in the easiest possible way: Making engines with massive displacement. It made sense then, but times have changed and now there are other ways to make engines that produce usable and reliable power, without requiring 800 pounds of cast iron and pistons the size of coffee cans.

The hardest part of this conversation is that there will always be dyed-in-the-wool people who declare there is “no replacement for displacement.” We’ll get to why that may or may not be true, but first let’s talk about why this sentiment exists: The displacement of an engine is essentially the measurement of how much air volume the engine can pump through itself. The easiest way to calculate this is to plug into a formula the engine’s measurements: Bore squared x .7854 x stroke x number of cylinders = cubic inch displacement. Example: A Chevrolet small-block that measures 4″ bore by 3.48″ stroke by 8 cylinders equals 349.8 cubic inches. Most every manufacturer does a little rounding for the sake of cleanliness.

As compression and combustion of the air/fuel mixture is what makes power, the volume of air determines the power potential. More air in means more fuel, which is what holds the potential energy that is converted to kinetic energy when the fuel is burned under compression. There are other factors in the formula though, including rpm and boost, as pointed out by Engineering Explained on YouTube:

While driving, Jason Fenske does the math to calculate the air volume pumped through a hypothetical naturally aspirated engine. This becomes the baseline, and by doubling the rpm ceiling he is able to downsize the engine by half and have the same potential power. Same goes for boost, as adding one additional atmosphere of pressure—14.7 pounds per square inch—allowed the engine size to shrink without needing massive rpm.

This proves there are, in fact, replacements for displacement, but before you leap to the comments section to drag those knuckles across the keyboard in defensive of stone-age technology, let me just agree with you. You’re right. A big, unstressed, slow-churning engine is likely the most durable and easiest-to-produce option. All of these other methods for making power come with trade-offs that are worth discussing. High-rpm and low-displacement often requires a significant amount of additional precision to make the engine live. Same goes for boosted applications.

Is any option always better than another? If only life were that easy. The reality is that there are better engine formulas for different applications. Otherwise, we would all be driving around 28.5-liter four-cylinders. Sounds fun for a bit, but that’s overkill for the average person’s commute.

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Michael writes:

My 1997 Porsche Boxster steering wheel gets very sticky on hot sunny days; it can even leave a black residue on the hands. It is not a leather-covered steering wheel, though. The stock wheel is some kind of synthetic material, almost a super dense foam rubber. It is somewhat springy to pressure. I was hoping some chemical would transform the outer surface to its original.

A cover feels too thick, and I don’t really want to buy another wheel. Cures?

Sajeev answers:

This should be an easy one, unless the comments section tells us otherwise! I’ve addressed the same issue on the airbag cover of the C5 Corvette. So before we proceed, can we all enjoy the irony of the Porsche with premium materials having the same off-gassing issue as the Corvette with an inferior interior? (The Porsche indeed has nicer guts, but age conquers all opinions of plastics and vinyls.)

Back to my experience with successfully cleaning off-gassed “goo” from the airbag cover of a C5 Corvette. Long story short, my experimentations ended after just a few minutes, thanks to a can of carburetor cleaner (yes, really) and a plastic scraping tool (like the ones used for drywall) to shed off that gooey mess. After I was done, the airbag cover looked perfect. Even the detailing in the embossed Corvette logo looked like new.

Maybe you’ll get lucky and treating your wheel won’t require such an aggressive chemical. To avoid overkill, I would start by slapping on some latex gloves, getting some shop towels, and trying these chemicals in an inconspicuous area first.

1. WD-40 (least aggressive)
2. Brake cleaner
3. Carburetor cleaner (most aggressive)

Once you’ve ascertained how aggressive your chemical needs to be, then you can turn your attention to the steering wheel. To start, I’d turn it upside down (rotate it 180 degrees) and work on the bottom of the rim, just to validate the investigation you did on the inconspicuous area first.

Follow up your work with a dab of abrasive hand cleaner to get any residue off the wheel, then rinse with water to finish it off. I have done this exact procedure three times now and #3 has always done the trick. Be conservative on how much cleaning agent you use, and work in small areas to keep the residue from making a bigger mess in your Boxster’s interior. Good luck!

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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Welcome to the latest installment of Project Valentino, a series dedicated to the decades-long story of senior editor Sajeev Mehta and the machine that got him into cars: the 1983 Lincoln Continental Valentino designer series. Join us as Sajeev restores this Ford enigma to its original glory… and then some! —Ed. 

Eight years is a long, long time for a simple headlight installation. And even though they look finished, the electronics behind the façade are all whacked out: Those beautiful low beams don’t illuminate with the headlight switch. The weight of electrical glitches in my life is crushing and difficult to overcome. However, even though I am, let us say, overburdened with more pressing classic automobile emergencies, I felt that neglecting these lights any further would be a shame. After all, just like everything else on Project Valentino, I’ve put a lot of effort into restomodding these “eyes.”

Brace yourselves for a wild ride of wires and headlights.

I still remember that weekend back in 2016 when I used my $9 Harbor Freight angle grinder to open up the Valentino’s factory headlight buckets. I cracked into them because my restomodding mission involved the installation of Hella lights with H4 (low beam) and H1 (high beam) bulbs. The Hellas are larger than the factory lights internally, demanding a bit of grinding. A drive to the restoration shop to media blast the buckets ensured they were ready for fitment.

Meanwhile, I mocked it all up in the Valentino’s header panel, verified clearances, and disassembled everything again. I was excited! Remember—back in 2016, Project Valentino was still nothing more than a few crates of parts and a chassis sitting on a rotisserie. I can still feel the anticipation of the moment after paint when, at long last, Project Valentino’s face could be fully revealed.

When that paint work was done, the restoration shop did their job at little too well. It installed every external trim part—even things I didn’t want yet on there, like the “Lincoln Continental” script above the lights, because a tape stripe must be applied beforehand.

Back to the lights, which brought an even bigger annoyance. The Hellas grew cataracts while sitting in storage. Why this happened is irrelevant at this point, but a quick chat with longtime pal and headlight guru Daniel Stern suggested the glue just off-gassed inside the light. All that murky fog does look kinda spooky and cool against freshly plated chrome, and cleaning it off is far from a priority for a non-functional project car such as this.

Priorities change, though, and that’s what happened in the last few months. I’ve had other lighting issues going on, so I pulled out all four of Project Valentino’s Hellas for a proper clean inside the air-conditioned comfort of my house, awayfrom brutal Houston summer heat.

Alas, what cleaning agent removes off-gassed glue from glass? I tried soapy water first, to no avail. Then I remembered there’s this stuff called “glass cleaner” and perhaps I shouldn’t fear using it within the expensive confines of a German lighting pod. Out came the Windex, which I polished off with a slightly abrasive cloth. All this was far more work than I expected.

At this point, I began to think about the upgraded halogen bulbs I originally installed in the light assembly. Halogen bulbs are still a solid choice in modern times, but headlight technology has progressed significantly since 2016.

Meet the Osram Nightbreaker H4 LED. When installing these bulbs in a Hella, you get an impressively engineered beam that’s legal in many parts of the EU. (I hope that by the time Project Valentino is on the road and running, U.S. federal law will have relaxed to allow aftermarket low-beam LED swaps. Regardless, for the moment, such use is fairly widespread and enforcement is rare.) The construction of these Osrams is stunning, especially when lined up next to a conventional halogen bulb, as the geometries are shockingly similar. The LED chip set is nothing like the junk you find online, and assembling it all in my “kitchen verified” setup shows a beam more like that of a modern luxury car. It’s nothing like a lifted truck with $40 Amazon-specials.

Reassembly wasn’t so straightforward. The restoration shop decided to make its own turn signal gaskets after it became obvious that the correct foamy ones from Ford had disintegrated. (No wonder those lights were so easy to remove!) Luckily there was a 1988 Mercury Cougar at a nearby junkyard that donated the right stuff to Project Valentino.

Adding Sylvania ZEVO turn signal bulbs (another quality product that replicates factory performance with LED advantages) gave the Valentino a proper amber “blush” to its cheeks when the parking lights are illuminated by the headlight switch. And that’s when I realized I was in far deeper than expected: A secondary pull on that switch should activate the low beams, but they failed to respond. I tested for power at the headlight wiring, there was none. Fuses? Yeah, they were fine.

I put this whole issue aside for a moment, because I had a more pressing problem with illumination on one of my regular drivers. I have been neglecting the HID headlights in my 1995 Lincoln Mark VIII. And they were on the verge of dying. Again.

Devoted readers of mine will recall I wrote about a stopgap solution for Lincoln Mark VIIIs back in 2016, seeking replacements for the revolutionary Luminarc HID headlights that once had no peer. New replacements no longer exist, and the aftermarket HID alternatives have horrible geometry and deplorable durability. I was forced use one of these aftermarket setups anyway, though my new plan was to do even better with a solution of my own devising.

Sitting on my workspace just a few inches from Project Valentino’s EU-compliant LEDs were a pair of cheap-ish LED bulbs from a well-regarded Chinese manufacturer, with geometry that claimed to match that of a factory 9005 halogen filament. To verify the LED bulbs came with accurate geometry, I found an original set of Ford/Luminarc HID bulbs from my parts cache. The photo in the slideshow above doesn’t do it justice: the HID light bubble and the LED chip line up perfectly.

However, the factory bulbs are just way too old to work well—one half was dead and the other was at maybe half-capacity.

My goal: Remove my crappy aftermarket HID assembly from the car, find a way to make the new LED bulbs fit on the factory-original HID bulbs’ mounting brackets, and reinstall the original Luminarc assembly with the new LED bulbs. It is the closest thing to the original equipment available for the Mark VIII, and it would offer the safest, best-performing forward lighting.

So I stripped the original HID bulbs down to their mounting surface, trying not to break the glass housing so as not to be exposed to Xenon gas. (I’m currently batting .500 in this regard.) Once the mounting surface and its integral red O-ring were freed with a cutoff wheel, they revealed the geometrically correct mount for the LEDs. It’s a perfect match when you measure with a pair of vernier calipers, but even if I were off by a fraction of a millimeter, this would be better than the garbage I’m currently running.

I yanked out the aftermarket HID kit in the Mark VIII’s eyes, ordered a headlight wiring harness kit from Tony Candela at Auto Electric Supply, and slammed in my homebrew restomod LED kit for the Lincoln Mark VIII. The new LEDs illuminate just as well as the original Ford/Luminarc design from 1995, but that’s not exactly a compliment by today’s standards. The Mark VIII’s tiny reflector headlights aren’t emitting a beam like a modern projector or LED array would, but the cutoff line and hotspot are back to the contemporary era’s definition of cutting edge (as it were).

All is finally right at night with my daily driver. Now I had no excuse but to return to Project Valentino, or so I thought…

See, I haven’t yet told you about the all-original, low mileage, 30th Anniversary Ford Thunderbird in The Mehta Collection. It needed a mild restoration thanks to sitting for too long after something in the fuel system died.

With help from friends, this car went from a 3600-pound doorstop to a sleek coupe with a new fuel system, fresh brakes, and a few new gaskets. It’s quite the beauty now, after receiving a fresh set of reproduction Goodyear Gatorback tires, the last NOS speedometer cluster on the planet, an OEM style exhaust system from Waldron’s Exhaust, and this snazzy license plate frame. (The frame is actually for a 1989+ model, but let’s keep that discrepancy between us.)

I thought these finishing touches meant the Blue Bird was ready to be enjoyed. Well, except for the source of that massive battery drain that I have yet to track down. I could ignore that for a while, just disconnect the battery when I’m not driving it. Right?

Going for a quick celebratory spin in the T-bird, I noticed the courtesy light was illuminated around my left foot. Odd. Why would the courtesy light on with the doors closed? Not too bright, either. Bad ground?

Wait, why is it flickering like a literal flame?

“Oh dear, the fusebox appears to be ablaze,” I definitely said, without profanity.

I cannot tell you how physically and emotionally draining it was to put out the fire and remove that once-pristine interior to address the resulting damage. I felt like I lost a beloved pet, and it took days for me to get my spirits back up. This whole ordeal could spawn a series of articles on its own; after seven hours of delicate surgery spanning the driver’s low-beam headlight to the center of the cabin, I extracted the wiring harness. (Typing that triggers the same stress all over again.)

Luckily, help came my way. My stash of spare parts and friends in the car business run deep. I consulted my Thunderbird Turbo Coupe parts car and snagged its fusebox, after verifying it had the same part number as mine. Then I asked around at a 24 Hours of Lemons race I was judging last November, looking for anything from spiritual support to legit advice. To my absolute delight, one race team had a very nice gentleman named Neil in their ranks.

Neil works for Halls Auto Electric in nearby Conroe, Texas. I expressed my concerns about re-pinning the fuse box by myself, especially with de-pinning tools I couldn’t use. He assured me his outfit does “this all the time,” and after the fact, that makes sense. The end result of their work was fantastic and even affordable. I am very confident the source of the issue is now put to bed; the fire likely originated from tap connectors used to install an aftermarket alarm sometime in the 1990s. I removed one tap connector but apparently didn’t notice the other one … until it was too late.

Now I must force myself to reinstall that beast of a harness and deal with whatever consequences may come from it. At least when I go behind the T-bird’s low beam headlight for a second time I won’t be greeted with a face full of washer fluid that’s old enough to vote.

It feels like I will never get around to Project Valentino. Still, I’m proud to be doing restoration work that terrifies most folks—work that most mechanics will (understandably) decline to tackle. Between saving the Anniversary Thunderbird and reincarnating the Mark VIII’s headlights, this work gives me a level of pride that’s hard to articulate in words.

If not me, then who?

One thing is crystal clear: Every car in The Mehta Collection needs a fire extinguisher. It’s not a small expense, but worth it. After this ordeal, you can trust me on that one. I’d recommend it for any old car.

(A shout-out to eBay’s mrfivepointo. In case you’re reading this, your cache of fire extinguishers went to worthy homes.)

Hopefully, my next installment in the Project Valentino series comes quicker than this last one, and maybe next time, I won’t set a rare Thunderbird aflame. Setbacks are painful but they reinforce my belief that perfection in a restoration is an overrated goal. True DIY perfection is in the process, which comes from embracing flaws and learning things you never anticipated. Perhaps Shakespeare said it best in Sonnet 130:

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

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Read all the books you want. Watch all the TV shows and YouTube mechanic videos that have ever been filmed. Sit and have a conversation with everyone who has turned a wrench. You still won’t be a mechanic, because practice and experience cannot be taught.

When younger enthusiasts recount certain adventures (or misadventures) to those with a few more years in the hobby, the seasoned folks will nod along. A mechanic’s rites of passage often need no explaining; by definition, these experiences have become universally accepted as ones that you must encounter and conquer to become proficient.

Which of these 11 rites of passage have you experienced, and which do you think changed you the most?

Rite of Passage #1: Roadside repair with makeshift parts

Whether on the road or in the shop, there comes a time when what you have is all you’ve got, and what you have just needs to work. Gaskets cut out of beer packaging, throttle cables made of shoestrings, or bailing wire on a part or piece that should be properly connected, but isn’t … If you understand a system well enough to engineer a functional fix on the fly, you truly understand how that system works.

Rite of Passage #2: Busted knuckles

You know the bolt is about to break free, so you give it a little extra oomph—and slam your hand into something. Usually, that something is heavy, rusty, or sharp … possibly, all three. Keep a record of your last tetanus shot handy, and know that we’ve all been there. Pulling towards yourself is often safer, except when it comes to cutting tools or other sharp implements.

Rite of Passage #3: Trapped tools

The order of operations during disassembly and assembly is important—but you’ve got to pay attention to your tools, too. We’ve all been in situations when the excitement of a bolt coming loose makes us forget the limited space we’re working with, and suddenly our wrench is trapped between a bolt and a hard place.

Rite of Passage #4: Broken hardware

When a bolt chooses to Marie Antoinette itself, or threads stretch past the plasticity point and become unusable, progress can get tough. The fact of the matter is that rookies are more likely to break hardware, but there is a bit of a bell curve: As you tackle more and more projects, the quality of your work often rises; and then, as you gain confidence to handle the problems you now expect to encounter, the quality of your work tends to dip. Learning new methods for dealing with broken and stuck hardware is a never-ending quest for any wrench, green or seasoned.

Rite of Passage #5: Buying the shop manual

Just about everyone went through a phase when they felt as though they knew everything. Most advance out of such a state to understand that, even with everything they know, the shop manual knows more. Learning just how important and helpful a shop manual can be is often a freeing experience: Buying one is the first step to being self-sufficient because it allows you to solve problems without calling in experts or endlessly searching the web.

Rite of Passage #6: Disappearing parts

How else are you going to learn to organize your shop if you never experience the mildly panicked search for something you sat down right there? Everyone who ever gave you advice about doing DIY work probably told you to bag and tag parts and hardware, but most of us had to learn the benefits of organization the hard way to truly understand them.

Rite of Passage #7: Endless parts search

You saw that cool hunk of metal on the side of the road and just had to have it. Now you got it home and are excited to get to work and … Wait, there are no parts available for this? Sometimes the coolest models are the ones with the most problems and buying one that needs everything without realizing none of the parts exists is the gearhead’s version of falling in love with a crazy person: You often can’t give them what they need, and if you try, you’re going to be doing a lot of work (and probably spending a lot of money).

Rite of Passage #8: First rebuilt engine start-up

The thrum of a well-tuned engine is magnificent, but the stutter and cough of one chugging to life for the first time is even more enthralling. Was everything assembled correctly? Was anything forgotten? How is the combination of parts you chose going to work together? It all becomes clear with the first touch of the key. Weathering that storm of nerves is an experience unlike any other.

Rite of Passage #9: Ruined clothes

It was supposed to be a quick, clean job. Now that pair of jeans that used to be nice is stained with oil. (The situation is even worse if you’ve just ruined a pair of pants that your significant other specifically told you not to wear in the garage.) Typically when doing DIY work you dress to protect, not to impress. Hubris may protest, calling that an obvious truth, but the drawer of “work clothes” indicates we occasionally need a reminder.

Rite of Passage #10: Inclement weather moving in

Having a garage is a luxury that some of us take for granted. Most of us started by working on whatever we had wherever we could: Laying on our backs in gravel driveways, sitting cross-legged on the dirt of the back yard, or even leaning over core supports on the side of the street. If the sun was shining when you started work, your lack of protection from the elements becomes obvious as the clouds gather and the wind picks up. Being soaking wet, cold, and/or dirty while trying to assemble or diagnose your car is not fun, but we all must experience this misery to truly appreciate mild weather and good shelter.

Rite of Passage #11: Fixing what is not broken

The excitement to work on a project is sometimes so great that it must be satiated—even when there is work that needs to be done. I personally recall my father giving me the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” speech while in my early teens; I had just made a mess of the garage floor taking apart something that had worked when I started and, more than likely, would never work correctly again. Poor thing.

Do you have to go through all of these to be a decent mechanic? Of course not, but many of us have experienced most, if not all, of these and more. Think we missed a rite of passage that changed you? Let us know about it in the comments below.

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TG writes:

I like this column and I’ve been racking my brain for a good question. I finally have one. (I could always use more like this, so everyone please email me questions at pistonslap@hagerty.com – SM).

There is a lot of internet lore out there that you can assemble an entire car from scratch from mail-order parts. I believe this has actually been done for a ’69 Camaro, and this may be true for a handful of specific model years for a handful of specific model—but generally it isn’t the case, particularly for body panels.

I have a ’65 Impala SS, of which there were 200K built. If you go more general to just a ’65 Impala, the number is 800K built. As I worked through my body woes, my mind was blown on exactly how many rusted body sections that my car had which are completely unobtainable. I ended up firing up the ol’ MIG and pushing through it one little piece of metal at a time, but what are the options for custom-fab body parts? Think trunk seal gutters, window frames, etc.

So who out there has gone this route, and what generally does it cost?

Sajeev answers:

See the photo above? Those 1967 Mustang fastback bodies are part of a plan to recreate the iconic Pony Car for modern times. And they only need an owner to provide a VIN from a 1967 Mustang to make it road legal. The company behind it is Relic Restorations, but I’m not here to promote them.

No really, I only mention them because their owner works firsthand with every type of restoration vendor in this space. For simplicity’s sake, let’s put them into three buckets. You’re gonna dip into one of these buckets if “firing up the ol’ MIG,” as TG suggested, is not a choice.

Bucket #1, traditional vendors: These are the names you’d commonly find at a SEMA show, and they regularly get media coverage by the hot-rodding side of automotive journalism. While their products may never apply to a “not Camaro/Corvette” Chevy like TG’s Impala, sometimes buying reproduction sheet metal from a place like Dynacorn is your best bet, as it already has some of the correct bends, holes, and shapes for your project because of platform interchangeability.

This was absolutely the case for my Fox chassis based Project Valentino, as rust underneath the battery tray was cheaper to fix when I handed aftermarket patch panels for Fox Mustangs to Relic Restorations’ metalsmiths. The quality was decent, the price was right, and it saved me a lot of labor cost in the process. A big win all around.

Bucket #2, factory direct suppliers: You really got to have your act together and your wallet open if you want do a short run of any reproduction part. You can’t make just one part, so organizing a group buy with fans of your vehicle is ideal. While I don’t have any specific prices, they would be irrelevant anyway as commodity prices, labor rates, shipping costs, etc. change quite regularly. Just know that it will be exponentially higher than buying something off the shelf and metalsmithing it to fit.

You will likely hire a specialist contractor that can work with factories in China/Taiwan on your behalf to get a batch order of parts designed, manufactured, and shipped to you. Which still requires you to create a digital version of whatever you want to make. That work isn’t necessarily easy at the quality levels required for a factory to utilize for production, so an experienced professional might be needed. But don’t take my word for it, as we discussed this previously with new engines made for Ford’s Model A.

Even if you can find a suitable manufacturer in the USA, the same steps will likely apply. After discussing the finer points of this with a former boss/friend with experience in managing contracts like this, I’d consider this option a last resort for most folks. Though it could be a great idea for someone replicating parts for modern classics with a potential upside in future restorations; Tesla Model S and X restoration parts anyone?

Bucket #3, 3D printing: This is the most likely avenue for reproduction parts for low-volume restorations like the aforementioned ’65 Impala SS. If a part cannot be found by any other means, perhaps the pieces on your project car can be scanned into a digital image and printed into a 3D hunk of plastic. Since we are still talking about sheet metal for an Impala, the printed product can be used as a die for reproductions.

Once you have a plastic die, it can be replicated in metal, which can make the sheet metal bits by anyone with a large enough press. Well, in theory, as that’s usually a big ask for someone owning a press. And this is still cost prohibitive, thanks to the equipment and talent required to make a 3D rendering. Perhaps fiverr or a “makerspace near me” search can break down some barriers, or this is the time to learn to 3D print in your own home.

What’s my advice? Don’t bother restoring a car like Project Valentino or any non Muscle/Pony/Sports car with a large following. Buy the project-worthy Mustang, Corvette, etc. and enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labor for a classic car restoration that everyone can appreciate.

If you can’t follow my advice, welcome to the club. We feel your pain and we are always looking for qualified fabricators to fix our rusty junk. The good ones never come cheap, and that might be reason enough to learn to fabricate in your spare time.

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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Today’s automobiles don’t require regular tune-ups like the cars of yore once needed. The electronic sensors and computers that regulate spark, timing, and fuel mixture are not maintenance items, although they do have to be replaced if they fail. And in today’s engines, spark plugs operate well for 100,000 miles or more. There are still filters to be replaced and components to be checked, but modern maintenance procedures are far different than what we old-timers remember.

Older cars need more attention on a more frequent basis. A typical owner’s manual for a 1950s car calls for a 10,000-mile that includes swapping out spark plugs, replacing points and condenser, and checking the carburetor idle mixture and ignition timing. In addition, recommended maintenance calls for oil changes every 2000 miles and regular lubrication of numerous components in the engine and chassis. With an older classic or an ancient beater, regular maintenance of ignition parts and filters is critical to smooth running and adequate power. Let’s walk through the process together.

Step 1: Swap out the spark plugs

To replace the spark plugs, carefully remove the plug wires and their insulating boots from each plug. If you think you’re not going to be able to tell which wire belongs to which plug, tag the wires. Inspect them: If you see deterioration of the insulating boots, or severe burns or cracking of the cables, replace them. Likewise, if the cables’ contacts are corroded to the point where they can’t be cleaned, replace the wires.

To remove the spark plugs, you’ll need a 3/8-inch drive ratchet and a spark plug socket. In most cases, a short extension allows better access. A ratchet with a flex head that can rotate to different angles can be helpful. A 5/8-inch or 16-mm hex socket will fit many plugs. Some Fords use plugs with a 9/16th-inch hex. A few European and Asian vehicles use 14mm plugs, and there are a few applications that use plugs with a 7/8-inch, 3/4-inch, or 18-mm hex. Most older American cars are fitted with plugs that have a 13/16-inch hex.

Some BMWs are equipped with plugs that require a thin-wall, 12-point, 14-mm socket for removal. Check the specs for your car before purchasing a tool.

Once the spark plug is fully loosened, extract the magnet or a rubber sleeve inside that grips the plug (most cars have one or the other). On many cars, that combination of ratchet, socket, and short extension is all you’ll need, but on some models, it may not allow you to access all the plugs. My ’55 Chevy V-8 is equipped with a combination generator/power steering pump, and some left-bank plugs are best serviced from under the car with a 13/16-inch open-end wrench.

Before installing the new plugs, inspect them for damaged insulators or bent electrodes, then set the gap between the inner and outer electrodes. For most older vehicles with coil ignition, a gap of 0.025 inches is generally recommended. For even older vehicles with magneto ignition, the gap should be set to 0.020 inches. You can use a conventional feeler gauge to set the gap, but a round wire gauge is better. I have a tool that consists of a calibrated ramp of gradually increasing thickness. By sliding the plug along the ramp, the gap is easily measured. Your auto parts counterman may stock gapping tools as giveaway items. At the very least, they are inexpensive.

If you have to change the gap, carefully bend the outer electrode with needle-nose pliers or with the slot on the gapping tool. Don’t bang the electrode against a hard surface: You might crack the insulator, which can cause a short.

Some plugs come with the metal gasket installed. On others, you have to work it on over the threaded end. Place a small amount of dielectric grease on the plug threads and install them. Tighten moderately. If space permits the use of a torque wrench, torque them to 25 pounds. If you can’t use a torque wrench, screw the plugs in by hand until they seat, then tighten another half-turn with your wrench. It’s always best to start them by hand; there’s nothing like a cross-threaded spark plug to ruin your day.

Step 2: Service the distributor

The replacement and adjustment of distributor parts is fairly easy on many cars, as the distributor is mounted at either the side or at the front of the engine. Except on my ’55 Bel Air, in which the distributor at the rear of the engine and snug up against the firewall. One must either have really long arms or lie atop the engine to reach it.

On some cars, the distributor cap can be removed with the spark plug wires attached. On my old Chevy that’s near impossible, as the wires are routed behind the engine, and there’s not much room for maneuvering. In any case, you’ll want to remove the wires from the cap at some point to check for corrosion or other damage. I mark the position of the number one cylinder’s wire in the cap, then pull all the wires out of the cap, wiggling each a bit as I tug on them so as not to damage the wire terminals. Armed with the firing order (1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2 for my Chevy) and the rotation (clockwise), it is easy to reinstall them correctly. But because the wires disappear behind the engine and under the exhaust manifolds before they arrive at the spark plugs, I number them as well, wrapping a short piece of masking tape with the cylinder number written on it around each wire.

After removing the distributor cap, have a look inside. There you’ll see contacts that distribute voltage to the spark plugs for each of the cylinders. For example, the cap for an eight-cylinder engine has eight contacts evenly spaced within the circumference of the cap. If the contacts are badly corroded or if the cap is damaged, they should be replaced. The contacts will likely be mildly corroded. In that case, clean them with a small, sharp knife or similar tool.

Remove the rotor from the top of the distributor shaft. Check for corrosion on the conductor at the rotor’s outer edge. Mild corrosion can be removed with an emory cloth or small file. Severe corrosion that has caused pitting or loss of material is grounds for replacement.

Within the distributor, you’ll find the breaker points and condenser attached to the breaker plate with screws. While old-time service manuals suggest that points can be cleaned and readjusted if they are in fairly good condition, I replace them if I’ve already dug in this deep. Many distributor parts for older cars are still available from standard aftermarket sources, even for cars that are 70 or more years old. And they’re generally not very expensive: Breaker points for my ’55 Chevy, as listed in the East Coast Chevy parts catalog, sell for $15.00. Other distributor parts are equally inexpensive.

Ignition parts for less common cars may be harder to find. But suppliers who specialize in servicing classics and exotics should have them. Of course, you may pay considerably more. Ignition points for a Ferrari 250 GTO are $53.50 from awitalian.com.

The breaker points are attached to the distributor breaker plate with one or two screws. You might also find an eccentric adjusting screw that can close or open the point gap when it’s turned with the locking screw loosened. Be careful removing the screws, as they’re small and it’s easy to drop them.

On most systems, the condenser is wired to the breaker points via a screw terminal and is held in a bracket that is attached to the breaker plate with one screw. The points and condenser can usually be removed together.

Before installing new points and condenser, apply a very small amount of dielectric grease to the distributor shaft cam. Install the points and condenser. Some points are adjusted with a slotted screw hole in the breaker point assembly that enables adjustment of the installation position. The points on most 1957 to 1974 GM cars are adjusted using an 1/8-inch Allen socket adjustment screw that can be accessed with the distributor cap removed, or through a sliding metal window in the cap. Thus, on these models, final adjustment of the points can be completed with a dwell meter after reassembly. But whichever type of breaker point adjustment you’re dealing with, it’s important to set the air gap before buttoning things up, even if you intend to fine-tune the adjustment with a dwell meter after starting the car.

The breaker points are fitted with a cam follower that rides on the distributor cam. To adjust the air gap, crank the engine until the cam follower is on a peak of the cam. Then adjust the gap to 0.015 inches by moving the breaker point assembly in or out before tightening the screw or screws that lock it in place. On those GM cars with the Allen adjustment, just turn the Allen screw until the correct air gap is achieved.

Install the rotor, cap, and plug wires. Then, if you have a dwell meter, attach its black lead to ground and its green lead to the negative terminal on the coil or as directed by the instructions for your meter. Dwell is the number of degrees of rotation that the points remain closed. Start the engine. You should see a reading of about 30 degrees dwell for V-8 engines. A degree or two in either direction is okay. A six- or four-cylinder engine will be happiest with a couple of degrees more dwell.

If dwell is not correct, you will have to readjust the points. If you are working on a ’57 to ’74 GM car, you can adjust the dwell while the engine is running by turning the 1/8-inch Allen screw, accessed through the metal shutter in the distributor cap. For most other cars, remove the distributor cap and readjust the air gap, moving the breaker point assembly closer to the cam for less dwell and further away from the cam for more dwell. If dwell bounces around more than a degree or two, the distributor shaft bearings are probably worn, and the distributor should be replaced.

Step 3: Check ignition timing

After installing new points, a check of ignition timing is necessary. Attach your timing light inductive lead to the number one spark-plug wire, and attach its black and red power leads to positive and negative contacts. Disconnect the vacuum advance and plug the vacuum line. On most cars, there will be a line on the harmonic balancer that indicates top dead center (TDC) for the number one cylinder. Behind the harmonic balancer, on the engine, there will be a degree scale. With timing light attached and engine running, aim that line at the degree scale. The flashing light will indicate how many degrees before top dead center the plug is firing. The spec for my Chevy is 8 degrees before top dead center (BTDC), which is indicated by four lines on the scale. With today’s higher octane fuels, I set it to 10 degrees BTDC.

Step 4: Replace filters

At minimum, your car probably has filters for air, oil, and fuel. Of course you should change your oil filter every time you change your oil. And for a classic car that is driven infrequently, oil change intervals should be 2000 miles or every two years.

Fuel filter intervals vary widely by filter type, and many classic owners who don’t put many miles on their car may never have to change it. But a good rule of thumb calls for replacing the fuel filter after 20,000 miles of driving.

Air filters made of paper or synthetic material should last at least 20,000 miles. Oil bath filters, like that on my ’55 Chevy, should be cleaned and refilled with oil at tune-up time. But the filter housing oil level should be checked every 1000 miles or so. I clean the wire mesh element of the oil bath in a solvent bucket and then blow it out gently with the air gun. I then douse the element with SAE 50 engine oil and fill the reservoir to the full indicator mark with the same oil. If temperatures are expected to remain below freezing for an extended time, I use SAE 20 oil. When servicing the oil bath air cleaner, I cover the areas of the engine around the carburetor with plastic drop cloths, because drips are inevitable.

Step 5: Adjust idle mixture

Before 1980 or so, carburetor idle mixture adjustment was an important part of a tuneup. Begin by setting the idle rpm using the adjustment screw on the carburetor throttle linkage. For my old ’55, GM recommends setting the rpm to 450 rpm. If you have a dwell meter, it probably doubles as a tachometer. A vacuum gauge will also be necessary to pinpoint the idle mixture setting.

With the vacuum gauge attached to a manifold vacuum port, turn the idle mix screw gradually in clockwise and/or counterclockwise direction until you find the spot where rpm peaks and the vacuum reading is highest. If that increases the idle rpm above the spec for your car (or what you’re comfortable with in terms of vehicle creep and smooth idle), reset the idle speed via the idle speed screw on the throttle linkage, and then recheck the mixture adjustment. If you’re unable to detect any difference in engine performance as a result of this procedure, you may have a vacuum leak or a bad carburetor.

If you don’t have a tachometer or vacuum gauge, you can probably get a good approximate idle mixture setting just by adjusting for what your ears tell you is the maximum engine speed. A lot of old timers set idle mix strictly by ear, made possible through lots of experience.

In every case, lots of experience is a mechanic’s best friend.

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Last weekend, vandals in San Francisco set a Waymo self-driving taxi ablaze. The car was destroyed. It seems this event was prompted by random crowd-induced fury, versus last year’s deliberate campaign in which protesters disabled autonomous cars by placing traffic cones on the hood.

I fully plan to bully AVs, too, should I ever encounter one on the road—in a game of chicken for a traffic opening, the robot must give way, right? But those folks in San Fran are on a whole ’nother level.  “We are seeing people reaching a boiling point over tech that they do not want and does not make their lives better,” Missy Cummings, director of the George Mason University Autonomy and Robotics Center and a former adviser to U.S. traffic safety regulators, told Reuters.

Who could have predicted this tech backlash in a region that spawned so much of it? I’ve been very clear that I love to drive, but I’m starting to feel like autonomous technology is unfairly getting a bad rap. If my kids are walking city streets late on a weekend evening while traffic buzzes around them, would I rather have robots driving or humans? Robots. Sure, they’ll make mistakes, but at least they won’t be high or staring at a screen while they drive.

As so often happens, the problem is communication. Autonomous technology requires millions of practice miles, and some San Franciscans are pissed that they weren’t asked if they wanted to be part of a years-long experiment. The city is suing the state of California over the issue. Also, we now know that, during the initial hype, the tech industry made too many impossible promises, a massive collective miscommunication on its part. I recently read a terrific level-setting interview with GM’s former head of R&D, Larry Burns, in Automotive News. Burns, a Big Thinker whose team developed the skateboard chassis concept that underpins most of today’s EVs, thinks we’ll end up with some sort of very capable autopilot, like what planes use.

This weekend marks a special time in the Webster household because the Daytona 500, which marks the start of the NASCAR season, is on Sunday. Stock-car events might just look like a bunch of cars going around in circles, but there is so much nuance to the racing. To get the behind-the-scenes view, I interviewed my friend Bozi Tatarevic, a professional mechanic and NASCAR insider. You won’t believe the lengths teams go to for a win. Listen on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.

I also recommend the new Netflix docudrama series on last year’s NASCAR season. Read our review of NASCAR: Full Speed here.

When you’re not watching the Daytona 500 this weekend, check out the latest and greatest from Hagerty Media:

• Next stop hyperspace: A drag racer cleared 340 mph!
• The squad of Corvair enthusiasts who fix cars for free
• Speaking of Corvairs is another excuse to highlight the time I almost flipped one
• GM’s 50 millionth car rides again
• The car that Jason Cammisa says has everything an enthusiast could wish for

Thanks for reading! If you’d like to support us, please share our material and join the Hagerty Drivers Club.

Have a great weekend!

Larry

P.S.: Your feedback is very welcome. Comment below!

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Whodunits are fun. About a quarter of the top-ranking global podcasts are true-crime-themed. Working to understand every twist and turn to solve the mystery gives people a rush. That’s the feeling gearheads chase when something isn’t working and they want to track down the cause. The engines under our hoods are comprised of myriad parts and systems that, when all operating as designed, create a harmonious symphony of power, heat, and exhaust. When something is wrong, it can be a frustrating experience learning just how much more intricate an engine can be than simple “does it have fuel, air, and spark?”

The latest diagnostics tale I’ve been following is that of high-performance engine builder Steve Morris and the small-block Chevrolet V-8 that got bolted up to his dynamometer. The engine is in its second life now; it first served as an NHRA Pro Stock Truck powerplant when the NHRA had such a class nearly 30 years ago. It wears heavily modified Chevrolet casting, which is unique compared with many high-horsepower applications these days that utilize aftermarket and improved castings or, simply, blank-slate billet engine blocks and cylinder heads.

That NHRA class, full of Chevrolet S10- and Ford Ranger-bodied vehicles, is long faded from it’s short-lived popularity. But that didn’t mean this engine was relegated to a shelf or scrap metal pile. Instead, it now lives inside a mini-mod pulling tractor that is designed to move a weighted sled as far and as fast as possible on dirt. It’s a very different use case for the engine, and that created problems. As we learn in Morris’ YouTube video, the first issue was recently solved, but another popped up and it’s a stumper. On the bright side, it’s an interesting reason to learn something.

The initial problem: The engine would destroy the thrust bearing on the crankshaft after only a few runs down the dirt track. Turns out, the amount of clutch usage and pressure plate force over the duration of a tractor pull run is significantly different compared with the rapid-fire hits of shifting down a drag strip. The solution was a roller-style thrust bearing, and to be sure the fix was going to work, Morris hung the engine on the dyno to give it final checks.

After the first loaded pull, the engine exhibited a slightly higher idle than before. After the second pull, the idle reset again to another couple hundred rpm higher. Even after the team dialed in the idle air screws and reset the idle on the carbs, the engine continued to high-idle after a dyno pull. It even coughed a bit of smoke on startup after sitting between pulls. No vacuum leaks could be found.

Later in the video, Morris seems to have some ideas as to the cause of the high idle, but he doesn’t let on much. Can we at-home players suss out the problem?

My personal theory is that the problem is related to ignition timing. The short clip of a dyno pull at the start of the video shows that this engine is using the front-mounted distributor for arcing the plugs. While it’s extremely unlikely to be running a points plate, there could be some form of mechanical advance inside that is hanging up as the engine slows down after a dyno pull. Or the pick-up and sensor are moving due to vibration thus causing a slight timing change.

I am also totally aware that my theories could be 100 percent wrong. Is the fact that Morris has the valve cover off in the video a tell or a well-placed red herring?

Morris closes the video with a promise that he will post a video within a couple of days, revealing the answer. These kinds of diagnostic discussions are just plain fun for some gearheads. If you have a solid guess, leave a comment below. I promise not to edit the story when you prove how wrong I am!

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The first time I saw a Range Rover, I was ten years old, peering out of the back seat windows of our 1978 Plymouth Volaré, waiting in line to be dropped off for the first day of school. I still remember how the Plymouth’s oven-hot plastic seats burned my skin, and the smell of the air inside our car—it reeked of floorboard fungi fueled by the perfect conditions of mystery roof leak water and Chrysler Corporation shag carpeting.

Our car smelled like cheese and the FM radio only seemed to work on even calendar days. These new, seemingly alien vehicles—the model was later named the Range Rover Classic by the factory—were adorned with aromatic, soft leather complemented by contrasting piping. The driver and passengers inside had perfect cotillion-like posture while sitting much higher than what appeared to be necessary. These Range Rovers even had something called “CD changers,” which played a multitude of compact discs … from the back of the car.

Now, 30-ish years later, I grab my son from the pick-up line in a Range Rover, a 2008 Supercharged model. However, our truck doesn’t cause any 10-year-olds to crane their necks out of back-seat windows. In the eyes of my son and his generation, it’s just a 15-year-old SUV that does this neat thing where it can raise itself up and down with the press of a button. For me, however, it feels special because it retains many characteristics of the Land Rovers I first admired: green gauges, a symmetrical dashboard, contrasting piping on the soft leather seats, the same general boxy geometry. Would I have preferred to carry on the school pick-up custom in a Classic? Absolutely, but for most auto enthusiasts, the Venn diagram of availability, reliability, and feasibility rarely has Range Rover Classic in the center. So far, my 2008 Supercharged has been a successful attempt to create that intersection.

If you are not most auto enthusiasts, and have money to spare, Florida-based ECD (formerly East Coast Defenders) will help you consolidate that Rover Venn diagram into one tight circle. ECD’s take on the Classic aims to grab the attention of people like myself, who grew up around the first-generation Rovers and wish to relive those early luxury experiences with added reliability and more personal touches.

Land Rover’s original target demographic was well-to-do tradesmen and farmers who had outgrown their extremely utilitarian Series I and II tractor-like trucks. Originally conceptualized as “A Car for All Reasons,” the first Range Rover was revealed in 1970 as a three-door Ford Bronco-inspired truck with seating for five and a towing capacity of just under 4 tons. The new Rover’s comfort and surprising on- and off-road capabilities were quickly appreciated by wealthy, clear-scheduled outdoor hobbyists and enthusiasts seeking to comfortably arrive at their favorite ski resorts and remote hunting lodges.

Word of the truck’s prowess quickly spread overseas, where aristocrats in bygone British colonies snatched up as many as they could to handle the rigors of poor roads and still-developing infrastructure. Many of those new owners would never set foot on a pedal, as the most elite Rover owners preferred to be chauffeured than to drive themselves like the commoners. To satisfy this burgeoning foreign market, independent limousine upfitters and coachbuilders took it upon themselves to elongate the plucky three-door Rovers into a chauffeur-able amalgamation fit for African, Middle Eastern, and Southeast Asian royalty.

One of those coachbuilders was Monteverdi, a small-batch Swiss luxury car brand born from a racing engine repair relationship with Ferrari and Lancia, which saw limited success in the 1960s. In the mid-1970s, Monteverdi found a little niche in the newly established SUV market with its Safari, a rebodied and well-appointed International Harvester Scout. The Safari was of comparable three-door Rover size and came standard with a Chrysler 5.2-liter V-8. It was said to be optionable with the enormous and as-of-that-moment surplus 7.2 big-block, which was a casualty of America’s contemporary Clean Air Act legislation.

When Monteverdi began offering the stretched Rovers alongside the Safari, buyers flocked to their English counterpart, despite the Safari’s clear performance advantages and novelty luxe items, like power windows and softer interior trim.

The success of the elongated Range Rover soon caught the attention of Land Rover— newly independent of British Leyland—whose endorsement of the longer wheelbase refashioning was so strong that the original factory warranty was courteously extended to owners of Monteverdi-modified examples. The two companies became unlikely sales partners in 1978, whereupon five-door, Italian-built Monteverdi Range Rovers could be purchased directly from British Land Rover dealerships.

In 1981, Land Rover began to roll full-size Ranges off its own assembly lines, signaling the beginning of the end of the Monteverdi Rover era (the latter’s expensive Volaré-based Sierra sedan certainly didn’t help). By then, the altruistic Swiss company had already done most of Land Rover’s heavy lifting in the five-door branding and marketing department, creating a sales segment in wealthy automotive markets where the Safari had done well. Securing orders for the future “Classic” was a breeze.

When the boxy, original Range Rovers of the ’80s and ’90s were finally phased out of production, they briefly shared the same assembly line with their successor, the P38 Range Rover. The newer, more square-bodied truck offered an updated drivetrain and more luxe bits but never seemed to recapture the magic of the Classic. Horror stories of electric gremlins and dealer floor models having to be pushed out of the showroom directly into service bays would malign the brand for years, leading many long-time Rover evangelists to abandon their enthusiasm for more reliable options.

Into that void steps ECD Automotive Design, a Kissimmee, Florida–based company that first made a name for itself building bespoke Defender trucks for clients all over the world. After hand-building a large number of stunning, highly individualized vehicles, ECD plotted out its next move. Aptly, it bet that the next generation of Land Rover enthusiasts would be people like me—the backseat dreamers of the early ’90s.

The company’s roots trace back to 2012, when co-founder Tom Humble moved to the U.S. from Britain, taking a job in Florida with Volkswagen and Porsche, where he focused on dealer training. Humble’s parents had preceded him in the Sunshine State, a place the Humble family had enjoyed holidays for years.

The Humble family had a rich history of personal garage tinkering with various English vehicles, and when it was time to make the move across the Atlantic, Tom decided to bring along two previously tinkered family Defenders for the cool factor alone. Original as they came, Humble realized his 1983 model with a four-speed manual wasn’t an ideal fit for busy, sometimes unreasonable Florida traffic, so it was soon relegated to eBay for sale.

“I remember people coming to view it in my little garage, in the apartment complex where I lived, and after it sold, people kept contacting me. Can you find me one? Can you bring one in?” Humble says.

From there, the “I want ones” and the “Do you have any mores” turned into “When you find one, can you do this to it, or can you do that to it?”

Sensing that the surprising attention and demand from one eBay listing could turn into something much bigger, Humble began planning early individual builds in his free time with available parts and the few resources he had located in his new area. There were some build aspects that necessitated outsourcing, but the goal was to finish projects with as little outside help or influence as possible.

As word got out and demand increased, Tom’s brother Elliot was brought into the fold. Elliot was working for a university in England and had become his brother’s parts lifeline; he’d bring original Land Rover bits and pieces in his luggage when he’d visit the family in Florida.

The brothers got busier and busier and the “reading weeks” Elliot used as excuses to get away from university work became more frequent.

It was on one of these trips when the brothers attended a dinner party hosted by Scott Wallace, a friend and fellow British transplant with a background in private equity. Upon their arrival, Tom Humble remembers Wallace and his guest’s reaction to their blacked-out Defender’s commanding presence and driveway demeanor.

“Scott had never seen one in the U.S. before and was kind of taken aback. We spent the rest of the night drinking Coronas and talking about Defenders.”

As the evening progressed and the two talked cars, Wallace subtly proposed what Humble felt was a dare: “If you want to do this properly, quit your job, and get rid of your safety net. If you do, I’ll grow it with you.” In less time than it took for the original Range Rover to be declared a Classic, Wallace and the Humble brothers were verbally in business.

Their first step toward incorporation occurred in an unlikely place. The trio’s preeminent business meeting was an impromptu, hours-long get-together in a mid-Florida Wawa convenience store, where the first order of business was buying out Elliot’s position at Leeds University and making him CTO. Scott would serve as CEO and Tom as CXO—the Client Experience Officer, encompassing sales, customer service, and overall experience.

A U.K.-based node would allow ECD to source and maintain a steady supply of solid vehicles and parts that could be exported to the U.S. to satisfy new orders, a plan which ultimately allowed the company the advantage of sidestepping many issues other businesses had during the pandemic.

By the end of 2013, ECD employed four craftspeople. Wallace’s original dinner party dare had turned serendipitous by 2021, as Land Rover Defenders were the second-most imported vehicle into the United States, bested only by the venerable R32 Nissan GT-R. Today, ECD has 80 employees working side-by-side in a sprawling facility in Kissimmee, and the company is publicly traded via NASDAQ.

A primary company ideal dating back to Tom Humble’s initial builds included no outsourcing. Having in-house upholsterers, electricians, engine builders, and other craftspeople would allow ECD to directly manage the adventurous build timelines and quality-control benchmarks the trio believed would be paramount to their success. This business model allows trucks to be built completely in-house within a 16-day period, with each stage of manufacturing lasting four days. Quality control can be more closely scrutinized, with hand-picked parts and materials approved from within. To bring the customer directly into the manufacturing process, clients can request daily updates and are able to watch their trucks throughout every stage of the build via ECD’s in-shop webcams.

Shifting from their wildly successful Defender builds, Humble and his team moved into the Classic realm with an emphasis on providing their clients with a more refined, confident model that harkens back to the original Range Rover concept. Currently, the Classic makes up a little more than 10 percent of ECD’s build schedule.

“In my mind,” says Humble, “the Classic encapsulates Old World luxury, go-anywhere ability, and with our touch, a new sense of reliability and quality. It is a superb family vehicle, especially the LWB version with the huge amount of space for rear passengers.” It excels in modern school pick-up line comfort and efficiency, in other words.

“I’ve a 2019 Range Rover SV,” he continues. “Once the kids’ seats are in the back they can hardly climb in, whereas when I put the seats in my 1993 LSE they can climb in with backpacks, the dog, and anything else they wish, and still have plenty of room.”

All ECD builds are given unique project names by clients and their families. When I joined Tom Humble and his team in Raleigh, North Carolina, on a pre-SEMA leg of ECD’s outreach event tour, graciously hosted by Carolina Exotic Car Club, I was greeted by “Project Mercer,” a 1995 Range Rover Classic painted in a glossy Epsom Green. This particular truck’s namesake came from its original destination on Mercer Island, in the Seattle area. Noted in a very factory-looking door-jamb nameplate, “Project Mercer” was ECD’s 271st build.

Names aren’t just a reflection on the truck; they also reflect the personality of the owner. As Humble recalls: “We had a client send us his RRC, which he had owned for many years with great memories, which he wanted to rebuild and use again with his family. He told us that it always had a funny smell about it, so he struggled to convince people to use it anymore with him. We shipped the vehicle over to our Florida HQ from California, and once we started tearing it down, we found several dead rats in the air ducts. It was horrendous.

“When we informed the client, he laughed and named the new build Project Stinky. It was rather odd doing a voiceover for one of our new builds and saying in my fake posh English accent ‘This is Project Stinky’.”

As I began to familiarize myself with Project Mercer, my initial walk-around proved highly nostalgic. Those door handles (originally a British Leyland parts bin item first seen on the Allegro, but more courteously remembered as being fitted to the Lotus Esprit), the round, sealed-beam headlights, and my favorite underbite-y square taillights that peer out meekly from each corner; it all felt like a fall afternoon in the middle school pick-up line.

In contrast to untouched, stock Classics, ECD’s truck has a more confident, highway-worthy stance. In both upper and lower suspension positions, the wheels fit perfectly within the unmodified fenders, thanks to compatible axles from its wider Defender cousin, while red Brembo calipers mated with drilled rotors peek through the black, age-appropriate wheels. The addition of functional running boards hides the oversized stainless exhaust needed to allow the supercharged LT4 V-8 to exhale, and they also add a nice mid-wheel line to the truck’s originally optioned long wheelbase. If you’re not familiar with the Classic in its original form, you won’t find too many obvious exterior cues to indicate that this truck is different.

On the inside, many of the original analog Range Rover characteristics that could very easily have been ditched for touchscreen controls are preserved, ceding the sole digital controls to the well-placed iPad-like infotainment system. The original Land Rover analog clock, four-position fan switch, and round temperature/vent control switches remain as a throwback to a time when people pressed spring-loaded buttons and moved tensioned mechanisms.

An upgraded analog dash gauge cluster that could have very easily been mistaken for factory equipment provides only essential information, and the steering wheel remains true to its original form. It is a welcome sight in a world that’s all too keen to go digital. One subtle, electronic Easter egg is an added blind-spot detector, which incorporates small, camouflaged lights into the midsection of the A-pillars.

I am so conditioned to my own truck’s one-touch ignition that at start-up in the ECD Classic, I (embarrassingly) did not hold the key in the starting position long enough for the engine to catch. It was the first note the truck had given me that it wasn’t going to do everything for me—that I needed to pay attention.

The second note came immediately after, when the supercharged LT4 sprang to life, giving a pleasant truck-wide shake that quickly settled to a low but noticeable rumble.

On the road, the truck provided all of the handling feedback I needed to make good decisions. Its wide Defender-based stance gave manageable cues when I was testing cornering limits, with just enough body roll to feel where the truck wanted to go next. When my foot came off the pedal after heavy acceleration, the transmission hovered perfectly in the higher rpms, almost asking, “Are we doing this or not? Because we can absolutely do this.” Braking came naturally and required no distance or pressure adjustments compared with what I was used to in my more modern truck. The Brembos’ responsiveness was a friendly reminder that they were there whenever I needed them.

The Corvette-emblazoned LT4 powerplant gave the same vibe. This isn’t a truck that feels like it should be driven flat out all the time, but if you need to pass that beige Camry lingering on the short highway on-ramp, you’ll have an absolute ball doing so, and the supercharger whine will keep you looking for similar opportunities. When cruising at regular highway speed, the historically smooth feel of a V-8 Land Rover is still present. Along with the creaky leather and tight door closings, the sounds all blend perfectly to create the auricular sentimentality I was hoping for.

The one thing I always take time to appreciate when experiencing a restomod is its sensory aspects. For better or for worse, from vehicle to vehicle they’re all different. Project Mercer was special in the sense (pardon the pun) that it was the first 28-year-old vehicle I had ever driven that smelled like a new car. Not a freshly cleaned car with an obviously chemical new-car scent; it smelled like a genuinely new car.

ECD sources much of its leather from Poltrona Frau in Italy, a company with so many color and texture offerings that, according to Humble, “You can basically pick out the cow.” In Mercer’s case, the leather choice was a simple sandy tone with contrasting chocolate middle seat panels, which coordinated well with the overall original look of the interior. It was soft with precise stitching, which still retained a rich, worn-in creaky sound when shifting in your seat; that’s a hallmark of the Land Rover driving experience.

As trends go, it’s easy to say a style has come back into favor simply because it has been rediscovered by a new generation. That enough time has passed for the originality and attractiveness of that particular thing to come into fashion once again; that it has become a “classic.” With auto-enthusiasm trends, however, it never seems to be that simple.

For a vehicle to be labelled culturally as “classic,” time must pass, details must be debated and scrutinized, and an appreciation should be widely recognized for the contribution that vehicle has made to engineering, nostalgia, and design. One cannot simply do as Land Rover did one morning in 1994, when, as the next-gen P38 Range Rovers rolled down the assembly lines alongside their sharp-angled, round headlight predecessors, the company retroactively declared all pre-P38 Range Rovers to be “Classics.”

Time and progress march on, and the things we once loved are never remanufactured—successfully, anyway—from scratch. For us, automotive enthusiasts of the world, nostalgia is more nuanced. My preference for a 2008 Supercharged instead of the nearly identical 2010, with the latter’s added digital displays, engine power, and trim options, has made me a believer that our willingness to sacrifice modernity for the everyday feelings and visuals of our past is what fuels the next generation’s enthusiasm. We send out deep roots from the cars we grew up with; we want to be the people who drove them, a sentiment with which Tom Humble is familiar.

“Many of our clients who have commissioned our RRC builds have a history with them, a common story being that their parents had one when they were growing up and had fond memories attached. Some have actually been brought to us by the client as that exact surviving vehicle from their childhood.”

For a day, I got to experience a history I had dreamed of as a kid, with perfect driving posture.

And finally, to the person who recently purchased an exact middle-school Brandis-spec 1978 Plymouth Volaré for $7200 via Bring A Trailer, I sincerely hope whatever fulfillment you’re looking for is dry, and fungus-free. And that maybe, just maybe, you are reading this on a Commodore 64.

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Hagerty Community Member Jeepcj5 writes:

I’ve successfully (at least in my mind) set point gaps and timing in various cars. The reason I say successful is because they seem to run well afterwards. I have a dwell meter that I’ve been told to use, but I just don’t understand it or what it’s even telling me.

How does dwell come into play? Should I not worry about it? If I do need to worry about it, can you explain it in a “Dwell for Dummies” sort of way?

Sajeev answers:

This applies to me, as I am clearly a dummy when it comes to dwell or any other aspect of mechanical ignition systems. I (poorly) define dwell time as the time it takes to make a good spark, but Denso properly defines it as “The period when the ignition system applies an electric current to the ignition coil’s primary winding.”

Dwell time and dwell angle is adjusted on mechanical ignition systems with hand tools, a feeler gauge, and dwell meter. You can’t do much on any vehicle after 1975(?), as electronic ignitions became standard fare. (Vehicles from the 1980s and newer can be tuned with a computer and software, but that’s irrelevant to this discussion.) No matter the ignition system, this concept is important because an ignition curve is crucial to efficient combustion.

Perhaps Jeepcj5′s experience proves that you don’t need to mess with dwell time (i.e. the part of the process that needs a dwell meter) very often, but that’s between an owner and their fuel economy calculations. And the sensitivity of their butt dyno, but now we’re really getting off the rails.

Ignoring dwell time and only using a feeler gauge for your points (i.e. dwell angle) is basically approximating your ignition timing. And since graphics and videos are better at this than my wordsmithing, let’s try a couple of selections from YouTube. Here’s a fun retro video on the concept of dwell angle.

And the video below is a solid example of how to set dwell angle and dwell time, among other bits of knowledge for analog ignition tune ups. I’ve started it at the part relevant to dwell time, but you might want to watch the whole thing. Stick around for the 10:15 mark, as Uncle Tony’s Garage rightly suggests, “It’s not rocket science, right?”

The only issue I have with analog ignition systems is the availability of quality-made points in our modern times. Condensers in the ignition system have the same issue but to a lesser extent, as they are generally more durable. If you can still get good quality points/condensers for your application, adjusting your dwell time can improve your vehicle’s performance over the long term. If you cannot, maybe it’s time to convert to electronic ignition.

So give it to me, Hagerty Community: What did I miss in this discussion of dwell time? I am far from an expert in this matter, and your feedback will only make this article better.

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

***

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Most of us treasure the time we spend working on projects. The mental flow state that comes with forcing our minds to mellow out and focus on solely the task at hand can be therapeutic—in the right situation. Every bright light casts a shadow, and every garage holds some tools we hope never to use.

These are the devices that mean our time in the garage is not going well. The steel canaries in the horsepower mine. Projects go sideways just as many times as they go flawlessly, and many of us have various gadgets that serve no purpose until all else has failed.

Here are a few tools that we love to have but hate to reach for.

Tool #1: Tap set

More often than not, forming—or re-forming—threads in a part or piece follows the destruction of those spiraling channels. You’ve probably broken a piece of hardware—or, worst of all, an easy-out. Toss in the fact that taps are very hard, and thus brittle, and you have a very volatile evening of work ahead of you.

When used properly and carefully, a tap set can be a reset button on the life of a part. Even drilling up one size and tapping so that a fastener can have appropriate holding power may be better than replacing the fastener. Sometimes it’s all about perspective.

Tool #2: Spring compressors

The sudden release of potential energy describes a lot of scenarios: The explosion of a firecracker, the expansion of an airbag, and the release of a compressed spring. Each of those can have serious long-term health effects if it happens too close to your person. There are two groups of people who work on automotive suspension: those who are uncomfortable, and those who ignore the forces at play.

Springs and suspension still need to be serviced, though. Carefully inspect and service spring compressors before using them to ensure there is no damage or problems that might pop up. Sometimes just that bit of added confidence is enough to soften the fear factor.

Tool #3: Camshaft locker

It’s not that this tool is so bad; it’s that the consequences of human error when using it are high enough to make us uneasy. Variable camshaft timing has unlocked horsepower that comes with minimal compromises in fuel economy and also drivability. Unfortunately, the technology also makes for more complicated service; replacing a timing chain or belt often requires careful alignment of multiple points while also holding tensioners and gears in proper orientation. The job can be fairly painless, but that doesn’t mean it’s fun.

Tool #4: Air hammer

Percussive force breaks the bonds of rust, and it hammers eardrums just as thoroughly. The compromise can often be easily overcome with a good set of earplugs or over-the-ear muffs, but using an air hammer still isn’t a pleasurable experience. Compared to using the torch, and the chance of lighting everything on fire, it is the lesser of two evils. We don’t love you, air hammer, but, after all these years, we haven’t let you leave the toolbox.

Tool #5: Impact driver

Stripped hardware is the bane of any DIYer’s existence. Even with the proper tools and experience to handle stripped screws and bolts, we don’t want to spend the limited time we have in the garage dealing with them. The combination of driving and turning force delivered by an impact screwdriver can take quickly solve the problem of a partially stripped screw. It can also result in hitting your wrist with a hammer, or create an even bigger problem by snapping a bolt off where you can’t grab it. Often, our opinion of an impact screwdriver is based on how well it worked the last time we used it.

Tool #6: The Big Hammer

You know the one. The handle is slightly stained, and the face features a few chips from that one time you got a little carried away on that ball joint. You probably started addressing the problem at hand with a couple of smaller hammers and, when you realized that things were not going your way, and that you were tired of talking nice, opened the drawer to grab The Big Hammer.

This list is all a matter of opinion and personal experience, so we may have missed one or two here. If you’ve got a tool you avoid reaching for but might not be able to put a finger on why, leave a comment. Consider it an unofficial survey.

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With much of the United States and Canada recently in the icy grip of a polar vortex, and many regions experiencing sub-zero temperatures (that’s 0 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale, about minus 18 on the Celsius scale for you folks north of the border), it may be an appropriate time for a look into the history of car heaters.

The first motorcars, appropriately termed horseless carriages, were generally open, and like horse-drawn carts and wagons they had no protection from the elements. “Brass era” publications show advertisements for “automotive apparel,” i.e. heavy coats, gloves, and hats, as well as “storm aprons,” essentially ponchos big enough to cover all of the passengers.

You may note that Margaret A. Wilcox was the first to invent a car heater, and that’s true, in a manner of speaking. While she did patent a system that directed air through the engine, heating it, and then routing it to the passenger compartment, the “cars” her 1893 invention warmed were railroad cars, not automobiles. I suppose that conceptually it is the basis for the way early motorcars and later air-cooled automobiles pulled passenger compartment heat from heat exchangers on the exhaust system, but I doubt Ms. Wilcox ever saw an automobile before she filed her patent application. The system did warm railroad passengers, but it was relatively primitive. Without the system they froze; with it, they were roasted.

Depending on which source you read, it was either Cadillac in 1906 (or 1907 per some sources) or Hudson in 1913 that first introduced a fully-enclosed automobile. To keep warm, early motorists did what they had done with animal-powered conveyances; they would preheat bricks or soapstone on the oven at home and place them in dedicated hotboxes inside the passenger compartment.

If you think heated steering wheels are a modern accessory, you might be surprised to know that some early electric car builders wrapped heating elements around their steering wheels.

An improvement over hot bricks was the introduction of portable coal-burning heaters, made of galvanized iron with asbestos linings and brass handles for portability. A purpose-manufactured brick of coal (or charcoal) was placed in a drawer in the heater after it was prepared for use in a live fire, presumably a wood- or coal-fired oven at home. After the flame died down, the hot coals were said to burn without odor or smoke. Fortunately, even though automobiles were being enclosed, they weren’t very airtight, so perhaps carbon monoxide from the burning coal wasn’t an issue. One brick was said to be able to heat the passenger compartment for several hours. When heat was no longer needed, the hot coal could be doused with water and reused later.

Such portable heaters required preparation ahead of time as well as moving the coals and heaters in and out of the cars. On-board heaters would be much more convenient. Since many early automobiles were air-cooled, attention was given to recovering waste heat from the exhaust system. At least as early as 1907, exhaust gas heaters were sold as automotive accessories. As seen in a period advertisement, one of those designs incorporated a metal jacket around the muffler through which air could be heated and supplied to the passenger compartment via grates in the floor.

In some cases the cabin was heated passively, through convection, and in other cases air was forced through the system, either with an air intake funnel behind the engine fan or actively with an electric blower. A more sophisticated heat exchanger design routed the exhaust gases through bundles of tubes. Heat could be controlled in very rudimentary fashion with valves whose handles were typically mounted on the car floor. Those valves controlled the flow of exhaust gas through the heat exchangers.

As an aftermarket accessory, these early heaters were not very practical. They were hard to retrofit into existing passenger compartments, and sometimes leaked exhaust into the cabin, causing some deaths due to carbon monoxide poisoning. A safer way of using the engine’s waste heat was with manifold heaters, popular with Ford Model A owners. A cast iron duct routed air over the exhaust manifold and into the cabin via a port in the firewall. Enough Model As are still on the road that manifold heaters are still being made, though now they are made of aluminum.

In 1933, after it introduced V-8 power for the masses, Ford developed an in-dash heater for those cars, though it still used exhaust as a heat source. Constructed like steam boiler, hot exhaust was directed into two dozen 13-inch-long flues around which flowed fresh air. The outlet of the heater was installed in the dashboard in front of the passenger. A button at the driver’s feet regulated the heat via an intake valve upstream of the flues.

None of the early exhaust-based heaters had provisions for mixing fresh air with the heated air, so in 1940, Ford had Novi Equipment develop an integrated manifold heater that could mix the heat with fresh air.

Also in the mid-1930s, General Motors’ Delco division developed a clever heating system that duplicated the steam radiators used to heat many homes and buildings. A boiler was located at the outlet of the muffler. The boiler was charged with a very small amount of water, just one ounce, so when the car was started, the heat from the 900°F (482°C) exhaust gases would immediately vaporize that water into steam, causing it to rise into the heater core where an electric fan would blow the heat into the cabin. From the heater core, the steam pipes routed the water vapor through the car’s radiator to condense it back to water.

If you are wondering why the auto industry didn’t use the hot water in the cooling systems of water-cooled engines, that’s because exhaust-based heaters could discharge heat at a quite toasty 200°F (93°C) and exhaust gases are hot as soon as you start the engine, unlike engine coolant that has to heat up. However, by the mid 1920s, water pumps and thermostats had gotten reliable enough at regulating engine temperature to allow for hot coolant to be used to heat the passenger compartment. The first coolant-based heaters were aftermarket devices, and it wasn’t unusual for owners to transfer their heaters when they replaced cars.

In the winter of 1927-28, A.B. Arnold fabricated a prototype hot water heater for the Ajax car owned by another Arnold whose initials were also A.B., Arnold B. Modine. Modine had founded Modine Manufacturing in 1916, first making the Spirex-branded radiator for tractors and then supplying Ford with the Turbotube radiator for Model Ts. Incidentally, it was Modine Manufacturing that built the first vehicular wind tunnel in 1941, to test radiators and car heaters.

Modine attributed his success to his insight that the key to managing heat in liquid-cooled engines was focusing on heating the air passing through the radiator, rather than concentrating on lowering the temperature of the coolant. A.B. Arnold took a honeycomb heater core, mounted it under the dashboard and plumbed it into the engine cooling system so that the hot coolant flowed through the core on its way to the radiator, where it would be cooled. The system impressed Modine enough that he started to manufacture it to sell to automakers.

The Trane and Fedders companies, which you may recognize as makers of HVAC equipment, joined Modine in selling hot water-based car heaters, as did brands like Arvin and Ha-Dees (back in the ’30s, it was much more polite to say “hades,” than, “hell”). Major retailers like Sears and Montgomery Ward also sold aftermarket hot-water heaters. As with the Ford manifold heaters, you can buy reproductions for your period-correct restoration.

General Motors got into the picture with coolant-based heaters designed by Carl Darrah at Harrison Radiator Division, and in 1931 they introduced a heater for the rear passengers built into a footrest. Modine introduced a similar footrest design that was one of the first to mix fresh air from outside the car with the heated air. In 1933, A.B. Arnold also addressed the issue of fresh air by ducting heated air from the cowl ventilator on a Ford V-8 to the heater core mounted behind the instrument panel and then routing it from the heater core to the windshield, thereby apparently inventing the defogger.

In 1937, Nash added cabin pressurization to the mix. Filtered air was forced into heater and then to the passenger compartment, creating slightly higher air pressure inside the car. This prevented cold air from seeping in through various routes into the cabin.

It should be noted that with all of those advancements, most automakers did not offer heaters as standard equipment. It wasn’t until 1962 that hot water-based heaters became standard equipment on General Motors cars (well, except for the air-cooled Corvair, which had air forced over heat exchangers built into the exhaust system, similar to air-cooled Volkswagens and Porsches), and it wasn’t until 1968 that automakers stopped making heaters optional equipment. Newly-adopted Motor Vehicle Safety Standards required some kind of heated windshield defrosting system and the only way to do that was making heaters standard.

Owners of some of those air-cooled VWs, as well as over-the-road truckers, might be familiar with another heating system. In the late 1930s, the Stewart-Warner company developed a gasoline-burning passenger car heater and in the early ’60s. Working with GM’s Harrison division, they developed a gasoline-fired heater for the Corvair. Essentially a self-contained furnace, it delivered near-instantaneous heat in ample quantities. Stewart-Warner’s Southwind brand advertised them as heating up within 90 seconds. S-W sold them for Volkswagens, as did Germany’s Eberspacher. Nothing will warm the inside of a car faster than a gas-fired heater. Over-the-road truckers have used similar gas-fired heaters to keep their sleeper compartments warm without having to idle their engines for hours.

Developments like air conditioning and automatic climate control followed, and perhaps when the weather heats up this summer, we’ll take a look at the history of automotive A/C (short form: Packard, 1939). But in the meantime, if the weather outside is frightful, but inside your car it’s still delightful, you can thank folks like A.B. Arnold, A.B. Moline, Carl Darrah, and maybe even Margaret Wilcox.

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The post All Warmed Up: The Early Days of Car Heaters appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Jack writes:

How about some guidance on motor oil for us old farts who are still driving flat tappet engines like my ’74 Corvette L82?

Sajeev answers:

Woo-hoo!  This is a pretty easy answer to give, as 1975 was the first year for Corvettes with a catalytic converter. All pre-1975 vehicles will benefit from the added zinc content available in oils designed for diesel engines. Yep, it’s pretty much that easy!

You can buy modern oils and a standalone zinc additive, and there are modern “racing oils” with a loyal following. But the standby stuff for diesel engines is both commonplace and downright affordable, which makes it rather hard to beat. Oh, and they come in synthetic (if you are confident in your gasket’s sealing) or conventional oil (if you are not).

Things are tougher if you have a 1975+ vehicle with flat tappets and a factory-fit catalytic converter. You might not want a high zinc content, as ash buildup can destroy the catalyst. This happens most likely due to engines burning oil, and I assume many a Malaise Era automobile had their cats defeated with a rod/broom for this reason alone. Engines that don’t burn a drop of oil are unlikely to experience this problem in their catalyst, and might be able to get away with modern gasoline engine oils.

So let’s formally ask ourselves this question: What if Jack had a 1975 Corvette with its factory cat? Or one of the many other flat tappet/catalytic converter vehicles still on the road? First off, that’s impressive, and I thank you for saving a piece of Malaise Era history.

Running a modern synthetic oil for gas engines with high mileage additives ensures maximum protection for flat tappets and minimal leaks (as synthetic oils can exacerbate a leaky gasket). You might not have a leak yet, but unless your motor has low miles and gaskets that still seal like new, always opt for the high mileage synthetic oil. This might not be as good as diesel oil for the flat tappets, but it will likely do an adequate job reducing engine friction while ensuring a healthy catalytic converter.

Then again, do you even need synthetic oil? I reckon most of these 1975–85 vehicles are driven infrequently. Maybe just ordinary, not-synthetic oil is good enough. Will you drive it enough to wear out an engine with flat tappets? Your call, but just know you have options.

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

***

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When it comes to a project car, it’s best to dive into one that truly lights a flame inside you. A project car is almost always mentally, physically, and financially draining at some point in your relationship with it. If you don’t care to stick it out through such hurdles, frustration might block you from ever returning to the project again.

So, where to begin? The list of needy cars for sale from the world’s garages, carports, driveways, and open fields can seem overwhelming. It can be easy to dream big. Of course, hell-on-wheels traps exist; certain cars are difficult to source parts for, offer minimal community and owner support, or are just plain prone to breaking.

Some cars, on the flip side, offer a stronger foundation for novices. Today we’ll be donning the role of Car Matchmaker. Whether you’re new to the hobby or a veteran, smoother-sailing and joy-to-own DIY classics are out there— here are five vehicles we think might be right for you:

Little British Cars

A cheap British sports car can offer plenty of, uh, opportunities to bond with the mechanically inclined owner. The nice thing is that there were tens of millions of Austin-Healeys, Triumphs, and MGs produced during the 1960s and ’70s that share much in terms of maintenance parts and techniques. The cars are relatively affordable, and thus, so are the parts. The biggest boon: support and knowledge provided by other enthusiasts. British car clubs are often large and helpful—perfect for a newbie to the genre.

Volkswagen Beetle

The Beetle dethroned the Model T for the outright model sales record, eventually going on to account for over 21 million sales. There is safety in numbers, which often correlates with good parts support and pricing. The aftermarket support for Bugs is downright impressive, even compared with other mainstream vintage cars like Mustangs or Chevelles. Beetle owners will get familiar with regular maintenance like oil changes and valve adjustments, but the fundamental build and design are sturdy; if you do the job right the first time, you likely won’t have to do it again unexpectedly.

Ford Model A or T

You want to learn the basics? Then buy one of the most basic cars you can drive. Just stare at a Model T for more than a few minutes, and you’ll notice that none of the critical parts are hiding. Everything is pretty out in the open. Best of all, components were overbuilt by a factor or two in most areas. Model Ts—and As, for that matter—don’t require many power tools, which means they’re accessible and enjoyable to work on whether you’re a tool rookie or an experienced wrench. Fun to learn on and fun to drive? That’s a good project car.

Trucks of the 1970s and ’80

As simple as the aforementioned Fords are, their age comes with real-world usage limitations. If a utility is an aspect you value in a finished project car, vintage pickups from the 1970s and ’80s are a great place to look. These are rugged, tough hunks of metal that enjoy fairly high tolerance for deferred maintenance. If you are willing to buck up and take on the challenge of catching up on all the stuff the last owner neglected, the juice can be worth the squeeze. Fruits of your labor will include functional overdrive transmissions, disc brakes, and decent power, all baked into solid packages with relatively simple powertrains and chassis. Being trucks, they also have beds for work—or pleasure hauling. For those without a utility-focused daily driver, that’s a nice bonus when trying to justify how a collector car fits into your lifestyle.

Anything you don’t expect to daily drive

In reality, just about anything that makes you look forward to dirty hands and busted knuckles is the right project car. Expectations, however, are important; old, semi-working cars tend to behave like old, semi-working cars—they can break down and sit out of commission for extended periods. Take it from me: Spending Sunday evening underneath your car is a lot more relaxing when you don’t need the thing to get to work the next morning.

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The whole project car process, even if it requires a long timeline, can be as rewarding as the end result. The thrill of parts finding is sometimes more thrilling than installing or even using said parts; whether buying something that requires lots of networking and parts hunting might be perfect for you, as long as you go down that road with both eyes open. Tougher endeavors in that vein hone project-car skills, but the learning curve is often steep and time-consuming. Patience is essential, so if you want more immediate gratification, relative oddball stuff like Wankel-powered NSUs or Nash Metropolitans may not be the ideal place to get your feet wet.

Find a car you think you’ll love, and the learning, fixing, and driving it all become part of the adventure. Get some experiencce under your belt and before you know it, you’ll have more than one project in the pipeline—don’t say we didn’t warn you!

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The Corvair has been precariously perched atop jack stands in my garage for a month or two—I’ve lost track, to be honest. The engine and transaxle sit divorced on the floor, angled away from one another, conveying a slight contempt for each other that shouldn’t be possible for inanimate objects.

After weeks of trying to “find the time” to make the next big step in getting the car back together, I finally carved out just enough time to make some progress. Luckily for me and my tight schedule, I knew how to make some self-tightening bolts.

The rift in the relationship between engine and transmission was my doing, of course. My investigation of an oil leak revealed that the crankshaft seal, which I expected to have failed, was innocent; the real culprit was a damaged gasket between the bell housing and engine block, which was found guilty for its part in leaving oil stains all over town for five years. This unplanned crankcase vent was allowing oil mist to blow out and coat the underside of the car with enough anti-rust I could probably have driven it last winter. The leak became an un-ignorable problem last fall, and this winter was the perfect time to deal with it.

Over the past few months, however, other combustion-based projects entering and leaving my garage have made progress slow—slow enough that suddenly a planned spring road trip was starting to look shaky. It took a good hour to for me get back in the “working on a car” groove. It sounds dumb to say, but there is a radical difference in touch and technique between working on the motorcycles and the cars. The literal weight of everything. More systems. More finicky bits. More patience.

About the time I was hitting my stride, I turned my attention to the powerpack that was resting on the bright red steel cradle that bolts to my aluminum floor jack. To split the differential and engine requires removing seven bolts, two of which hold on the starter motor. Those starter bolts are the only ones you can easily access, though. The five other 9/16”–headed bolts go in from the bellhousing side, tucked in nicely cast aluminum ribs for strength. The arrangement totally makes sense, just like the countless other times assembly time won out over service time. The insufferably slow process of threading a bolt in 10-degree rotations is something that just gnaws at me—I needed some self-tightening bolts.

The process is simple, really. I’ve been working at learning machining on the lathe and wanted to test my single-point thread cutting technique, so I started with a super secret alloy sourced from an old tool and die guy in North Carolina …

Yeah, not really. Self-tightening bolts don’t exist. You knew that. But we don’t have to settle through these infuriating little catch-22 situations created by someone else. Back when this engine was last out, I cut slots in the tips of the bolts. The holes that receive them are drilled and threaded clear through the cast-iron housing of the differential. With a nice narrow screwdriver, I can reach down the center bore of each hole and turn the screwdriver counterclockwise to thread the bolt in snugly. A couple touches with a wrench, and it’s time to move on. Even describing the process on video took less than a minute. Cut those slots once, and a job like this is easier, should you ever come back.

Rarely is anything about project cars or motorcycles easy. There are no self-tightening bolts, just like there is no shortage of time-saving tips that create scenic trips rather than shortcuts. We have to do the work in some way, shape, or form. The result of doing the work is what gives us the otherwise-mythical powers to make things easier for ourselves. We learn these tips and tricks over months, years, and decades spent thinking about the materials and processes that we use and abuse during our love affair with an inanimate object. Because I learned and implemented that little trick of slotting the end of five bolts, this sizable job is not so bad—enjoyable, even. At the very least, it’s more fun than watching the car assemble itself.

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Scott writes:

I’m 74, and I have a 1990 Vanagon (with a 2.5 Subie engine) and a ’91 Porsche 964. They both have computers, but not the kind that report my every thought, action, and broadslide to “the authorities.” The idea of buying a newer car terrifies me because, well … “Question Authority.”

I assume that privacy in new cars is totally impossible. But (here’s the question part) is it possible to take a new car and strip Big Brother from it?

Sajeev answers:

Possibly, but I am neither a lawyer nor a computer hacker. While both of those folks are more qualified to answer this question, I shall do my best. And my best means I won’t suggest adding an Eldorado Biarritz-style stainless steel roof atop a modern car, but hey, that’d certainly look cool.

This is a good time to mention that I am one of those younger folks who somewhat doesn’t care about the personal data in my car, phone, and social media channels. (Aside from hacks to circumvent banking laws that empty my savings account, of course.) I see Big Data as part of doing business in our modern capitalistic society, and I love the fact that Google Maps is pretty darn accurate in addressing traffic slowdowns, thanks to everyone’s data contributions.

But there’s always a dark side to Big Data, and what bothers me are rental cars. Plugging your phone into that Chevy Malibu gives someone else a lot of opportunity to scam you and possibly steal your identity. So always dig into the rental car’s settings, tap around for a minute so it can delete or forget your phone. (And maybe delete everyone else’s information too, since you’re a good person like that.)

But for those folks who wholly reject my notions, I totally get it. Let’s discuss options for modern car ownership with privacy concerns.

• Buy a hacked or jailbreaked Tesla: Sure, the warranty will be voided, but their service centers aren’t exactly great anyway. There are seemingly countless hacks, and it seems like the Black Hat hackers (i.e. the supposed bad guys) have figured out a lot about Teslas. Remember that this automotive brand pitches itself as a tech company, catering to a tech-obsessed crowd. So if you’re inclined, read this to learn more.
• Seek third party help: A company called Privacy4Cars caters to concerns for dealerships and individuals. They have an app to use your data make that happen for you. I hesitate to give the hyperlink because I know nothing about them, but perhaps clicking here is indeed a good start on your journey.
• Read the Owner’s Manual: Learn how to restore a vehicle to factory settings and other bits of data collection that will be available in the owner’s manual. The manual won’t stop your car from storing a lot of vehicle-specific information on you, but the data that opens you up to scammers can be deleted.
• Make it the Salesperson’s problem: My time in the car business taught me many truths, and one is that younger salespeople who view this industry as a career are HUNGRY for loyal customers. (No offense to the older sales folks, but they often already have a book of business and don’t need to struggle as much.) Salespeople in general will move heaven and earth to earn happy customers, they have access to service professionals (and their proprietary hardware) in the next building, and they might just find the right balance between data collection and the headaches involved in curtailing it.

I wish I had a better answer, but routing people to places they need to explore is sometimes the best we can do here at Piston Slap. Perhaps someone in the Hagerty Community will comment below with more valuable advice?

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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The post Piston Slap: Keeping Big Data Out of Your Ride? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

DUB6 writes:

Although I think I already know the answer, I’m going to throw out a question because, after having read previous posts, I know that not everyone knows everything. We can often help each other learn new things, and maybe I don’t REALLY know the answer. (Or at least, not all of it.)

So here’s my question for everyone: How should one determine what CFM (cubic feet per minute) carburetor to install for best fuel mileage/drivability and performance?

I assume that there is some sort of calculation that takes into account displacement, intake runner type and flow numbers, cam specs, combustion chamber size, compression ratio, exhaust port size, and actual exhaust design—all sorts of variables that could fill up a large blackboard with numbers and algebraic squiggles, etc., resulting in a number at the end that tells us exactly what size carb(s) to purchase, right?

Sajeev answers:

To the best of my knowledge there are two CFM calculations pertinent to carburetor selection, and I have used both recently. That’s because my recently resuscitated Continental Mark III needed a lot more work than originally anticipated. There’s a rebuilt engine, new cooling system, and a new fuel system in my future. But let’s get back to my Mark’s big-block engine and its need for a new carburetor:

CFM = (Engine CID × Max RPM) ÷ 3456

For my Mark’s 460-cubic-inch motor that redlines (around) 5800 rpm, I need a 772 CFM carburetor. But let’s consider a more accurate formula, even if it borders on being too pedantic for most folks:

CFM = ((Engine CID × RPM) × Volumetric Efficiency) ÷ 3456

What you see above is my manipulation of the Volumetric Efficiency (VE) formula, pushing the CFM on one side of the equation by itself. Hopefully I did the math correctly, but even if I got it wrong, VE is not an easily-sourced figure. (Finding it might require an engine dyno to know the truth.) The fine folks at Summit Racing offer a rough estimate of your engine’s VE, but save yourself the effort and use Summit’s handy CFM Calculator instead. It includes VE data into its formula, and it gave me a CFM requirement of 656 for my Mark III.

You can mull over your intake design, camshaft profile, compression ratio, combustion chamber size, boost from turbo/supercharging, etc., but the more generalized information from Summit Racing is good enough for most folks. Getting the right CFM is just the first step, because you then adjust it via jetting, mixture screws, etc. to get the right amount of fuel to go with all that air the engine will consume.

And no, you didn’t ask, but last week I bought an Edelbrock 750 CFM carburetor for the Mark’s new engine. Odds are it will need to be tuned down just a little by my mechanic, but I am looking forward to driving this one soon … sooner or later.

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

***

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I keep a few of my cars outside under covers. As winter approaches, this invites critters, as we say in the South, to find shelter in the relatively warm confines of various nooks and crannies throughout the undercarriages and interiors of these cars. I’m not alone, of course. Hobbyists who store cars, including in unheated buildings, have an annual battle with mice and certain reptiles as the weather turns cold.

My own campaign of death and deterrence for mice has come down to baits, traps, and sticky paper (my least favorite—some things you can’t unsee). Mice seem to get used to my strategies, and recently I even noticed mouse excrement on top of my slappy trap—the critter had literally pooped on my idea of a viable lethal bait system for him. So now I use baits placed strategically around the trunk, the interior, and the engine bay, plus a spring trap in the interior, plus a sticky trap for good measure. I am adding odds in my favor in lieu of truly knowing my enemy.

One night in early December, I realized that it had been a month since I’d exercised one of my air-cooled Porsches, so I went out after dinner to take a short drive. The routine is simple: Pull off the car cover, reconnect the battery, check the slappy-slap mousetrap on the passenger floor for a dead tenant, then proceed with starting the car and the subsequent driving fun. This one particular evening, the mouse trap was empty so all went as planned on my getting off to a good start. Being a visual guy, I did not really want to drive while seeing a mouse trap on the floorboard, but it was dark outside and my dash lights are 1970s dim. As the saying goes, out of sight, out of mind. So I left the trap where it lay.

The engine started relatively willingly, I backed out of the driveway through the usual cloud of heavy fumes and oil vapors, and I was off. Everything was warming up nicely on this cold December evening, and soon I had heat wafting from the floor vents (“wafting” is the maximum setting on vintage Porsche heaters). I was falling in love again with this special vintage machine, just a simple engine and four wheels, with minimum gadgets and doodads to distract from a pure driving experience.

About three miles into the drive, however, things started to go a bit wrong. I smelled a distinct burning odor, definitely organic, not oil- or gasoline-based (or plastic-based, as wiring harnesses give off when thermally excited). I surmised that a varmint had started a nest in one of the car’s exhaust heat exchangers and that the fumes were coming into the cabin. Here is where I made a critical but unknown error.

The air vent and heating controls on early Porsches are purposely confusing, a means to humble owners who have not memorized their user manuals. On this model, there are three unlabeled levers that have a particularly satisfying feel as you slide them from left to right, even if their purpose is impossible to remember. The top lever does something related to the fan speed, the bottom lever has some temperature-related function, and the middle lever’s purpose is unclear, but I always associate it with fresh air.

My error, unbeknownst to me, was to move the top lever over to the right position to let some cool outside air into my stinky cockpit, rather than the correct middle lever. I will blame the darkness for me using the wrong lever. It turns out that a mouse had indeed already been in the car, and had started a nest in the blower motor located in the front trunk, which served to jam the fan’s blower wheel into a fixed position. Engaging the “high” setting on the top lever fan switch sent the desired 14 volts or so to the motor, which promptly became an amperage dead end, the motor being unable to rotate due to the various newspaper and paper towel tatters carefully placed there by said mouse. This soon overloaded the circuit leading to the blower motor, and concurrently, began to overheat the fuse for this shared circuit.

In a normal vehicle, this would simply result in a blown fuse. What I was driving is not a normal vehicle but a 50-year-old German car that has, what was at the time, a well-engineered electrical system. That system was pumping its little heart out trying to carry the extra amps to the motor in an attempt to make it turn. If this had been 1972 (the year this car was made) all would be well, and the circuit might even handle the extra load without failure. Enter the modern world, however, and we have to consider the weak link that had been introduced to this circuit when I, the owner, lazily Amazon-ed some off-shore, off-brand fuses for the car. The original German fuses were wonderfully simple assemblies consisting of a ceramic carrier wrapped with the appropriate-gauge metal fusing element. Each color of fuse matches its particular rating, and you can visibly see thicker mid-sections on the higher-rated fuses. So elegant, so simple.

The modern off-shore copies of these robust German designs, however, do not use heat-resistant ceramic cores but rather plastic material which looks and fits just the same, but has a much lower heat capacity. This is not generally a problem, until you try to pass a lot of amperage through the fusing element and the high current slowly starts to heat up the fuse, approaching the melting temperature of the plastic in question. As the cheap plastic core softens, it loses its dimensional integrity. The clever Porsche/Bosch clips in the fuse box compress the fuse core into a banana shape, and the clips can no longer hold the fuse in place.

The first warning that all was not well just a few minutes after I’d slid the fan lever to “high” was that the alternator warning light came on. This alerted the DEFCON 1 status in my automotive lizard brain because a) my battery was no longer being charged; and b) it was pitch-dark outside and I had to keep my headlights on to get home; and c) I was 10 miles from home, and my battery is a four-year-old Mazda unit that I got from Mazda racing guru Glenn Long when he was making Spec Racers out of ND Miatas, so it had questionable depth due to its age.

In someone else’s world, all of this might have not been a catastrophic situation. An overheated and melting off-shore fuse, even without blowing, might just shorten/relax its length enough to lose contact with the terminals, and the circuit would simply go dead in a moment of self-diagnosing failure. However, as clever as Porsche’s German engineers were, one error might have been installing the fuse box directly above the driver’s feet. If an owner were, say, to use a cheap fuse with a plastic core, and if that fuse were to melt and fall out, and if the previous owner had removed the fuse box cover and lost it years ago, there just might be a direct trajectory from the melting fuse to the driver’s ankle. Welcome to my world, December 7, 2023 at 9:16 p.m. Good thing this was not the 1980s and I was no longer wearing cuffed pants.

The human brain is a wonderful storage device, and while I didn’t anticipate the burning sensation in my left ankle, I did immediately recognize it for what it was—jetsam from my electrical failure giving me empirical evidence of the burned-out fuse. I grew up on British cars, so this was not the first time this has happened.

I saw a neighborhood entrance 30 feet ahead so jammed everything I had on the brake pedal (this car has early ABS: “About to Brake Sometime”) and pulled a hard righthand turn into it. This 0.8 g maneuver, inelegantly executed, served up a new problem as the accompanying centripetal forces launched the armed-and-ready mouse trap in the direction of my right ankle, which it proceeded to impact with great enthusiasm, triggering its release mechanism.

For this I had no such past memory data point to pull up. What I did have is the recollection of once being on a drive in this very car and finding a medium-sized black snake below the brake pedal as I was cruising down a country road. My mind connected the long-past snake incident with the biting sensation in my exposed right ankle. My actual lizard brain then took over and I essentially leapt from my seat into the roof of the car, an involuntary convulsion of self-preservation all while rolling into the neighborhood at about 30 mph.

A 60-some-odd human brain takes a bit longer to recover from trauma than a younger one does, and it took me a good 50 yards of coasting past this neighborhood’s Christmas lights to regain at least a portion of my senses. Regrouping, I pulled to the side of the road, yanked out my phone and turned on the flashlight feature. Looking down I saw, not an enraged snake, but only an empty floorboard. Then I noticed the sprung mouse trap hanging from my pants leg. It was at that moment that my folly came into full focus. I left the trap in place, dangling as a badge of shame and stupidity, and quickly jumped back in to start home. I chose not to install a new fuse, since they all were of the same poor quality as the one that had tattooed my left ankle. And so, my electrical death march started. At the one stoplight of my route, I cut the headlights off, cringing when I turned them back on, anticipating the engine to stutter and stall from a lack of juice to the ignition coil.

As I drove I did some quick mental math and worked backward on my amperage budget:

• A used spark plug will fire (in a compressed-air environment) with as little as 5000 volts.
• My Bosch ignition coil on this car has about a 100:1 lift ratio as an inductive transformer, amplifying the alternator’s 14 volts into 100 primary field volts when the circuit voltage is cut (thanks to the magic of a magnetic field collapsing), and then inducing 100 times that voltage in the secondary field coil (the one that zaps you—always the best cure for hiccups in my family).
• So, I’m probably okay until I get down to 5 volts in the battery.
• My headlights and taillights combined pull around 20 amps and the ignition coil pulls about 5 amps.
• My old battery probably has a 15 amp-hour capacity left in it.
• I maybe have a safe half-hour of driving before life goes dark.

This is why engineers are generally optimists: We make up pedantic equations, often on the fly, to make ourselves feel better.

Fuzzy logic aside, I sweated the last eight miles to my house. I am happy to say that we both made it, the voltage in the battery inversely proportional to my adrenaline as every quarter-mile passed beneath me.

They say your brain permanently records strong emotions, maybe as a survival mechanism to prevent future trauma. In the classic-car world, events such as those I had experienced are chalked up as “character building” and are, in some crazy way, considered to be the charm of these old machines. Hmm.

In any case, thanks, old Porsche, for a memorable ride.

***

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The post Of Mice and Machines: Porsche Fuses, Death Traps, and Imagination Gone Awry appeared first on Hagerty Media.

It’s freezing outside and the roads are covered with salt, so my Lotus Esprit is weathering the winter in its underground lair.

The car is currently looking a little perplexed, with one headlamp raised in an appropriately Roger Moore–like manner, which seems to be the result of a domino effect of difficulties that can be traced back to the summer.

The trouble began one sunny day when I opened the hood for a routine check of brake fluid and the driver’s side hinge ripped itself away. Unsurprisingly for a Lotus of its vintage, the fixing is a rather Heath Robinson affair: a slot formed in the fiberglass into which a metal plate is inserted to take three bolts. Mine only had two of these bolts and, perhaps thanks to the rather forceful nature of the gas strut supporting the hood, it tore through the fiber.

With the aid of my EnduroKA racing teammates, Araldite, and various clamps I managed a repair, the trickiest part of which was re-fitting and re-aligning the hood. All seemed fine until a few weeks later when I opened the hood again and it immediately gave out once more.

The good news is that the hood stays closed and doesn’t appear to lift at all, even at speed. The bad news: The repair has now affected the pop-up lights. The Lotus Esprit Group on Facebook informs me that it is possible to hand crank the lights up and down, but unfortunately I can’t open the hood on my own to do it. So the Esprit will be winking until I can get it to a specialist to repair the fiberglass.

Even before the hood hinge failed, the headlamps had been proving troublesome: Though the high beams were fine, the dipped beams randomly switched off. If I held up the column stalk, the lights would stay on, but any release of pressure, and the road ahead would be plunged into darkness. Exciting!

With any luck, a dab of deftly applied superglue has now fixed the issue, but I may need to replace the Lucas switch that this Lotus shares with the Morris Marina and Lamborghini Countach. Thankfully, the part is still available—and not at Lambo prices.

On the subject of electrics, there’s a mysterious drain on the battery, so while it’s not in use I’ve disconnected it, but that’s another job to add to the growing list. My weeping rocker covers are a common problem, but apparently there’s a medical-grade rubber gasket that solves the issue. As a service is due, I should be able to fit those when I do an oil change. While its age means the Esprit is exempt from Britain’s annual MOT test, an additional inspection feels like good practice, so that also needs to be booked.

I didn’t put many miles on the car in 2023, but this year my wife and I have a fancy, black tie wedding in France to attend and I’d love to turn up at the château, 007-style, and raise a few eyebrows. I just hope the Esprit is no longer doing the same.

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As I’m not wrenching much this winter (a situation caused by not really having a proper winter project, as well as using that as an opportunity to give my nagging back injury a chance to heal), I thought I’d write about the spectrum of wounds, cautionary tactics, near misses, and emergency room visits that the decades of wrenching have produced. Considering the amount of wrenching I’ve done over the past 45 years, I’ve had surprisingly few serious injuries—no ambulances have visited my house. But there has been blood and one near catastrophe.

Cautionary Tactics

Racers talk about losing their judgement when the red mist (adrenaline) flows and they begin doing things they know they shouldn’t do. When you’re removing some stuck bolt or recalcitrant component, it’s easy to get influenced by “mechanic’s red mist” and go all Cole Trickle on it (“This part is goin’ DOWN!”). Because of both impaired judgement and the larger forces at play when you’re pushing or pulling hard, this is when you’re likely to hurt yourself. For example, when gripping on a wrench or a ratchet handle and pushing it to loosen a bolt, if the ratchet slips or the bolt breaks, it’s the back of your hand that’s likely to smack against something sharp or pointy. The tendons back there are very close to the surface; you can plainly see them whenever you flex your fingers. Pushing a wrench or ratchet with the open palm of your hand instead of the closed fist can make the difference between a few stitches versus surgery and months of physical therapy.

Helicoptering up a bit, it’s good to be in the habit of approaching any repair with a degree of situational awareness. What are the hazards in the area you’re about to stick your hands into? Are there jagged edges? Hot hoses? Frayed wires or ends of cables that can cause a painful puncture that gets infected? Are there rotating parts you need to be aware of? Is the thing that you’re removing going to drop down and pin your hand? Simply taking a moment and scoping this stuff out is time well spent.

The phrase “gas and spark” is often used to describe the necessary precursors for an internal combustion engine to run, but it’s also a cautionary phrase, as you really don’t want these things combined outside of the engine’s combustion chamber. Spilled or leaking gas can easily be ignited by a stray spark from either an electrical connection being made or broken, or cutting something with a spinning wheel. So don’t, for example, use a Dremel tool to cut a metal clamp off a fuel hose.

But that’s all small stuff. In my opinion, the most serious vector for automotive injuries is jacking up a car and working under it. I believe I’ve told the story on these pages about how my physics professor for my sophomore mechanics class (and part of mechanics is statics—the study of the forces on things that aren’t moving) was killed when his car fell on him, forever imprinting on me that intelligence and common sense don’t necessarily go hand in hand. To be fair, I don’t know the details of what went wrong, but ever since that event, I’ve “double-jacked” cars. That is, if you’re going to crawl under a car, be sure to put it on a hard level surface (concrete, not asphalt, and definitely not hot asphalt), jack it up, position the jack stands, let it down onto the stands, and then leave the floor jack in place as a backup.

Near-Misses

There are five that stand out.

The lift incident: By far the scariest thing that ever happened to me while fixing cars was the time my mid-rise lift nearly killed me. A chain of three unlikely events—the design of the lift that makes it possible to defeat the safety latch (the thing that supports the weight of the car mechanically instead of relying on the hydraulic pressure in the cylinders), my having flipped that latch and not flipped it back into the auto-lock position, and, while I was under the car, my legs having accidentally kicked one of the car’s removed wheels, by pure chance sending it rolling into the lift’s pressure release lever—caused the hydraulics to depressurize and the lift to slowly drop while I was under it. Fortunately, I was under the back of the car, and due to it coming to a stop on its brake drums, there was enough space that my chest cavity didn’t get crushed. (You can read the details in the link above.)

At the time, I was stoic about it and simply finished the repair, but with hindsight, I could’ve been killed, and I’d be lying if I said that that didn’t rattle me. Obviously I no longer move the latch from its auto-lock position, and I’m assiduously careful to make certain that, when a car is on the lift, the lift is resting on one of the stops and not on hydraulic pressure.

The jack incident: While not nearly as serious as the lift incident, the jack incident viscerally demonstrated the importance of jack safety. On a hot late-summer day, I drove down to Cape Cod to have a look at a BMW 5 Series wagon. I met the seller in a CVS parking lot. I noticed that the lot was asphalt and had a very slight grade but didn’t think too much of it. I’d brought a medium-sized aluminum floor jack to check for front-end play, so I slid it under the nose of the car, found the jack point under the subframe, and gave it a few pumps to get the front wheels high enough to wiggle. As I was checking the first wheel, the seller said, “Look out, look out, LOOK OUT!” The combination of the jack sinking into the hot, malleable asphalt and the slight grade caused the car to topple off the jack and toward me. I was never in real danger—I was wiggling the wheel with no part of me under the car—but it alarmed both of us. Whenever I think about swapping a wheel with a car supported by only a jack, I remember this incident, and reconsider.

The wiper linkage that pinned my wrist: Decades ago, I was troubleshooting the non-functional windshield wipers on my BMW 3.0CSi. Doing so required me to pull the multi-prong plug off the wiper motor, turn the key to the accessories setting, switch on the wipers, and check for voltage and ground at the connector using a multimeter. When I was done, I pushed the connector back onto the wiper motor, which rewarded my efforts by suddenly springing to life. When it spun, it rotated the wiper linkage, which pinned my wrist against the piece of metal that the wiper motor mounts to. I’ve recreated the event in the photo below, which was instructive because the way I remembered it, it was the act of reaching in and plugging the connector back in that put my wrist in a position where it could’ve gotten pinned, but now I see that that’s highly unlikely. Regardless of exactly how it happened, my wrist was pinned, and the motor was still on.

The incident occurred in the late 1980s when my wife and I were still living at my mother’s house in Brighton. I stood there, watching my hand turn white as the unrelenting torque of the wiper motor cut off the blood flow and stood a good chance at slicing open my wrist, but because the garage was on street level and the house was a flight up from the sidewalk and my wife’s and my apartment was up on the third floor, my calls for help went unanswered. Fortunately, while looking around the engine compartment, I saw a wrench within reach, and I was able to use it to undo the negative battery cable, which killed the power to the wiper motor. Even with the power cut, though, it took quite a bit of wiggling to extricate my hand, and when I did, the crease on my wrist looked like a dull guillotine blade had bounced off it.

The vise that attacked my foot: I was installing a new exhaust in my car, replacing every piece except the catalytic converter. Unfortunately, one of the bolts holding the cat to the resonator was frozen in the flange and needed to be drilled out. At the time I didn’t own a drill press, so I put the cat in my car, changed into summer clothes, drove into work, and used the drill press there. I clamped the flange into a vise that sat on the flat surface of the drill-press table. The vise wasn’t secured to the table, though; it was free to move, allowing you to line up the drill bit with its target.

Drilling out a bolt is slow work, I got impatient, the mechanic’s red mist got the best of me, and I leaned a little harder on the drill press lever. I saw a little whisp of smoke, heard a little chirp from the bit, and then the bit grabbed the flange, causing both the catalytic converter and the vise to rotate and throw themselves on the floor. They landed about six inches from my left foot. As I looked down, I saw that I was wearing sandals. IDIOT!

Emergency Room Visits

It’s the two head wounds that rise above the background of hand stitches and metal filings and rust removed from my eye. Head wounds, of course, generate a lot of blood, making them very dramatic. And these two incidents were just so stupid.

Chevy Suburban rear hatch: The gas struts on the rear hatch of my 2000 Suburban were getting weak, resulting in the hatch slowly closing after you raised it. I replaced one of them, smiled to see that the hatch was now holding itself up, reached inside the truck to get the second strut, didn’t expect the hatch to begin sagging during those few seconds, turned around, and the corner of the lowered hatch caught me right across the scalp line. I grabbed a handful of paper towels, mashed it against the wound, and staggered toward the house. A few minutes later my wife and kids arrived home to find me sitting on the front stoop with blood dripping from my face. “Father down!” I said. “Father needs assistance!” My wife looked at it and said, “Hospital, now.” (photo above)

The vicious driveshaft: I don’t work on other people’s cars for money, but I do favors for friends. The problem is that the more often you do this, the more you open up the possibility of something going wrong. In this case, prior to a road trip, one of my traveling companions asked if I could revive the A/C system in his BMW 2002. A pressure test revealed a single bad o-ring, so with a pump-down and a recharge, he had a cold car. But when we test-drove it, I noticed a very large amount of play in the shift lever. Tightening it up is usually a quick repair, so I put the car up on the lift and crawled under it while he moved the shift lever around. There are two metal-and-rubber bushings holding the shift platform to the back of the transmission, and the Allen-head bolt holding one of them had backed its way out. This was the left-hand bolt, which is usually the one that you’re able to get an Allen-key socket onto by using a wobble extension, but there was something about the five-speed installation in this particular car that made accessing that bolt difficult. Plus I could see that the hex hole was stripped. So to get at the bolt and replace it, the front of the driveshaft needed to be dropped.

It was the end of a long day of wrenching, and I was on automatic pilot. I undid the bolts securing the driveshaft’s center support bearing, and the three holding the giubo (the rubber flex disc) to the flange on the back of the transmission. I began lowering the driveshaft but immediately found that it hit the exhaust. Fortunately, the bolts holding the resonator to the exhaust headpipe weren’t seized. Unfortunately, as soon as the resonator was lowered, the center of the driveshaft dropped with it, which freed the front of the driveshaft to swing down and clonk me right in the face, just above my left eye.

Garage wounds fall into three categories (emphasis on the gory): 1. Press on regardless, 2. Non-urgent car ride to urgent care clinic or emergency room, or 3. Ambulance. I asked my wife to triage me. “It’s not awful,” she said, “but it’ll need stitches.” I asked her to call and find out the hours and the co-pay of the nearest urgent care facility and to put a gauze pad and tape over the wound so I could finish the repair, which only took about 15 minutes. My friend graciously paid the quoted $35 co-pay, and we joked about whether a medical facility had a standardized insurance code for “hit in the face by a driveshaft.” (A doctor-friend later told me that the code is likely W20.8xxA, “struck by thrown, projected, or falling object,” along with Y92.015, “private garage of single-family house as the place of occurrence of the external cause.” He then joked, “For completeness sake, I would probably add Z74.3: Need for continuous supervision.”)

That’s most of it. Except for the time I ran over my own foot, but I think I’ll stay mum on the details. I mean a guy has to have some secrets.

***

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A great number of words have been spilt over the years regarding tools and their use. The utility of objects can be amazing at times. Yet even the greatest tool known to man is borderline useless if you can’t find it, it’s broken, or you have to spend more time digging it out from under other things than actually using it. Enter the toolbox. It’s a humble box of drawers and slides that keeps our beloved tools safe from harm or kidnapping.

It’s also typically the last thing any of us think about. The tools inside are critically important but the thing holding them is merely a cabinet to most casual viewers. It is more than that though, and out of respect for one of the hardest-working non-tool objects in the garage here are some toolbox tune-up tips.

Toolbox Tip #1: Empty out and clean every few years

Sometimes it makes sense to have a bunch of seemingly random stuff in your toolbox. Most of the time it doesn’t. Depending on who you are, how you work, and what you work on, it might be smart to go ahead and make the rule that the only thing that lives in your toolbox is. . . tools.

I say this because I am as guilty as anyone when it comes to finding homes for things I don’t need to be keeping. That includes stuffing any number of trinkets and doo-dads into my toolbox. All of those things inevitably get in the way when I am trying to actually work. As a hobbyist and not a professional mechanic this small amount of time doesn’t amount to much time lost, but dealing with minor inconveniences can stack up and sap some of the joy out of working on your projects.

Toolbox Tip #2: Lube the drawer slides

This only takes a minute with a can of aerosol lubricant to make sure your drawers continue to work like new for years to come. We ask drawers to carry a lot of weight and older slides can use the help to make sure they are not sticking or grinding chunks of dirt or debris into the delicate parts. Extend the slides out fully, blow them off with canned air or an air nozzle, then give them a light spray with a silicone or dry-film lubricant. Grease or oil-based lubes will likely just attract dust so be careful what you grab out of the chemical cabinet.

Toolbox Tip #3: Label the drawers

Most of us have kept everything in the same place for decades but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be nice to have reminders from time to time of where that thing you are looking for is. I’ve personally also found that sometimes the brain gets to thinking about something and that one-track mind forgets other tool options I might have that could do a job better. That whole out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing can cost you sometimes.

Labels also allow helpers to assist more easily—both in getting and returning tools. Who doesn’t like the thought of their helper actually assisting with cleanup? If they know where things go, it won’t be just a pile on top of the box.

Toolbox Tip #4: Add power for a charging drawer

We are getting a little luxurious here but stay with us. Battery tools are more popular than ever, and that means chargers are cluttering up our workspace. With a little planning, it is often possible to snake a short extension cord into a drawer via the side or back, which allows the charger to hide inside. Kits featuring motion-rated cables and outlets exist and can be had for reasonable money considering the space they can free up in and around your toolbox. Of course, always monitor charging batteries to lower fire risk.

Toolbox Tip #5: Keep (or make) it mobile

Nothing is more annoying than working on a project that only fits on the other side of your workspace from where your tools are. A rolling cart is a good option, but the ability to roll your entire toolset right to where you need it can be extremely nice. Adding wheels to a toolbox you already own might get clunky, but it is often worth it. Just be sure to use casters appropriate for the weight of a toolbox. Most toolboxes come with wheels but it is always tempting to build or stash them into a corner. Keeping the ability to move your toolbox allows for easily creating ideal working conditions or at least allowing easy reorganization and cleaning of your space.

Toolbox Tip #6: Let it evolve

It’s cool to still have the same box after decades in the garage, but don’t let nostalgia cloud your sanity. What lives where inside or even the toolbox itself is not sacred and replacing or reorganizing can greatly benefit your functionality and productivity. Switching to a larger box that allows better access to the tools you use most elevates your working experience more than most other tool investments. After all, regardless of which tool you are reaching for it is likely inside your toolbox. Before you can use any tools, you have to use your toolbox.

***

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The first night I tucked my new-to-me 1967 Porsche 912 into my garage (read part one of Lyn’s story here), two things happened. First, I pinched myself. It had always seemed that the odds of my getting a car like this settled on the “outlook not so good” answer from a Magic 8-Ball. Second, a wave of anxiety washed over me. This is my first project car, and I had no clue where to start—I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

I took a breath, recalling the joys found in my dad’s 356 Speedster. If I was going to make some fresh memories of my own, there was nothing to do but get cracking.

This effort should have been kicked off with a trip to California’s Department of Motor Vehicles, but that doesn’t exactly inspire the romance of classic car ownership—it’s more like a grade school visit to the principal’s office, especially given the implications of my 912’s non-operational status. I knew it’d be a while before the 912 would be on the road, so I did what any self-respecting scaredy-cat would do: I procrastinated.

In my defense, the first step in my delay-the-inevitable strategy was critical to the process: I sought out reference material.

I was desperate to know more about my car’s story. The person I’d purchased the 912 from had meant to get it running but never did, and ultimately never put the title in his name. So, I tracked down the guy whose name was on the title. As I left a message on his machine, he picked up. He—I’ll call him Sam—was thrilled to talk with me about the car. He’d bought it from a corrections officer in Santa Rosa who’d started the restoration—that’s where the brand-new floor pan and dashboard, among other things, made their way onto the car, but the project was eventually abandoned. Sam bought the car and a mountain of parts from the officer, but soon realized he wanted something further along in the restoration process. He sold the car and all the parts to a dealer, who then sold just the car to the owner before me. Then, the car languished.

This was a car that everyone, and then no one, wanted. As a result, it had been sitting outside for the better part of five years before making its way to me. It was as if all these previous owners were shepherding it along until I was ready. Serendipity, baby.

Now that I had a bit of my 912’s history, I set about understanding what resources there were within the 912 community. For the first time ever, I joined a discussion forum and even posted. For someone who traditionally doesn’t like asking questions for fear of looking stupid, I put myself out there. I was happy to embarrass myself and admit I had no clue what I was doing and would likely get lots of things wrong, but was excited to learn. I received a lovely welcoming response and even got some great advice about transmission rod boots among the encouragement.

I also picked up a couple of books to have with me in the garage. The 911 & 912 Porsche: A Restorer’s Guide to Authenticity by Dr. B. Johnson came highly recommended, as did the Porsche 912 Workshop Manual and Owner’s Manual. The latter includes some helpful mechanical advice but also imparts the wisdom of taking your car to a well-trained mechanic for detailed jobs.

With literature in hand, I started taking stock of the 912 and what it needed. The more I looked things over, the more I grew confident in my purchase, but there was still plenty of work ahead of me. With each turn of the page, I could see what was correct on my car and what wasn’t.

Somewhere along the line, a previous owner removed the correct 1967 sealed, glass H4 headlights that Ralph Nader deemed unsafe and replaced them with “sugar scoop” units from 1968. I prefer the original look, so I bought a refinished set off eBay before I’d even turned the 912’s key. Even a newbie like me knows that cosmetic fixes aren’t top priority, but I rationalized straightforward projects as a means of getting comfortable with wielding tools and bringing my 912 back to life.

Though it had a new dashboard, the rest of the interior was rough. Fortunately, I’d gotten the car around Thanksgiving and online Black Friday sales were in high gear. I went on a spree, purchasing an entire new interior, including carpets, an upholstery kit, and dash trim plate at a massive discount. I’m a sucker for oxblood, and it’s going to look great with the current patinated exterior, not to mention my future paint plans.

Was I getting ahead of myself? Maybe a little, but I wasn’t ignoring the steps to get this little 912 running. I knew the engine turned over manually, but before checking to see if it could run on its own, I needed to do something about the incredibly rusty gas tank. I ordered a new one as well as the requisite plugs, fitments, and sleeves that go with it. The old sending unit was virtually falling apart so I decided to replace that, too.

The new battery went in next, and to my delight every light except for one of the turn signals worked. Even the clock ran properly! No classic car I’ve ever owned had a clock that was accurate more than twice a day. This was the biggest win yet—the prospect of electrical work was not something I was looking forward to.

As my bank balance shrank, I knew I needed to tap the brakes on the purchases, but I’d do that after I bought new rotors (the pads were actually in good shape). And shocks. Okay, now I was done. Almost. There was a spot up front on the driver’s side directly under the battery that was notorious for rusting out. Mine was no different. I’d need a new front suspension pan and someone to do the welding work before it was safe to drive. If indeed the car actually started.

Once again, I took a breath.

I considered the progress I’d made in mere weeks. There’s now a mile-long to-do list, but having that list and crossing things off it meant I was headed in the right direction. Emboldened, I decided it was time to sort the title.

I headed to the Auto Association of America, which in California can perform some DMV functions, including vehicle registration. Good fortune rained down. It turns out that Sam, the previous-titled owner, was wise enough to register it as non-operational, too—so there’d be no inspections or convoluted processes to worry about. The lovely woman asked for my $292, and there, without fuss or friction, I’d taken care of the legal paperwork. I was in and out in 15 minutes.

The momentum was building. My priority was to get this thing on the road. I had debated prepping the car for paint work, but a couple things stopped me. Almost every other 912 owner I’d come across suggested I just get out there and enjoy the car as-is. Closer to home, my friend and co-conspirator, Hagerty Driver’s Club editor-at-large Aaron Robinson, recently penned an argument for embracing imperfection in our cars, and that sealed it for me. I decided to press on with the mechanical improvements and enjoy the patina. I’d complete the interior because I wanted the cockpit to be a pleasant experience, but for now, it was time to focus on what was under all the sun-damaged sheet metal.

Not long after, with the new gas tank in and fresh gas coursing through its veins, the moment of truth for my 912 came. Robinson, ever helpful, stood by the engine with his can of starter fluid at the ready as I turned the key.

“More gas…More. Again. It’s starving—more,” he said between cranks. I pumped the throttle and the engine coughed. The exhaust blew out a cartoonish cloud of soot.

“More gas. Again.” Robinson sprayed starter fluid into the carbs and it shuddered to life. That simple four-cylinder settled into rhythm, making the same high-humming and happy sound of my father’s long-gone-but-not-forgotten 356 Speedster.

Let the adventures continue.

***

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There are several strikes against my 1996 Winnebago Rialta (a Volkswagen Eurovan with a Winnebago camper body). The primary one is that early ones like this have the 105-horsepower, five-cylinder Audi engine, making them as snail-slow as the VW Westfalia campers of old. Another is that this particular one is a bit, well, ratty. The white paint and the decals on the metal and fiberglass surfaces are in shabby shape, and it’s missing the spare tire cover and the rear bumper corner pieces.

However, part of its charm is its interior color scheme. Our Rialta is outfitted with a fabric that Winnebago called “Bauhaus,” which I believe was only available in these early five-cylinder rigs. You can argue whether the artistic term Bauhaus, which refers to a rational functional design aesthetic and is best known from architect Walter Gropius’ minimalist houses, really applies to this fabric or whether it has more of a Picasso-Kandinsky-Miro vibe, but it’s certainly unique.

Part of the history of my buying the Rialta is that I wanted a small, inexpensive, fuel-efficient RV, but looking at the cheap end of the market means seeing a lot of ads for rigs with dark paneled interiors that look like a meth lab or a porn studio. When I learned about the Rialta, with its lighter-colored European-feeling interior, then found this Rialta and its Bauhaus fabric in my price range, I loved it, as did my wife Maire Anne.

Unfortunately, the RV’s front seats were torn from road wear. Maire Anne is an avid quilter and seamstress, and she looked for replacement fabric, but it appears to be long out of production, so we put seat covers on them.

Plus, the slipcovers on our twin rear mattresses were missing. So what remains intact of the original Bauhaus interior is the seat at the fold-out table, and the accent pieces on the walls and near the ceiling. Still, it’s very cool.

Fast-forward six years. A week before this past Christmas, Maire Anne saw a Facebook post on the “Newton Free Stuff” page. It said “Well-used loveseat sleep sofa (full-size mattress). Must be out on Thursday.” She showed it to me, and we both gasped, as the sofa was unmistakably covered in Bauhaus fabric. We both had the same thought—it’d be great if we could cherry-pick the back cushions, as we could use them to lean against when watching TV in bed in the RV. Maire Anne messaged the owner “I hope this sofa-bed finds a home, but if no one else wants it, and you’re going to discard it, I would love the two large back pillows. The fabric is identical to something I own. Thanks.”

Two days before Christmas, the owner replied to Maire Anne: “The sofa with pillows is on the curb outside my house. Help yourself!” Out the door I ran.

If I was going to grab the back pillows, it made sense to also grab the bottom cushions as well, even if we weren’t sure what to use them for. I wasn’t sure how big they all were, so I almost drove the Rialta itself, as it’s currently the only large vehicle I own, but it had already become landlocked at the end of the driveway for the winter. So I took my wife’s little Honda Fit, whose rear hatch and fold-down rear seats can swallow a lot.

I drove about 10 minutes to another part of Newton, crested a hill, and there was the sofa, looking like a beached Bauhaus whale by the curb. I wish I’d taken a photo of its unmolested puffy Bauhaus curbside splendor, but I had other Christmas errands to run. The cushions from the loveseat-sized sofa were smaller than I expected and fit easily in the back of the little Honda. I stashed and dashed.

When I got home, I transferred the cushions into the Rialta, and marveled at the absolutely perfect match of the fabric. There wasn’t even a noticeable difference from sun exposure.

I showed this to Maire Anne, and we were both oddly giddy. While there clearly wasn’t enough fabric to make slipcovers for the mattresses (and even if there was, it wasn’t obvious whether we should cover the original mattresses themselves or the deliciously comfortable Tempur-Pedic toppers we had over them), we began thinking about reupholstering the front seats.

And then, like an old married couple who thinks the same thoughts and completes each other’s sentences, we both wondered if maybe we should go and strip more fabric off the sofa before the truck comes to take it to the big dump in the sky. We should at least pull the big piece off the back.

Now, you have to appreciate that this was two days before Christmas, my wife had cardiac surgery this summer, and while she’s doing great, she rations her energy and chooses her activities appropriately. But there was something about this idea that instantly clicked with both car-guy-me and fabric-girl-her. The owner’s “Help yourself” message could’ve been construed as a green light to strip the sofa (the fact that it was out on the curb meant that it was already scheduled for disposal), but in the tony suburb of Newton, you don’t want to be wrong about this. After all, I’d hate to repay an act of generosity by having someone mad at me for leaving a shredded sofa carcass on the sidewalk with its stuffing blowing in the breeze.

So I messaged the owner and confirmed that we could strip the fabric. Maire Anne grabbed her fabric shears (though not “the good ones”), I took a single-edged razor blade and my Swiss army knife, we jumped into the Fit, and shot back over to the curbside couch.

Initially I tried to pry the fabric-upholstered panel off the back, but the density of staples that held it on was formidable. So we both began cutting. It didn’t take long to remove the back piece.

At this point, the owners came out of their house. We explained how the fabric was the same as the “Bauhaus” design of our little Volkswagen Eurovan-based RV. They found this interesting, as the wife’s brother was into vintage VW busses. Rather than being annoyed at someone ripping up their old sofa by the side of the curb, they were gratified by the thought that the fabric would live on.

Although we’d ostensibly come just for the big fabric piece on the back of the sofa, the weather was good and the sun was still up, so we kept going, systematically denuding the couch of the other big pieces.

The odd thing was that, a few weeks prior, I’d watched the Ken Burns two-part series The American Buffalo about the horrific near-extinction of the bison. Images of slaughtered buffalo stripped of their hides and left to rot on the plains were still fresh in my mind as I reached into the couch’s crevices to cut the inner side pieces. Fortunately, this was the closest I’d ever come to skinning something that’s the last of its kind.

It’s still likely not enough fabric to make slipcovers for the mattresses, but it’s enough to recover several sets of seats. That’s important because I posted a photo of the curb-find Bauhaus sofa on a Rialta forum, so I’m now not the only one who has interest in the unobtanium fabric.

Someone on the Rialta forum commented, “What are the odds?” It’s true. Having a) someone local own a Bauhaus-pattern sofa, b) offer it for free, c) Maire Anne see the ad and recognize the fabric, d) her request to take only the pillows acceded to, and e) the owners not balk at our request to strip the fabric off was an astonishingly narrow series of needles to thread.

Of course, looked at another way, absent the Rialta’s connection to the fabric, the odds that owners would tire of a sofa like this, that there would be no takers even for free, and that it would need to be disposed of were pretty high.

But of all the things I’ve parted out, this was the cleanest, the lightest, and the most colorful.

And the only one where my wife was excited to help.

***

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The post The Parts Couch: Stripping a sofa to save an RV’s seats appeared first on Hagerty Media.

David writes:

Hi Sajeev,

I thoroughly enjoyed your article regarding the use of an 8-volt battery in a 6-volt vehicle! It made me think of an issue for which I’ve sought a solution. It seems that nobody produces a 6-volt jump pack. As you know, it’s not hard to find a 12-volt jump pack; lots of brands, sizes, power ratings, etc. But, as far as I can tell, nothing similar exists for a 6-volt vehicle.

We all know that vehicles with 6-volt systems are a bit strained when it’s time to start—especially when cold. Further, most of us with vintage vehicles (particularly those old enough to have a 6-volt electrical system) don’t drive them everyday. That can make starting even more difficult and more challenging to keep 6-volt batteries at full charge (battery maintainers notwithstanding).

On more than one occasion at a car show I’ve seen a vintage vehicle experience difficulty cranking and fail to start due to a relatively weak battery. For a 12-volt vehicle, the widely available power pack is a convenient and compact solution that gives the vehicle a boost and gets the driver heading back home. For a 6-volt vehicle, there is no comparable solution. (And finding another 6-volt vehicle for a safe jump start is not always possible.)

So, I’m wondering if you’re aware of anyone providing such a jump pack solution for us vintage 6-volt vehicle owners? (Or, is the market considered too small for the known jump pack manufacturers to make such an effort?) Perhaps there’s another solution of which I’m not aware?

I’m not sure if others have had this question, but I wondered if it might be a good topic for your Piston Slap column. Thanks for your thoughts and consideration of this topic and for your truly enjoyable writing (and, your graciousness toward commenters who don’t always deserve that grace!).

Sajeev answers:

Thank you for your kind words and this fantastic question, David! You mentioned the benefit of battery maintainers, and those should be used as frequently as possible to reduce the need for a jump start. Nearly every maintainer I’ve come across has a provision for 6-volt trickle charging, so you are right when you suggest this isn’t the problem.

The bigger concern here is enjoying your vehicle outside of your property and getting stranded at a car show, strip mall parking lot, gas station, etc. You can’t use your handy 6-volt garage trickle charger in these places, so you need a 12-volt jump pack. There are two types of packs, one with an internal battery and another with a supercapacitor. From what I can find, the latter has yet to be tested on a 6-volt vehicle, but the general consensus is that using a 12-volt jump pack with a self-contained battery is safe. Well, provided you follow a few rules.

Keep in mind I have never tried this personally (as I do not own a 6-volt automobile), so try this at your own risk:

1. Keep hand tools and a fully charged jump pack in the vehicle.
2. Turn off all accessories: lights, radio, etc.
3. Disconnect the negative cable from the 6-volt battery. (This removes the battery from the circuit.)
4. Connect the jump box to the positive battery post and the negative cable.
5. Use the jump pack as instructed by the manufacturer.
6. Start the vehicle.
7. Remove the pack’s positive and negative cables QUICKLY.
8. Reinstall the negative battery cable.
9. Hope and pray the motor doesn’t stall. (Just kidding … probably.) 

Again, I have never done this before. But step #7 is certainly paramount, as you want to minimize the time a 6-volt system has 12-volts being crammed down its throat. Fires, battery explosions, etc. are not worth it. If you don’t trust the wiring in your electrical system to handle this, just pay for a tow. (Some insurance policies offer free towing, and I’ve taken full advantage of that with multiple carriers with great success.)

Don’t fear the tow but also set yourself up for success: Replace old wiring, especially all the grounds and on the starter circuit. As we learned from Stu Tell in the aforementioned 8-volt Piston Slap article:

“The battery and starter cables themselves are usually internally corroded, and that itself causes you problems. Change them all out for AWG 2/0 cables along with grounding your battery ground cable right to one of the starter bolts or the engine block itself. From there run a jumper to ground your frame and a jumper to ground the firewall sheet metal. You will be amazed how well a 6-volt system will start with a new set of thick 2/0 cables, good grounding, and a good battery.”

Well said, Stu. And changing these wires is usually very easy on older vehicles, especially with the proliferation of home improvement stores stocking high gauge wiring that’s fuel and oil resistant. So this begs the question, will you even need a jump pack if the wiring is up to snuff in the first place? Probably not. 

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

***

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The evolution of the automobile has been non-stop from the moment Karl Benz first threw the flywheel ’round on his Patent Motorwagen. The technology, process, and tools needed to keep cars running have evolved from the adjustable spanners and flat head screwdrivers to complex, hyper-specific specialized tools that spend more time laying in toolbox drawers than being used. Some old tools have stood the test of time while others have faded from common use.

We are tool hoarders ourselves, and objects designed for utility that are still functional will always have a place in our box but it is interesting to look into the corners of the toolbox and see what tools are getting less and less use over the years. Whether due to an improved design usurping the use of an older tool, or the task a specialty tool was design for becoming less popular due to car construction and use changing, tools evolve as quickly—if not more—than the car itself. Here are seven examples of tools that are no longer the toolbox staples they once were—for better or worse.

Bumper jacks

In a world of bumper covers, the thought of attaching a lifting mechanism to the exterior of your car and using it to lift the vehicle is some type of strange fever dream. It wasn’t always that way though. Flat tires have been around longer than the automobile and the need to pick up the car followed right along. Bumper jacks are good in concept but the lack of any safety catch or stabilization to keep from tipping over makes them treacherous to use. They still have utility in off-road situations but that can also make use even more dangerous.

Verdict: Keep as a reminder of how far we’ve come.

Brake pliers

Somehow in the history of cars, there have been just two types of brakes commonly found behind the wheels: Drum or disc. Drum brakes can provide all the stopping power needed while also wearing like iron thanks to the enclosed and thus relatively debris-free nature of the design. That same design also has a handful of tension springs stretched carefully over small studs that can be serviced with groove-joint pliers and a screwdriver, but there are also brake pliers that rose and slipped from popularity right alongside drum brakes.

With modern materials and the relatively limited use of drum-brake cars, servicing drums has gotten less common to the point that while special tools can make the job easier it is only marginal and certainly not required.

Verdict: Keep them if you’ve got them but can likely pass if building your toolkit.

Growler

We aren’t talking about that curmudgeon of a mechanic who seems to only communicate in grunts and growls as the ratchet clicks to remove parts. No, the growler here is used to test the windings of a motor or generator. The armature is placed on a bed that flows alternating current into the windings. Using a ferrous rod to locate the magnetic field that will be created by a short makes for easy diagnostics. The price drop that came with the mass production and parts sharing between various models relegated these to hobby benches or the back room of specialist shops. Since rebuilding motors or alternators has become rare, these are practically a novelty.

Verdict: Keep if you’ve got the space, but often these find problems that are difficult to source parts to fix.

Vernier caliper

The increase in affordable precision has been quiet but amazing for at-home DIY projects. Good precision measuring devices used to be limited to the hands of skilled technicians and specialists in machine and fabrication shops. It took skill and training to properly use and read items like the vernier scale on calipers used in fabrication and precision machine work. Then digital calipers entered the market and the prices dropped year after year to the point that now a set of calipers accurate enough for most home use can be had for under $50.

Verdict: Use what you like and what works best for you. Regardless of what that is, be sure to keep any and all precision tools stored carefully to prevent damage.

Timing light

When we first wrote about tools that were fading from popularity last year, the comments section lit up with the suggestion that timing lights were left out. It’s been decades since a car rolling off the assembly line featured a tunable distributor, as the ignition is often now controlled by a computer working off data provided by a crankshaft or camshaft position sensor (or both) to control the firing of individual coils for each spark plug and cylinder. Adjusting the timing of the spark in the cylinder is changed with a laptop rather than a wrench and strobe light. Timing lights have been relegated to specialist shops and DIY garages.

Verdict: Keep it if it works, but consider a modern digital light if building a vintage-focused toolset as the features and capability have come a long way since the strobes of old.

Point file

Another from the ignition side of things. Even before computerized ignition was the advent of electronic or non-points-based discharge. Long gone are the days of having to swap a set of points on the side of the road or scratch off the char of the small faces to allow the coil to charge. A points file was handy for if or when a condenser would fail or the points would otherwise get crummy enough to not allow enough current through.

Verdict: If one is already in your glovebox, keep it for nostalgia’s sake and just in case. You never know who it might help.

Brake lathe or shoe arcing machine

Drum brakes often have more swept area compared to disc brakes, but that additional friction material is useless if it is not in contact with the brake surface. The heat retention characteristics of drums can sometimes lead to warping that would previously be cleaned up by “turning” the drums to create a nice concentric surface around the shoes. While drums can still be found on modern cars the drums are often cast so thin that turning them is no longer an option and instead we must skip straight to replacement.

Shoe arcing machines do the same thing as brake lathes but set the radius of the friction material to match that of the drum. It’s critical for good brake performance on some vintage cars but has faded from popularity significantly due to the health concerns of grinding friction materials—especially asbestos.

Verdict: Save if you’ve got the space, or sell to a vintage shop if you don’t. We likely won’t see new versions of these tools made and they so help keep our cars safely going down the road. 

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There are few laws of project cars, but one that is undeniable and rules over every single one of us who enjoys turning wrenches is that there is always more rust than it looks like.

Always.

Rust takes away the ability to enjoy working on a car. It makes routine tasks a battle fought with penetrating oil, heat, and large-caliber impact wrenches. It’s a brutal task to cut out the cancer that is iron oxide once it gets a hold of the steel panels. Leave any rust, and it will only come back faster, spreading like that puddle of oil from the time you forget to put the drain plug back in—slowly, but maliciously.  If you are going to remove rust, you have to remove all of the rust. If you can’t cut it all out, you have to resort to a more involved process: submerging the whole chassis in an acid dip to remove every last oxidized spec.

The idea of dipping cars in large vats of solutions is nearly as old as the car itself. Assembly lines have been using this method to paint unibody chassis structures for decades. In those cases, the end goal of the process is typically additive; there’s more car coming out the other side of the dip than there was going in. Conversely, When you acid dip a car, you’re looking to remove the paints and finishes that were applied to the body during the production paint dip. These chemical baths remove everything, taking the chassis back down to bare metal.

When doing a very detailed restoration you need to get back to the point of totally clean metal. There are multitudes of ways to strip layers of paint, sealers, primers, body filler, or undercoatings that involve abrasives. Pushing abrasives via air or water comes with the side effects of introducing heat and local pressure, which can warp and damage delicate panels, leaving more work than just hand sanding using a random orbital and sandpaper. Instead, all that labor can be put to better use if you let two large containers of chemicals do the work.

The first tank in the acid dip process is an alkaline bath that works to remove the layers of paint and other surface treatments that may be found on an aging car shell. That soak typically lasts a couple of days, and it’s followed by a rinse with a pressure washer to blast off the paint and undercoating. The bath softens and lifts all the paint but takes a couple of soaks to get it ready for the main feature: the acid dip.

If the thought of a large vat of acid is slightly off-putting, know that you are not alone. The tank is filled with phosphoric acid which is not incredibly strong as far as acids are concerned. In concentrations, it can cause burns to the skin, but this is not some vat of liquid where things go to disappear. Instead, the acid is chemically altering the FeO2 of rust to neutralize it. Effectively, it suffocates and kills rust, leaving behind a neutralized surface.

One final quick dip in the alkaline bath is required to make sure that none of the acid continues munching away at the metal from the inside out. Then a soaking with an electrophoretic paint, known as E-coating, seals all that fresh clean metal and sets a surface that can either be prepped for paint or removed with abrasives to make more extensive repairs.

By the end of the process, you know exactly what you have to work with and can be confident that no rust is hiding in the shadows, waiting to come back stronger. Instead, you have a car that can be protected with modern materials and finishes that could last decades with regular use. We like the idea of that.

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Deep in the rustbelt, there exists a place with so much iron oxide that fighting it has become as regular an occurrence as oil changes or tire rotation. This battle has become so routine that the products and creations made to combat the flecks of red and brown began to be exported. PB Blaster is headquartered northwest of the birthplace of American steel in Cleveland and has been helping the everyman wage war on rusty hardware for years. Now one brewery is helping us celebrate victory against rust, or at least have a cold consolation prize as we put our tools away.

Collision Bend Brewing Company might sound like they are more likely to create a “paint-match pilsner” or “insurance estimate ale,” but instead it was head brewer Ben Northeim who created the Loosen Up Lager, which is now all we want in our garage fridge. “B’laster actually reached out to us back in the summer and wanted to make a beer,” said Northiem via email. “How could we say no to doing a collaboration with another Cleveland company?”

If there are characteristics of a garage beer, Loosen up Lager seems to have all of them: Easy drinking, available in a can, and reasonable alcohol by volume (5.2%). Northiem let us know that drinkers can expect tasting notes of toasted bread, caramel, toffee, and a very slight nuttiness. We can now all rejoice that the decision to make it taste like the real PB B’laster was immediately nixed. Of course, PB Blaster is not fit for human consumption, but ask anyone who has been rolling around under a car trying to get exhaust hardware off and they will tell you that they unintentionally discovered exactly what B’laster tastes like.

So we can say with confidence what this doesn’t taste like, but if you want to taste it for yourself, you better act fast. This first batch of Loosen Up Lager is only available for a limited time—very limited according to Northeim. Use Collision Bend Brewery’s website to find your six pack. If you miss out like we likely will, just know that Northiem tipped us off that another round is on the way, but the exact release is under wraps a bit longer.

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One of the dynamics in the Hack Mechanic household is that the number of guitars rivals the number of cars. Fortunately, the guitars are considerably less greasy and a lot smaller, all fitting in one room. While I haven’t bought any new cars recently, I have bought two more guitars. I didn’t need either, but sometimes, like with cars, circumstances present themselves—an instrument speaks to you, you bond with it, and you act. (Which is, of course, a heartfelt and carefully-crafted description of an utter lack of self-control.)

To free up funds and make it seem like it’s a zero-sum game, I sold a few rare BMW parts. I had a pair of new-in-the-bags European-style flush turn signals for a BMW 2002. They’re no longer available and highly sought-after. I priced them slightly under the last available retail price, and they were snatched up immediately, which was the intent. Ditto with a pair of original chrome BMW 1600 front grills.

The last item intended to help fill the two-guitar-shaped hole in the bank account is a lovely wood-grained four-pod instrument cluster from a BMW 2800CS E9 coupe that I parted out over 35 years ago. It had been sitting in clean dry storage in my basement ever since. As with the other parts, I photographed it and researched the asking prices on eBay and enthusiast forums.

However, an instrument cluster is different from trim. It has electronics and moving parts. The descriptions I read for clusters with higher asking prices said that they’re tested and functional. My knee-jerk reaction was “I have no way to do that.” Unlike on a BMW 2002, where swapping out the cluster takes maybe 10 minutes, it is very difficult to get the cluster out of an E9 coupe.

And then a series of epiphanies occurred to me that enabled me to test the whole thing. The biggest one involves my steadfast belief that most of the time, you don’t need a wiring diagram, but we’ll get to that.

The speedometer

If the speedometer in the cluster is an old-school mechanically-driven unit, and you have a spare cable, odds are it can be easily tested by connecting the cable to back, gently clamping the transmission end into the chuck of an electric drill, and spinning it. Be certain to first check on an enthusiast forum for which direction to spin the drill, as you can damage the speedo if you spin it the wrong way. On a vintage BMW, you spin the drill in reverse. The whole thing took just a few minutes.

My rant about wiring diagrams

As I’ve said before, my experience is that the need for wiring diagrams on vintage cars is overblown. Sure, there are times when you do need to know what the green-and-red-striped wire in the multi-pin connector goes to, but most of the time you’re working from a PDF of a scan of a 55-year-old piece of paper in a shop manual, and it’s very difficult to read. On German cars, the wiring diagrams generally label the wire colors and the so-called “DIN” standard numbering of the terminals, but the components, much less the common-sense functions of the individual connectors, may not even be labeled, and if they are, they’re likely in German. If you need to know—oh, let’s just pick some example at random—the individual connections on the back of a gauge cluster, it’s often easier to look on an enthusiast forum and find a photo where some kind soul has labeled them with their actual useful names. Below, I’ll explain why not even that was necessary for me to test the gauges.

The tachometer

Tachs on vintage cars generally have three wires—power, ground, and a signal from the negative side of the coil (the side connected to the distributor, often stamped “1” or “-”). I could tell which of the three connections on the back of the E9’s tach were which because the power and ground connections were labeled as “+” and “-“ and were shared with other gauges, and the wires on the ground connection were the standard German brown, which left the third unshared unlabeled connection as signal.

For this test, I opened up the hood of my E9 coupe in the garage, laid the spare cluster on a pad, took the red and black test wires I carry with me on every road trip that have small battery clamps at one end and female spade connectors at the other, connected them to the car’s battery, and connected the ends to the power and ground male spades on the back of the tachometer. Then I took another wire with female spades and both ends, connected one end to the negative side of the coil, and the other to the signal input spade on the tach, and started the car. The tach sprang to life.

Fuel and temperature gauges

As is the case on many cars, the fuel and temperature gauges on the E9 are part of a gauge pod with other functions such as the high beam, brake, oil pressure, and battery warning lights. Initially, when you look at the back of the gauge, you think “How do I tell which connection is which, much less test things?”

But it’s actually not that hard. The trick is to simply look at the front of the gauge, note which function is where, flip the gauge around, and match things up. In the composite photo below, you can see that the gas gauge is on the left, so when you turn the cluster around, it’s actually very clear where the wires and connectors on the right for the gas gauge are. It’s obvious that the big circular one is the bulb. The multiple wires on the spade connector above it are the shared power (there’s also a little “+” above it). That means that the single wire on the spade connector below the bulb is the signal for the gas gauge. The same is true for the temperature gauge on the left, but its terminals are obscured by the bend of the wires in the harness.

The ground is a bit harder to see in the photo. The metal cases themselves are ground for each of the gauges. There are two male spade connectors that stand upright from the back of the case. The one at the upper left has chassis ground passed to it through the wiring harness. The one at lower center is unused, making it a convenient attachment point.

The last trick you need to know for this benchtop test is that temperature and fuel gauges and senders typically work by having the gauge interpret a variable resistance between it and ground. If there’s infinite resistance—no connection to the sender—then the needle doesn’t move, so the fuel gauge reads empty, the temperature gauge stays at the bottom. But if there’s low resistance connection between the gauge and ground, then the needle pegs (full fuel tank, temperature high in the red). The lowest resistance is continuity—grounding the signal connection. So to check functionality of these gauges, all you need to do is apply power and ground and make sure the needles are sitting at the bottom, then ground the signal connector. In the photo below, the bundle of green and white wires have been pulled off their male spade post, replaced by a thick red wire connected to battery positive. A Y-adapter has been connected to the spade for the case ground. The thick black wire is connected to battery negative. A white jumper wire connects the fuel gauge’s signal input to ground.

And … ta-DA!

I repeated all this to test the temperature gauge, with the same results.

With the gauges all tested, the only task remaining was to turn the cluster lights on. This was less to test them than it was to get the pic of the glowing instrument cluster because a) it would carry visual impact that the cluster was tested and worked, and b) it would be cool. For this, since the bulbs are all tied together, the easiest way to do it was to look at the wire color they used (gray and blue), find the pin on the harness connector using that color, feed it 12V, and use a shared ground for the instrument cases.

So, I now have a tested E9 gauge cluster. It hasn’t sold yet, so no more guitars (or cars) for this guy. Unless I find one that, you know, really speaks to me.

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John writes:

When a 6-volt battery is replaced with an 8-volt battery, will the 8-volt receive a full charge from the 6-volt system?

If not, what items need to be replaced or adjusted?

Sajeev answers:

Unfortunately not, because you need a voltage regulator that will charge an 8-volt battery. The generator/alternator is always (usually?) robust enough to feed that voltage regulator, at least in any automotive application my mind can consider: Even old tractors have generators and alternators, right?

I see potential problems, because parasitic losses inside any battery mandate charging levels over that battery’s stated voltage rating. In this case it will be over 9 volts of charging for an 8-volt battery. That could be too much for frayed/corroded/oxidized 6-volt wiring (on either the power or ground sides). It could also overpower 6-volt lights and other marginally durable accessories that run on the same system. This is application specific but always worth considering.

However, let’s assume the rest of the system is OK with the 9.5-ish volts needed to top up the battery on an ongoing basis. Finding an adjustable regulator that meets your needs is a concern, unless a 6-volt regulator can be tweaked up to charge an 8-volt battery?

Well, look at that handy little adjusting screw! This video from Moss Motors may not necessarily apply to every voltage regulator out there, so perhaps this article is better to print off and add to your collection of repair manuals. Sometimes there’s nothing better than instructions on a sheet of paper, especially when working under the hood of a car. Or tractor, especially out in the field where harsh sunlight washes out any electronic display.

Bottom Line? Get familiar with the internals of your voltage regulator, check the quality of all your wiring, and give it a shot. If something fails, go back to a 6-volt battery. Let’s hope that isn’t necessary!

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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There is something about the prioritization of function over form in the engine compartments of most race cars that turns the spaces into art. Any detail-loving person can appreciate them, but especially DIY and at-home mechanics: These engine bays are often the antithesis of what we usually get to work on. Race machines are built with service in mind, and that focus removes a lot of frustration for the mechanic. (If you’ve ever broken a dozen plastic clips opening the access panel to do an oil change, you know what I mean.)

In the engine bays of race cars, function becomes attractive. With that in mind, I took a look at a few projects around my garage and found some cool bits of flair that give off just the right motorsports-inspired look.

Tidy organization

Engine compartments can be busy, with hoses and cables going this way and that for various pumps and control modules. In race cars, engine bays are laid out system-by-system, and this arrangement lends itself to a more thoughtful installation that maximizes function while minimizing space. In short, the engine bay is all tidied up.

Organizing your car’s engine bay, whether or not it’s a race car, can be as simple as bundling wires into a proper loom or shortening unnecessarily long hoses. For my Corvair, tidying up meant removing the mechanical fuel pump and re-routing the fuel lines to remove clutter on top of the engine. This required very minimal fabrication: Though the four carbs might appear complex, they are mirrored side to side, allowing me to flip the stock fuel lines. Everything fits like it would from the Chevrolet factory, and I only had to put two 90-degree bends in a $10 generic steel pre-flared fuel line.

Safety wire

Since safety wire is the last step in any project—and one I am excited to do these days—just the presence of wire in the right place means a checkmark on my checklist. No need to rack my memory: If there’s no wire, the component is not ready —and I need to figure out why I left the job unfinished.

Science says a properly tensioned bolt will rarely loosen, but some positive retention of critical fasteners provides a warm security blanket to the mind of a detail-oriented gearhead: You know that piece of hardware is not going anywhere unless you let it. Safety wires entered my life when I first decided to try road racing and I’ve been breaking 1/16-inch drill bits putting them all kinds of places ever since.

With some attention to detail, the final product will be jewelry for your engine. Be sure to properly dress the cut ends, or your engine bay will hide a bunch of razor-sharp needles waiting to rip your hands open.

Labels or the lack thereof

For sponsored racers, brand names and logos matter. For the rest of us, they usually don’t, unless we are just bragging at the cruise-in. Between brand names and small labels identifying parts or need-to-know specifications, a race-engine bay can look either very cluttered or totally bare, devoid of any marketing whatsoever. Pick one look and try it out. Writing valve-lash specs on the valve covers or labeling fuel and oil lines all but guarantees correct assembly in any situation. They can be fun touches, too, especially if you enjoy silly easter eggs, like writing the solid-lifter valve adjustment specs on the valve covers that hide your hydraulic roller valvetrain. Posing? Yes, but also a harmless joke.

Breathers

Engines are all about airflow, and not just through the intake and exhaust. As the linear motion of the pistons is transferred into rotational motion by the crankshaft, pressure often builds inside the crankcase—pressure that is best relieved. Setting up appropriate breathers and ventilation can be easy and, if well thought-out, can still include modern crankcase-ventilation one-way valves.

Add some color

A little color contrast never hurt anything, and nothing makes a black-and-silver engine bay pop quite like a little gold—or whatever color you like. So many little details can be color-coded to make them disappear or become a feature. Valve covers and air cleaners are easy, but even hose ends, bits of wiring organization, and linkages can be snazzed up with subtle pops of color to really “bring the room together.” Be careful here though, as the look can get real gaudy real quick.

And just like that, you have an engine bay that is uniquely yours with a little race-car style mixed in—whether you need it or not.

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James writes:

Sajeev, the quintessential Ford dude! My wife has a 2018 Ford Explorer Limited with 52,000 miles. It’s been good so far. I’ve heard horror stories about the N/A  3.5 V-6 having catastrophic water pump leak/failure issues. A few questions:

1. Is it buried down in the “V”?
2. Are there warning signs?
3. Will this happen?
4. Should we sell before this happens?
5. When will it happen?

Sajeev answers:

This is a fantastic question with ramifications as deep as the location of the water pumps in these 3.5-liter Cyclone V-6 engines. The economic differences between an OEM’s production costs and the individual owner’s service expenses are somewhat fascinating.

But before I go into a huge nerd hole trying to convince you of that, let’s quickly answer James’ questions.

1. You bet! Ford put the water pump inside the timing cover, spinning it via the timing chain on front-wheel-drive vehicles.
   • Yes, it’s quite expensive to repair ($2000 or more), unless you can do things like dropping a vehicle’s front subframe in your own garage.
   • This applies to both naturally aspirated and EcoBoost 3.5-liter applications.
   • This doesn’t apply to the Mustang or F-150, as these have externally mounted water pumps like traditional American engines.
2. You are supposed to see a leak near the alternator, and it’s usually not too late if you keep an eagle eye on that area.
3. All water pumps fail eventually, but regular coolant services as per owner’s manual will extend the lifetime significantly.
4. People kick the can down the road for many reasons, and this is a darn good one. Just be straight up with the next owner, or trade it in and make it the dealership’s problem. (They lowball used cars for good reason!)
5. Given your mileage, if you flush the cooling system immediately and keep an eye on that alternator leak hole (technical term) you aren’t likely to have the problem for well over 100,000 miles.
   • The informative YouTube video below also mentions doing an oil analysis, if you really want to be ahead of the game. While I pinned it to the most enlightening part, watch the whole thing for more details.

And this is where we go deeper, considering the customer’s tolerance for repair bills years after the warranty expires. Who out there actually wants to service their coolant regularly, much less spring for an oil analysis on waste motor oil?

There’s a better way to force coolant services: by using a replaceable timing belt instead of a timing chain. That’s what countless belt-driven imports from the last 40+ years relied on, and it’s contributed greatly to their reputation for durability over American brands that avoid timing belts. Put another way, neglect a “not mandatory” coolant service in a 1990 Essex Continental and you quickly blow the gaskets between its aluminum heads and iron block. Bad news, but neglecting coolant in a 1990 Lexus LS400 has zero downsides because a blown timing belt ensures regular coolant servicing. I’m not suggesting the Lexus LS wasn’t a tour de force in luxury car quality, just that the delta between them and others doesn’t reflect its need for mandatory servicing.

It’s as if Ford gets timing systems and internal water pumps wrong far too frequently. Like back in 1981, when the Ford Escort “World Car” utilized Ford of Europe’s CVH engine. It, like the Pinto before it, had a timing belt. Unlike the Pinto, it was an interference engine. Ford’s American clientele clearly didn’t learn from blowing belts on Pintos, forcing the automaker to make broken-timing-belt-friendly pistons by 1983. The clarion call likely went like this:

“I’m not gonna service my Ford like some Yuppie European Weenie, you can’t make me, and your dealerships better be nice to me when I break something!”

But the 3.5-liter mill is nothing like yesteryear’s Escorts, because adding timing chains to an internal water pump makes it bit more durable. But it comes at major expense for the poor sap who owns it 8+ years into ownership, because labor costs are orders of magnitude more than servicing an old ‘scort in modern times; I got an entirely new cooling system, new power steering pump/hoses, new alternator, new A/C compressor, and a new timing belt in my 1982 Ford EXP for less than the price of a water pump swap in a modern 3.5-liter Ford.

It’s a shame, because the 3.5-liter Ford coulda been just as durable as the previous 3.0-liter Duratec V-6 found in older Ford Fusions, Five Hundreds, and Freestyles. External water pumps ensured the 3.0’s rotating assembly was essentially bulletproof, making for a compelling purchase at the bottom of the depreciation curve. But the “quintessential Ford dude in me” reminds everyone that Dearborn wasn’t the only manufacturer to do something this ridiculous. Chrysler did it with the 2.7-liter V-6, and several VW engines followed suit.

But they added a plot twist: VW’s internal water pumps came with the added bonus of plastic impellers. VW was successfully hit with lawsuits, but similar efforts against Ford’s superior-ish design have yet to succeed.

It’s a shame that somewhere in the hallowed halls of these automaker’s office buildings are people thinking of ways to advance the automobile at the expense of longterm ownership. This is a terrible way to treat your brand, but one perk of the EV revolution (as it were) is that all automakers are slowly adapting to the electric vehicle’s simple powertrain architecture. There’s so much less to screw up in an EV, especially compared to a plastic impeller VW or a 3.5-liter FWD Ford product.

The only flaw in my logic is the EV’s battery, but it’s never a hidden “gotcha” like these awful water pumps. And how great is that?

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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In the summer of 1945, only a few months after Allied bombers stopped punishing Italy for its WWII transgressions, Enzo Ferrari summoned his trusted colleague Gioacchino Colombo to Maranello for consultations. Though postwar racing rules had not yet been announced, Ferrari was anxious to build his own cars to compete. Anticipating a 4.5-liter displacement for naturally aspirated engines and a 1.5-liter limit for supercharged powerplants, Ferrari sought the advice of one of Italy’s foremost engine designers.

Asked how he’d construct a new 1500-cc engine, Colombo mentioned ERA’s promising six-cylinder and eights under development at Alfa Romeo and Maserati before proclaiming, “In my view, you should build a 12-cylinder!”

The usually aloof Ferrari lit up like a Roman candle. Turns out the 47-year-old racing don had admired V-12s for years after hearing primo piloto Antonio Ascari rev the engine in his 1916 Packard racer and seeing WWI American military officers cruise Italy in their majestic Packard Twin Sixes. He and Colombo immediately began conceptualizing the Scuderia’s first V-12, the engine destined to become the Prancing Horse’s heart and soul.

Ferrari’s timing was perfect because Colombo had been laid off by Alfa Romeo due to Italy’s postwar economic turmoil. Though the 42-year-old lacked a formal technical education, he had served a lengthy apprenticeship designing engines, including V-12s, under Alfa Romeo’s brilliant Vittorio Jano. Colombo erected a drafting board in his Milan bedroom and in a few weeks completed sketches of both a new V-12 and the Ferrari 125 S sports-racer it would power. His guiding light was versatility in order to serve wide-ranging racing applications and eventual road use.

Packard’s 1916–23 Twin Six, the world’s first production V-12, made 88–90 horsepower from 6.9 liters. The beauty of a dozen cylinders in a V is perfect balance—freedom from the shake, rattle, and roll resulting from pistons starting and stopping at the ends of their strokes. (The same is true of an inline-six; a V-12 is simply two banks of six cylinders sharing a common crankshaft. A 60-degree angle between cylinder banks yields the even firing intervals necessary for smoothness.)

Before we delve into Colombo’s V-12 design features, it’s essential to understand the operational details within every four-stroke engine. First, there’s an intake stroke when one valve opens to admit air (and usually fuel) to a cylinder while the piston moves top to bottom. Next is compression, with both valves closed and the piston rising in the cylinder, squeezing the mixture. Near the top of the piston’s travel, electricity sent across the spark plug’s gap serves as the match to light the bonfire inside one cylinder. Rising combustion pressure within the cylinder drives the piston back down, spinning the crankshaft and driving the wheels through the transmission. Then comes exhaust, when the piston again reverses direction, forcing burned gases out an open exhaust valve and into a pipe connected to the cylinder head through an exhaust manifold. Simply described, the four-stroke cycle is suck, squeeze, bang, blow.

Given that each power stroke lasts the better part of 180 degrees, in a V-12, there are three overlapping power strokes at any given instance to run through all the cylinders in two turns of the crankshaft. As a result, output feels more like a continuous twist than discrete pulses. A V-12’s exhaust note can be whatever the designer desires, between a gentle purr and a coyote’s shriek.

V-12s do have several less sanguine design issues—added friction, heavier weight, higher cost, and their overall length. It goes without saying that when value and mpg are top priorities, carmakers steer clear of V-12s.

To minimize mass, Colombo chose aluminum over iron for the block and head castings. Italy had become an epicenter for bronze casting during the Renaissance back in the 14th century, specializing in statuary, equestrian monuments, cathedral doors, crucifixes, and even dishes.

Combining a 55.0-millimeter bore with a 52.5-millimeter stroke yielded the target 1.5-liter (1497-cc) piston displacement. Cast-iron cylinders wet by coolant were plugged securely into the bottom of the block with a shrink fit (achieved by heating the aluminum block to expand openings before inserting cold iron cylinders. Once the cylinders and block reach the same temperature, they’re securely locked together).

Bolts securing both the heads and the cylinders screwed into the block’s upper decks. Since the block’s side skirts ended at the crank centerline, the cast aluminum oil sump had ribs to radiate heat and to increase the engine’s overall stiffness. The crankshaft was machined from a single billet of alloy steel with seven main bearings and six throws spaced 60 degrees apart to provide even firing intervals. Connecting rods were forged steel.

One chain-driven overhead cam per bank opened two valves per cylinder through rocker arms. Locking screws touching the valve stems facilitated lash adjustment. (Lash is the small space in the valvetrain that allows each valve to seal tightly against its seat in the closed position.) The valves were splayed 60 degrees apart to straighten and streamline ports for maximum flow of air and fuel into each cylinder. A domed (aka hemispherical) combustion chamber topped each cylinder. Colombo screwed the spark plugs in from the intake side of the heads because the bore-center areas were blocked by the single overhead camshafts.

Three downdraft two-barrel Weber carburetors prepared ample amounts of fuel-and-air mixture. Twin Marelli magnetos driven off the tail end of each camshaft supplied the ignition energy. Initial output with a 7.5:1 compression ratio was 118 horsepower at 6800 rpm.

To provide a path to more power, Colombo gave his seminal V-12 three innovative features. The first was what’s known as an over-square bore/stroke ratio (a figure greater than one). The unusually short stroke diminished the pistons’ reciprocating motion, minimized the height of the block, and lowered the engine’s center of gravity. The relatively large bore in turn allowed larger valves (see end-view illustration), a boon to volumetric efficiency (fluid flow in and out of the cylinder head). The net result of Colombo’s over-square design was a rousing 7000 rpm available at the beginning of this V-12’s life. His second fundamental inspiration was 90-millimeter cylinder spacing to facilitate significantly larger bores and additional piston displacement with minimal changes to the overall design.

Colombo’s third special feature was the type of valve springs he incorporated. Instead of the spiral-wound coil springs that are now common practice, he used what was called a “hairpin” design (despite the fact they more closely resembled springs found in clothespins). He was inspired by air-cooled motorcycle engines, which used such a configuration for three key reasons:

The first is that the hairpin design was less susceptible to fatigue failure that, in the worst case, would destroy the engine when an out-of-control valve struck the top of a piston. Second, the hairpin design was a better means of exposing the valves to cooling air swirling over the top of the engine. Third, this design allowed shorter and lighter valve stems. Lighter valves are less susceptible to the fatigue failures common with racing cam lobes. In summary, the hairpin spring design was instrumental in helping Colombo’s V-12 withstand the rigors of racing. Two such springs were fitted to each intake and exhaust valve.

A paucity of intake ports was the most notable shortcoming in Colombo’s V-12. Since Ferrari hoped to add a Roots-type (twin interlocking lobes) supercharger, there were but three intake ports feeding six cylinders per bank. This arrangement made it more difficult to ram-tune naturally aspirated versions of the engine for competitive power at high rpm. (Ram tuning uses fluid-flow momentum to pack the maximum amount of air and fuel into each cylinder.)

With the ink barely dry on blueprints, Ferrari attacked the 1947 racing season with a two-seater dubbed 125 Spyder Corsa. The 125 code referred to the number of ccs per cylinder, spyder is Italian for roadster, and corsa is the boot country’s word for racing. Nine entries yielded two victories by Franco Cortese, two class wins by Tazio Nuvolari, one third, one fifth, and three DNFs. Adding a supercharger for its 125 Formula 1 single-seater yielded 230 horsepower and the Scuderia’s first grand prix victory. By October of ’47, Ferrari was ready to move up with a 1903-cc V-12 dubbed 159, followed by a 1995-cc 166 for the 1948 season.

The rising costs of fielding competitive cars in road races, endurance competitions, and F1 are what moved Ferrari to offer his cars to wealthy customers bent on enjoying them on the road.

In a 1984 test of the first 1947 Ferrari 166 Spyder Corsa delivered to a private owner, Car and Driver clocked 0–60 in 13.1 seconds and estimated top speed at 121 mph. Weighing less than 1500 pounds, this red roadster rode on skinny 15-inch Michelin X radial tires. Respecting the vintage Ferrari’s rarity and fragility, C/D’s test driver used only 6000 rpm, so a run to 60 in under 10 seconds is probably within the Spyder Corsa’s reach.

Bolting on a two-stage supercharger in 1949 raised output to 280 horsepower, earning Ferrari five grand prix wins. In spite of the Scuderia’s early successes, Ferrari demanded more; Colombo fell out of favor and returned to Alfa Romeo in 1951. His successors? First Aurelio Lampredi, a former aircraft-engine designer, then four years later Colombo’s mentor Vittorio Jano, who continued development of Ferrari’s first V-12 another decade.

Colombo’s masterpiece grew from its original 1498 cc to a maximum 4943 cc in its final Ferrari 412i form. The 1957 250 Testa Rossa brought conventional coil-type valve springs, spark plugs relocated to the outer side of the heads, and one intake port per cylinder. These changes yielded 300 horsepower from 3.0 liters, enough prancing horsepower to win 10 World Sportscar races, including three Le Mans 24-hour events between 1958 and 1961. Ferrari 250 GTO sports cars that followed won the FIA’s over-2-liter championship from 1962 through 1964. In 1964, a 4.0-inch stretch of the block increased bore-center spacing from 90 millimeters to 94, allowing 4.0-liter and larger displacements.

Features proved on the track rapidly trickled down to Ferrari’s road cars. Dual overhead cams, still operating but two valves per cylinder, appeared on the 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4. The illustrious 1968 365 GTB/4 Daytona came with dry-sump lubrication. (Keeping oil well away from a frantically spinning crankshaft eliminates what’s known as “windage,” frothing of the lubricant, which saps power output.)

In 1979, carburetors went the way of the buggy whip with the introduction of Ferrari’s 400i equipped with Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection. This added power by diminishing the flow restriction that is imposed by carburetor venturis.

Ferrari’s 1985 catalog listed an amazing 75 60-degree naturally aspirated (no super- or turbocharger) V-12 engines designed over the previous four decades. The venerable Colombo stallion wasn’t dispatched to the glue factory until 1989, by which time Ferrari had shifted its focus to 180-degree (flat) 12s for the 365 GT4 BB (Berlinetta Boxer) and its successors. (They’re called that because the horizontal motion of the pistons resembles boxing gloves smacked together.) Even so, these new engines inherited their pistons and connecting rods from Colombo’s outgoing design.

The V-12 today

Fast forward to the March 2017 Geneva motor show. Although most makers follow new trends like a puppy locked on to a rabbit’s scent, Ferrari used this European gala to toast its 70th birthday with what it excels at building and selling: a fresh V-12 to power its new aptly named 812 Superfast sports car.

The first number in the 812 code refers to this engine’s peak power (in hundreds); the next two indicate the number of cylinders. Translating the 800 metric horsepower to imperial units yields 789 horsepower at a canvas-shredding 8500 rpm. A slightly revised version introduced in May 2021 tops 800 imperial horsepower.

What Ferrari achieved with its F140 V-12 was the most power ever packed into a production engine unaided by a turbocharger, supercharger, or electric motor. Add to that more than adequate torque: a peak 530 lb-ft at 7000 rpm. Those in the audience who favor the lower end of the tachometer will be happy to hear that a stout 425 lb-ft of twist is available at only 3500 rpm.

In keeping with longstanding Ferrari tradition, this is a Testa Rossa engine adorned with striking red valve covers and intake plenums. Naturally the bore/stroke ratio is markedly over-square, with a 94-millimeter bore collaborating with a 78-millimeter stroke to yield 6496 cc (6.5 liters). That 78-millimeter dimension ironically matches the longest stroke ever found in a Colombo V-12.

In contrast to the Colombo V-12s, the 812’s cylinder banks are spread 65 degrees apart. After Ferrari began using this angle in its 1989 Formula 1 V-12s, it trickled down to the 456 sports car in 1992. A 65-degree V-angle provides additional space for larger bores (more clearance at the bottom of each piston’s stroke), room between the cylinder banks for more voluminous intake manifolds, and a slight reduction in overall engine height. While it’s possible to maintain even firing with split-pin crank throws, Ferrari wisely avoided that potentially fragile complication. The result, with six straight crank throws, each carrying two connecting rods, is slightly syncopated firing intervals that alternate between 55 and 65 degrees of crank rotation. This subtle ticktock isn’t detectable from the driver’s seat thanks to Ferrari’s judicious powertrain isolation and intelligent acoustic measures.

Car and Driver’s 2018 test of a $465,509 Ferrari 812 Superfast reported a 3851-pound curb weight with a slight rear bias, 0–60 mph in a remarkable 2.8 seconds, and a quarter-mile clocking of 10.5 seconds at 138 mph. No one has verified the factory’s 211-mph top-speed claim, but that figure is certainly credible.

While all versions of the 812—GTS, Superfast, Competizione—cease and desist after existing orders are filled, Ferrari’s F140IA 65-degree V-12 will continue in the 2024 model year under the hood of the new five-door, four-seat Purosangue SUV.

Though Ferrari has boldly experimented with and/or produced engines with two, three, four, six, eight, and 10 cylinders, it’s most associated with V-12s thanks to its loyalty to that configuration for three-quarters of a century. There’s little doubt that 12-cylinder engines have been instrumental to Ferrari winning respect as a hypercar producer. Last year, the brand built and sold 13,221 cars worldwide, reporting 19 percent increases in both volume and revenue.

Count yourself fortunate if you’ve owned, driven, or even heard more than your share of prancing horsepower!

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For some parts of the country, it’s time to pickle our fun automotive toys and switch to either dreaming about or preparing for the driving season that is oh-so-far away. There is also a third option: buying a project and seeing how close you can get it to ready to drive before the snow clears and rain rinses the salt off the roads. Trapped inside the confines of the house or garage—if you’re lucky enough to not be frozen in there—the mind starts to wander and think that maybe one more project wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

The key to picking a project is being really honest with yourself and setting a goal. Buying a pile of iron oxide and stripped bolts can be a little retail therapy but it will be short-lived if you jump in and buy the first not-shiny thing you see. You have the desire, the funds, and the approval from your better half; so here are six tips for helping find your perfect project.

Let it find you

Passive searching can be incredibly powerful at finding things, it’s also the easiest. Simply tell anyone you know or talk to that you are looking for a project. You might be impressed at the amount of stuff that quickly comes out of the woodwork once there is a ready buyer. Also, you never know which of your gearhead friends has a network or connection you don’t. The number of times I’ve heard, “if you know someone looking for a. . . ”

Work on what you have

If you are anything like me, the true reason you are looking for a project is that some project you already own needs something you don’t want to do and you’re simply attempting to distract yourself by just starting on something else and hoping your current problem fixes itself. No? Just me? I don’t believe you.

Set a realistic budget and stick to it

Project cars are nearly always some form of a money pit. We all accept this at some level. That means you know you are going to sink way too much into whatever you buy, so therefore it’s at least a little prudent to not blow your entire budget just buying the thing. I’ll always advocate for buying the best version of whatever you like that you can afford, but if you set a budget be sure to stick to it. Otherwise, you are setting yourself up for frustration if you have a project and no funds to actually do any work on it.

Go exploring (look in weird places)

Drive one or two cities over for a day trip to drive by the local mechanic just to see what’s parked around the shop. Just driving around to places you don’t normally go can turn up some interesting finds. Tom Cotter—Hagerty’s Barn Find Hunter—has written fantastic books about the luck of discovering cars that weren’t hiding but merely just off the beaten path.

Know what you want and are willing to do

Not all project cars are the same. It might be more accurate to say no two are alike. Each and every vehicle will have different needs and wants over time, it’s just how an assembly of thousands of parts works. So set yourself up for success and do a little soul-searching before starting to sift through the classifieds. Decide what kind of tasks you are interested in doing and what you are not equipped for or generally just don’t want to deal with. If you don’t have a welder or grinder, buying a project car that needs a lot of rust repair would be foolish. Same with buying something with hacked-up wiring if you don’t have the patience to sit with a multimeter for hours. Think past the joy of purchasing and deep into how you will be spending your time: working on it.

Call up the club

Not sure if the project you want is actually what you think it is? Or maybe just feel like you have a blind spot about what you are considering getting into? Reach out to a car club dedicated to that niche. From Facebook to forums and in-person gatherings, it is often the members of a club who love specific models and brands who are best suited to find, inspect, and conclude if a project is worth saving. The joke for a lot of enthusiasts of niche vehicles is that once someone hears you have one, the cars start multiplying on their own. Most club members have leads on cars they wish they could buy and want to see go to a good home. Club members often know where good project cars are resting and are happy to share since it keeps one of their favorites on the road.

Now go forth and find those winter projects. When rains come and wash the roads we shall all emerge from the garage caves with pride for hopefully we will have taken something bad and made it…less bad. Good luck out there.

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Not long ago, I drove the Tesla Semi, which is their idea of an electric over-the-road hauler. It was sort of like driving a giant McLaren F1. You sit in the middle of the cab with a couple of computer screens, and even though it’s the size of a building, it feels as fast as a Tesla car (it isn’t, but for a huge truck, it sure feels like it). The windshield pillars are pulled way back, so you can see everything, and it’s extremely comfortable, and, of course, very quiet. One thing I didn’t like is that the windows don’t go down, which is a little disconcerting. They only open sideways, and just a crack, so you can maybe slip a Wendy’s single through, but you’re more or less sealed up in it.

We set up a trailer loaded with cars, and I backed the Tesla in, hooked up, put it in drive, and pulled away. And even though the whole rig with the trailer now weighed about 80,000 pounds, I could not tell the difference between having and not having the load attached. It accelerated exactly the same, and it’ll go 500 miles. It was amazing, and I think if you’re a trucker, especially a short-hauler like we have thousands of in LA going from port to warehouse and back again, this is the future. No dirty fuel, no changing the oil every other week, and you can pull it right into a warehouse to attach and detach the trailer because there’s no emissions.

I admit I am a huge fan of the Tesla story. OK, the Cybertruck isn’t necessarily my thing, but I grew up at a time when a pickup truck was a radiator, an engine, a cab, and a bed. And I’m old enough to remember the first pickup truck that was not a pickup, the 1961 Corvair Rampside. It didn’t really sell because it didn’t look like a pickup truck. But I get that the Cybertruck is for a different generation. It’s the best example of an over-40/under-40 car in a while, meaning people over 40 can’t stand it and people under 40 think it’s totally cool.

But the genius of Tesla is not in the cars, it’s in the infrastructure. Elon Musk came to the garage in 2007 with his Roadster based on the Lotus, and I drove it. I told him it was great, and he said that he planned to build charging stations all up and down California so you could pull in and charge for free. I remember thinking, “Well, that’ll never happen.” But as he was building the cars, he was also building the charging stations, and you see today that the Tesla charging network is a big reason people are buying the cars.

I think about when I was a kid, how a lot of American cars were all about the marketing. They would bring in guys from Whirlpool or somewhere and whatever they knew about selling washers, they would apply to cars, so it was all marketing hooey. The GT version was just the basic car with fancy wheels, a stripe, and a cartoon character on the fender. Those cars are nostalgic and fun to play with today, but they were never cutting edge. Nowadays, it seems like the president of General Motors is at the Nürburgring every other week. Personally, I think American engineering is now the equal of anything from Europe or Asia. Take the C8 Corvette; it’s built out of aluminum and magnesium in a union shop paying a union wage and it’s under $100,000. Europeans can’t do that. Heck, nobody else can do that.

I guess that makes me a techno-optimist. I look around and I see a world that seems better in just about every way. Sure, there are problems, but the average person lives a much better life, in large part due to technology. And American engineering and American manufacturing are on the upswing again. Tesla and the Corvette are only two examples, but it seems like every week there’s an announcement of a new breakthrough in clean energy or a new battery plant or chip factory being built somewhere in the U.S. Wasn’t it just yesterday that Japan was going to put us out of business? Then it was China. I think we tend to write ourselves off too quickly, because here we are, still in the game.

People my age often complain that America isn’t what it used to be. A lot of them are like Mark Twain, who is credited with saying, “I’m in favor of progress; it’s change I don’t like.” In the end, it doesn’t really matter what America used to be, it only matters where it is headed. And to me, it looks like it’s headed in a pretty good direction.

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David S. writes:

Do you have any thoughts/rules of thumb when it comes to replacing things before they break? I’m thinking about replacing the original, trouble-free radiator in my 1990 Mazda Miata as preventive maintenance. Am I being proactive or just wasting money?

Rob Siegel answers:

I used to be big on prophylactic replacement of parts in the “Big Seven” systems most likely to fail (if you’re new to reading this column, those are: cooling, fuel delivery, ignition, charging, belts, clutch hydraulics, and ball joints). The problem is that these days, there’s the very real possibility that you’ll remove an old, high-quality original part and replace it with something that’s new but of lower quality. When cars are under warranty, manufacturers work with the vendors who supplied the Original Equipment (OE) or “genuine” parts that were originally in the car. The dealership charges top dollar for these parts precisely because they pass quality control standards intended to help avoid repeat failures. As the cars age out of warranty, there’s little incentive for the manufacturer to police the quality standards of these OE parts. They may still be supplied by the same manufacturer, but production may be shifted to a different country, or the part may be made out of cheaper materials. Thus, the part you still pay top dollar for at the dealership may no longer be identical to what was originally in the car. It’s even worse when you move from “genuine” parts to aftermarket parts (the advertising phrase “OEM quality” is not an actual standard).

Obviously, cracked belts and rattling idler pulleys should be replaced before they full-on fail, but whether to replace an “it ain’t broke” part, and what to replace it with, has become a fuzzy calculation based on the perceived likelihood of failure, the difficulty of the repair, the cost, and whether you’ll feel like more of an idiot if the original part breaks and strands you or the replacement does. The best you can do is read up on candidate parts on enthusiast forums and make an informed decision.

I recently faced your specific problem. Although there was nothing wrong with the cooling system in my 200,000-mile 2003 BMW, I replaced most of it for exactly the reason you list—the aging plastic is known to crack. However, within a month, the brand-new water pump began to weep coolant (the vendor exchanged it). On a 200K daily driver, I’d make the same call again.

Nelson W. writes:

We all know that rust and accident damage are things to avoid when buying a classic car. But is there any mechanical telltale that will make you run for the hills, regardless of asking price? (Not an idle question: I’m considering buying a rust-free 1988 Camaro that clearly has some cooling problems. Owner admits he’s topping off the radiator constantly, and the heater core has been bypassed.)

Rob Siegel answers:

Mechanical? Not really. The more mechanical issues a car has, the better. If it’s dead and being sold at a third of its market value because of it, I welcome dead. Dead I can fix. Rust I can’t. But be aware of just how bad the worst-case scenario can be. For instance, the coolant loss in your candidate Camaro could be rotting hoses—or it could be a cracked head or block. If you feel that that possibility has been baked into the asking price, that you have the time to deal with it, and that you love the car in other ways (e.g., color, condition), fine, but be brutally honest with yourself about the downside.

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Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

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Hagerty Community Member DUB6 writes:

Sajeev,

With the onset of winter weather—in MOST of your readership areas, at least—I’m seeing examples showing up of an age-old question.  I have my own opinion, but perhaps you can set us all straight: Wider tires or skinnier tires for driving in snow?

Sajeev answers:

This is a fantastic and timely question from one of the Hagerty Community’s most cherished commentators! Might I first start this off by saying that the width matters far less than the need for running dedicated winter tires?

Clear the rubber compound hurdle and the answer might depend on your zip code. I’ve mentioned this previously, because automotive needs are nearly as diverse as that of our populace. Not all of America has the same terrain, the same level of infrastructure, and the same types of vehicles driving on said infrastructure. If you live in a rural area, I reckon you’re more likely to have a truck or an SUV as a winter vehicle.

Most of these vehicles are heavier than a car or crossover and can take further advantage of the extra contact patch provided by a wider winter tire for all-terrain/unplowed road use. That contact patch might really come in handy when braking to avoid a deer. And they look cooler: That shouldn’t be a concern, but it certainly comes into play when up-fitting a truck. And there ain’t nothing wrong with wanting a cooler looking truck!

Conversely, if you own a family sedan, a rear-wheel drive performance car, and live in the suburbs, you’re more likely to go on plowed roads and are light enough to have a harder time pushing down on wider winter tires. The average Toyota Corolla or BMW 3-series can take advantage of narrower winter tires slicing through soft snow to firmer ground below, but braking might suffer because there’s less rubber to make contact with the ground. Fuel economy will be better, and that’s important for areas with gridlock and endless rows of stop lights.

At least that’s the theory. The reality is that tire width, sidewall height, wheel + tire weight, rubber compounds, tread design (including tire sipes), and how much weight you can put above the drive axle all play a crucial role in a vehicle’s winter performance. It’s a lot to digest, and the following test does a good job explaining the complexities.

I started the video at the meaty part of the conclusion, so we can get to the heart of the matter.

1. Skinny winter tires are better for acceleration.
2. Wider winter tires are better for braking.
3. The quality of the rubber compound is more important than the width.

Personally, having spent a few fun and/or terrifying days in snowy conditions, acceleration is likely moot: My all-season-equipped, empty bed 2011 Ford Ranger (even during the shocking Texas snowpocalypse) has active handling that ensured I never did a one-wheel peel on unplowed, slush-filled roads. Ford’s AdvanceTrac even kept the Ranger straight while going up steep hills and icy driveways! I didn’t even need to start in second gear or find trash to weigh down the rear suspension, but maybe everything woulda been harder if the snow stuck around for longer than a few days …

My experience isn’t yours, so here’s the point: Most any vehicle equipped with winter tires can get off the line easily, especially a modern example with computer-assisted technology. But braking for a panic stop? I’ll take the hit to fuel economy and opt for a wider tire every time.

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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Traveling from Japan to the U.S. can take a lot out of you if you’re not prepared. The jetlag is a killer and, even if you’re flying business class, you’re going to have a few aches and pains as you stagger down the jetway toward home.

As it turns out, the trans-Pacific journey can be hard even if you’re a car, too. At least, it was on my car.

In early 2021, I bought my dream Subaru, a 1998 WRX STI Type R Version 4 Spec V Limited. That’s a long-winded way to say this is Subaru’s high-performance version of the Impreza coupe, one never released here in the U.S. I bought that car in 2021, but it didn’t turn 25 until March 2023. Since foreign cars under 25 are generally illegal to import, I had to store it in Japan.

I paid for covered storage in a garage. However, as I later learned, my car spent those two-and-change years sitting on top of a parking garage in the sun. When the car finally made it to me in New York it was utterly filthy and the paint was in bad shape. That, as it turned out, was just the beginning.

Making my dream Subaru look as good as I wanted was going to take some work. Here’s my journey.

The state of the car

After years of waiting, I couldn’t stop smiling as the car rolled off the transporter. When I got it home and into the garage, however, my excitement was tempered by all the work I could see ahead of me. For starters, it was disgusting, covered in grime from all that time sitting in Japan, plus whatever else it had picked up on the boat over and at the port in Seattle.

The windows were covered in writing from a yellow grease pencil. Every one of the four wheels had been curbed and chipped at some point during transit and, if that weren’t bad enough, somehow a big chunk had been taken out of one of the sidewalls.

After I doused the thing in soap and gave it a good bath, I spotted even more problems. A few panels had clearly been resprayed, but a scuff on the front bumper looked fresh, likely also imparted during shipping. There were dozens of chips and other little imperfections.

I decided to start with the wheels.

Wheel repair and restoration

I make a real point of avoiding curbs and taking good care of my wheels. So, having all four of the Subaru’s gold Rays wheels showing real signs of abuse was just too much for me. I looked into DIY options, but all looked well outside of my skill set. So, I decided to send the wheels out to the pros. A local shop made them look like new for about $175 per wheel.

The center caps, though, I decided to handle myself. These aren’t just any Rays wheels, they’re an ultra-lightweight model designed specifically for Subaru, and they have carbon fiber center caps to prove it. Those caps, though, were dull and scuffed up like everything else.

After a thorough cleaning, I broke out my favorite plastic repair set from Novus. It’s a three-step series of concoctions designed specifically for delicate plastics. I guessed it would work on carbon fiber too, and I was right. The end result was stunning. Those caps now gleamed beautifully.

Finally, I mounted a set of Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tires to replace the old, damaged rubber, and then we were in business. That just left the rest of the car…

Grease pencil on glass

One of the shippers somewhere had scrawled a bunch of identifiers all over the windows of my Subaru in what looked like yellow grease pencil. I had no idea what any of it meant, all I knew was that it had to go. This stuff usually comes off pretty easily, so I reached for some Invisible Glass, my usual go-to cleaner, and got to wiping.

I got precisely nowhere. That writing was baked on there good and proper.

I got more serious, pulling out a bottle of Goo Gone, my usual go-to for more persistent cleaning. Goo Gone did a little better than Invisible Glass, but I still wasn’t making much headway.

My next attempt was straight alcohol, and that did the trick—eventually. I had to mist on a layer, let it sit for a minute, then scrub like hell. I repeated that process two or three times on each pane, finally breaking out a razor for the really stubborn marks. It took nearly a full hour but finally, it was all gone. This glass was clean.

Paint restoration

I confess I’ve never been an expert on paint care, and so I was lucky to get a little expert consultation from Mike Pennington, one of the paint gurus at Meguiar’s. Over video chat, I gave Mike a tour of my Subaru and the sad state of its paint. He suggested two potential paths: a low-effort version that would deliver “fair” results, or a high-effort process for restoration-level results. When I said I was game for a little elbow grease, he sent me a box full of goodies.

Multiple boxes, as it were.

After a fresh bath for the car, I started with the clay bar, which if you’ve never used one is a slightly gooey, sticky bar of stuff that you simply rub on the paint, using quick detailer as a lubricant. That stickiness is key. The clay slides over the smooth paint but adheres to stuck-on deposits like pine tar or pollution. Within a few passes, I could see it all gathering on the formerly white clay.

That process took about an hour, and then it was time to get serious with Speed Compound. I’d used polishes and polishers before, but nothing so serious as a dual-action polisher, often called a DA. That was paired with a stiff foam-cutting disc. This is the most intensive step, so I was advised to go slowly. I made four passes over every part of the car, an agonizing process that took a whopping two hours.

But, the results were immediately apparent. That scuff on the front bumper? It was completely gone. Lots of other nicks and scrapes disappeared as well. But, I have to say that plenty of chips and deeper gouges were made even more apparent, highlighted by the compound gathered. Those will require more serious fixes later, but all things considered, for a 25-year-old Subaru that spent a few too many years in the sun, things were starting to look good.

With tingling fingers from the shaking DA and a sore back from all the effort, I was dreading doing it all over again with the Finishing Polish. But, this process went much more quickly. Applied on a softer foam disc, the slippery polish went on easily. And, with only two passes required, I was done in less than an hour.

The paint was really glowing now, but I still had one more step: wax. Pennington suggested Hybrid Ceramic Liquid Wax, which is purely for protection. Compared to all that had come before, and with the paint now glass-smooth, this part was easy. It took me less than 30 minutes to do the entire car.

The results

It was a hard day’s labor that gave me a lot of respect for all the great detailers out there, folks who hopefully have a healthier back than I.

Regardless, the aches and pains were worth it. No, I can’t say the car looks like new. It has its share of battle scars, plus a few areas where the sun-tortured paint is simply starting to flake away. All that is going to require a more radical intervention. But that classic World Rally Blue, scuffed and dull before, now gleams in the sun. I’m back to smiling whenever I see it.

There is, however, the not-so-small matter of the interior, which if anything is even more tired than the paint. That, though, is a project for another day.

***

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Walk the aisles of your local pick-a-part, or scroll the seemingly endless pages of projects listed for sale on the internet, and you’ll find plenty of cars just waiting for a new home. Decades of market forces have shaped the roster of cars that have survived this long. There’s a certain safety in going with the grain—relatively generous parts supply, aftermarket options, a knowledgable and engaged community—but going the other direction with a particularly rare or unloved model has its own rewards. Here are five reasons to adopt a car from an orphan brand:

Forces you to better understand your car

Parts availability often trends with popularity and production numbers. That means that while those who love Chevrolet Chevelles are spoiled by the ability to procure just about any part or piece they might need to keep their car on the road. Someone with an AMC Javelin is often left to sort out how new and old parts might play nice together.

This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Mainstream bolt-on kits often make meaningful compromises, and the simplicity of a one-stop shop means the installer doesn’t need to be terribly scrutinizing. In absence of such easy solutions, we might more clearly think through what we are trying to build and not get distracted by low-hanging fruit.

You’ll become a member of the community by necessity

Lived experience is a powerful thing. Usually, the most valuable resource for someone working on a given car is to talk with the people who have been doing it for much longer. Our knowledge and understanding of how our cars work changes over time, as well as changing with the technologies at hand, so not everything should be taken as gospel (look no further than a lot of performance modification books from decades ago) but there is incredible experience to mine from those who have tread the path before us. It’s probably possible to restore a first-generation Mustang without engaging with anyone else, but doing the same with a basket-case Nash? A lot tougher, and a few savvy Nash friends will make your journey a lot richer.

It’s impossible to hide

It’s fun to be known for something, especially if you can pick what it is. “Steve? The guy really into rotary NSUs?” Or “Alex? The Studebaker nut?” Just about any old car will stand out in modern traffic, but an orphan of years gone by is likely to draw even more attention. People just don’t know what they are. The rarer it is on the road, the more likely it is to draw comments and conversation at every fuel-up or parking lot. Not everyone wants to become the center of attention wherever they go, but it can be to have your work in keeping history on the road foster human connections.

Event eligibility

If you like driving your car and attending tours and events, an off-beat or otherwise unusual car can be your ticket into exclusive gatherings that run-of-the-mill cars will not be allowed access. Driving tours and large shows typically have to cap entry, often favoring interesting or unique cars so as to avoid a parade of too-similar vehicles. One example: The Colorado Grand “is open to racing cars and sports cars of distinction built in 1960 or before.” That means Peerless GTs are as welcome as Mercedes-Benz  SL Gullwings or Shelby Cobras. One of those is available on a blue-collar budget, while the other two are, well, not.

The barrier to entry is typically lower

Speaking of prices, take a scroll through your favorite classifieds site. It doesn’t take long to suss out that defunct brands generally trade at lower value than those from, say, the Big Three. Your dollar often goes further if your are agnostic as to the grille badge. For the price of an entry-level but popular car, you can sometimes nab the top trim of a more obscure car. While others may spend time and money up-badging or even up-restoring (think of all the Chevrolet 150s that became Bel Airs over the years) it can be satisfying to have piece of history that requires no asterisk. Not to mention the fatter parts budget.

Are there downside that come with choosing the path less traveled? Of course. It’s harder, for one, but the upsides should not be ignored. An oddball car might send you on an adventure that benefits not only you but helps preserve a small part of car culture that would have otherwise faded away.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have motorcycles to haul and a space in my driveway for a Studebaker pickup to do the grunt work. It’s out there somewhere.

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We’re delighted and confused by the automotive cornucopia that fills the brick-and-glass shop called Ai Design. As we stroll through the 10,000-square-foot, sun-lit space, located just north of New York City, we spy a 1961 Cadillac Eldorado, a 1985 Audi Quattro Sport rally car, a Porsche 959, a partially disassembled Maserati race car that’s resting on jack stands next to a military-grade Hummer H1, and a pristine 1970s Ford Bronco. They all have four wheels, but the similarities end there. What is this place?

“I freely admit that I can’t describe it in one sentence,” says owner and founder Matt Figliola. The services offered include not only repairing, modifying, or restoring any car, but also locating examples of rare vehicles—indeed, this outfit helped us find the cars we drove profiled in last month’s rally car story. (Click here to read it.)

Figliola, 56, got his start in the mid-’80s, upgrading the sound system and electronics of a Plymouth Horizon.

The craftsmanship and ingenuity of the modifications persuaded a custom-car shop in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood to hire the self-taught electronics whiz. In those days, the wolves of Wall Street wanted hi-fi car stereos, radar detectors, and body kits installed in such a way that they looked like they came from the factory. That meant hours of costly detail work. Money, however, flowed in the greed decade, and Figliola learned the importance of cultivating the clients who were willing to pay for the details he wanted to craft. “I’ve always been fastidious,” he says.

In 1992, Figliola left Manhattan and opened his own shop in Yonkers; six years later, he moved to his current location in Tuckahoe, a town 20 miles north of the Empire State Building.

Few shops that work on cars are so neat. The floor is polished daily, and even the ductwork shines. Metal sculptures and wall-hanging decorations accompany the expected tool chests, welding stations, and metal-working jigs, lending an art gallery feel. The space itself attracts what Figliola admits is an eclectic clientele, as evidenced by the varied machines inside. “We help them find the personal touches they want in their cars,” he says.

On the day we visited, the shop was hustling to finish a Maserati MC12 that was due to leave in a week so the owner could drive it in the GoldRush Rally. One technician shuttled between the car and the fabrication room, which was sealed from the shop’s main space by a pair of automatic sliding doors. The owner wanted air conditioning, which meant building a new set of carbon-fiber ducts to house condensers in the nose. Another worker retrofitted a new wiring harness in order to power front and rear video cameras and assorted other electronics.

The H1 Hummer nearby had received every survival gadget imaginable, including joystick-controlled spotlights, power-opening sides with tool storage, exterior cameras, Wi-Fi, and infrared lights for… we’re not sure. The recently finished Bronco, which Ai Design built from scratch and upgraded with modern mechanicals, waited for the owner to pick it up.

Future restorations, according to Figliola, will require different skills than that Bronco required. Cars built after 1980 are more electronically complicated and often have plastic-based materials that degrade over time. “I see a firestorm coming,” says Figliola. Engine computers were built on boards that develop hair-line cracks. The capacitors are vulnerable to leaking. “We are well situated to tackle these problems because we’re experienced with electronics, and we’ve been scanning and 3D printing parts for years,” he adds. Ai is also ready and willing to convert your classic to an EV, if you so desire. Indeed, we first encountered the shop two years ago when we reviewed a Willys-Jeep it had electrified.

These days, it’s definitely trendy to question the long-term future of our automotive obsession, especially in places like New York City. (Around the time of our visit, The New Yorker magazine published a piece with the headline, “How to Quit Cars.”) Shops like this give us hope that said future will be wonderfully weird.

Ai Design (Tuckahoe, New York)

• Open since: 1992
• Cars serviced yearly: 175–200
• Crew size: 12 full-timers
• Sweet spot: Custom anything and electronics
• Shop vibe: Art museum meets elbow grease

***

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The factories that create the cars we see on the road are slight mysteries to most enthusiasts. Sure, we know there is a building somewhere with a bunch of parts that are assembled into a functional object, but what does that actually look like? Ford’s River Rouge factory is open for tours so you can see new F-150s come together, but if you are more interested in the cutting edge of performance and engineering you are left a little high and dry. Until now.

In a video released on the Koenigsegg YouTube channel, the founder himself—Christian von Koenigsegg—takes us on a quick walk through the assembly area where the Jesko’s nine-speed, seven-clutch transmission is assembled. The parts look downright absurd to anyone who has spent more time under the hood of a car than staring at a computer screen running a CAD program. Looks aside, however, all of these parts have cousins in the “regular” car world—on the high-performance Jesko they’re just dialed up to 11.

The starter gear for the Jesko is a prime example. Rotating mass is the enemy of quick-revving engines, and the flywheel is typically one of the heavier parts of an engine’s rotating assembly, right up there with the crankshaft. Christian points out that the Swiss-cheese–looking starter gear is actually the largest diameter metal part in the drivetrain. Considering how easily he flips it around with one hand it becomes clear why the Jesko’s 5-liter V-8 revs so quickly.

Next step on the tour is the engine assembly, just steps away. Here one technician builds one engine per week. Seeing the pistons and crankshaft on the table is one thing, but seeing a completed engine and just how compact the whole package is—that’s something else entirely. The crankshaft is extremely svelte, while the connecting rods provide a beefy counterpoint. Pistons are coated both on the crown and the skirt to reduce friction and help with thermal management.

Then it’s off to the dynamometer, because of course Koenigsegg has an in-house engine dyno. Christian talks with the dyno operators to give a brief look into what kind of measurements they are looking for as new engines are developed and run before going into production. Some tuners might only look at spark plugs and air-fuel ratio, but naturally there’s more to take into account when extracting more than 1200 horsepower from just five liters of displacement.

It’s a stunning place for sure, but it is also easy to see why few cars can be built this way. “It’s really like Swiss watch manufacturing, in a way,” Christian tells us, “but on a larger scale.” That sort of astronomical precision comes with a price tag, of course. So much of modern automotive production is based in compromises for efficiency, time, and serviceability. This sort of behind-the-scenes tour allows us to see what can be built when those restrictions are thrown out the window.

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It’s been said a thousand times before, but we will say it again: Engines are just air pumps. The more air and fuel you put in, the more power you get out. Of course, anyone who has played with engines long enough knows there is a point of diminishing returns on the vast majority of engine designs. Rarely, however, do we get a first-hand look at the exact constraints.

Luckily Steve Morris, a noted race-engine builder, isn’t afraid to identify the problems that keep a Ford SOHC 427—one of the hero engines of the 1960s—from making the kind of horsepower we see in today’s high-output powerplants.

The single overhead-cam 427 is one of Ford’s most famous engines, for good reason. Known as the “cammer,” this V-8 was born as a rival to the venerable Chrysler 426 Hemi, which was dominating NASCAR ovals. However, NASCAR didn’t like that manufacturers were building engines that diverged further and further from the ones in street cars, and for 1965, organizers added a provision to the rulebook regarding “special racing engines.” Chrysler sat out the season in protest. Ford, whose SOHC 427 was no longer eligible, pivoted and used the 427 Wedge, which it had been running for a couple years.

The legend of the cammer lived on, thanks to racers in other disciplines who saw its potential. Drag racers embraced the SOHC 427 despite its nearly six-foot-long timing chain, a feature that gives the engine much of its unique character. Another contributing factor: The camshafts, which rotate in the same direction. Their profiles are mirrored side to side, based on how the valves are situated relative to the cam. That orientation is something that causes Steve Morris a lot of headaches as he chases four-figure horsepower.

The geometry of the valvetrain is stuck in the 1960s for sure. Each of the rocker arms has a roller on one side that rides on the camshaft and a pivoting adjustor cap that engages the valve stem. Each arm also contains an oil passage, which will not allow oil to flow if the adjustor is at too much of an angle. Keeping components from over-extending themselves is critical to keep everything slippery. As Steve points out, the oil passages could be reengineered, but that would require a lot of time. Few people are willing to pay for that kind of intricate development in a one-off engine.

The solution is to dial in the length of the valve stem, even after modifying the rocker arms with larger follower wheels. The amount of lift planned for the camshaft has set this whole problem in motion, but that airflow is critical to making the horsepower Steve’s customer desires. He is just lucky that the short-block is more or less the same as other FE engine blocks, without the provisions for lifters. New castings are available, but that doesn’t mean it’s as simple as bolting things together. Steve estimates he must spend over 100 hours mocking up this particular engine before he can begin final assembly. Even at time-lapse speed, the intricacy of the project is obvious.

Overall, this video provides a fascinating look into exactly what it takes to make unique high-performance engines. This engine even got mounted on the dynamometer—before the customer decided they wanted to take the engine home and either take a break or finish the project themselves. Will this SOHC 427 make the big power numbers everyone hopes? We may never know, but we have a new appreciation for just how tough it is to even try.

***

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This is a week of giving thanks across North America, and my Piston Slap column is no different. I wish to thank the folks who email me questions (I can always use more at pistonslap@hagerty.com) for this series and the commentators for personally enriching my knowledge base. And since many of us shall be consuming large amounts of carbs and tryptophan-laden dishes, let’s once again enjoy the tradition of overindulging in the automotive problem that is this series’ namesake: slapping pistons and failing engines!

John writes:

I have that piston slap, how can I stop the rattling on cold start?

Sajeev answers:

You can’t do much, because the noise comes from between the piston and the cylinder of the engine. For most folks it’s better to deal with the noise because fixing it costs thousands at a machine shop—maybe tens of thousands if the motor is for some exclusive specialty car. No matter the application, going to a heavier oil weight can help, but that might have unintended consequences for the engine elsewhere if it wasn’t made for it. Best you change the oil regularly, and be OK with the noise when cold.

Justin writes:

I read the article about piston slap on 2011–13 Hyundai Elantra 1.8 engines (TSB 14-20-002). I’m a mechanic myself and I’ve known that Hyundais have had this issue for years now. My mother recently purchased a ’13 Hyundai Elantra with full service records and only 58,000 miles on it. Car went in to limp mode about a week ago and after inspecting it, I can confirm I hear the piston slap within the engine.

I am planning on going to the dealer and demanding a replacement engine under the warranty. Original bumper-to-bumper warranty being 6 years/60,000 miles, which it hasn’t even hit yet, and the class action lawsuit settlement having extended the warranty to 10 years/120,000 miles. I’m reaching out wondering if you can foresee any problems occurring with me going that route? Yes, it’s 2023 and 10 years from production date of vehicle, but it hasn’t even hit 60K let alone 120K.

Sajeev answers:

I anticipate an uphill battle, especially if you demand something from an overworked service advisor who’s about as burnt out with their career as you are with this Elantra. So play the empathy card, and see if the dealer/Hyundai district manager is more charitable than needed to keep their job. If your mom bought the Elantra from a Hyundai dealer, I anticipate they will put the new motor in with zero stress. If not, they don’t have an ongoing relationship (as it were) and could reject the claim.

Worst-case scenario, you might be able to get a new motor for less money, just because the mileage is so low. Maybe you can get the motor from the district manager and install it yourself? Offer things like this if at all possible. I would also scan customer reviews/ask other local mechanics to see if one Hyundai dealer is staffed with folks who are better with escalations to the Hyundai mothership than others in your area.

Mike writes:

My parents purchased my Elantra in Virginia and gave me the car in 2018. The “slap” noise started after starting on a very cold morning (Virginia, after all) in December 2022. I could not afford to take it to dealership, and since no lights were on, I drove the car just fine. Regular oil changes were done, many from Hyundai. Nothing else is wrong with the car. Did not know about piston slap until my mom looked it up after she heard the noise two weeks ago.

Took it to a Hyundai dealer this week. They say my VIN does not qualify for the lawsuit settlement (but I have the year and engine listed in lawsuit). They also say I am out of warranty anyways because the settlement only extended warranty to 120K and mine has 140K. I don’t have money to buy a car. What can I do?

Sajeev answers:

Much like Justin’s concerns, because of the mileage, and the fact you aren’t the original owner, you are also in for an uphill journey. I have a similar Hail Mary for you: Escalate the issue with any Hyundai dealer that’s willing to work with a Hyundai district manager to see if they can do a partial goodwill repair for you. While this repair may not include a new engine for free, maybe if you ask nicely they can heavily discount the job for you.

Sue writes:

I have a 2013 Subaru Forester that had oil consumption and piston slap upon startup. It was purchased new in 2013, and it now has approximately 140K on the clock. I am on my THIRD short-block with new improved oil rings, and I switched from 0w-20 to 5w-20 oil and still have to add two quarts between 5000-mile changes. When the car sits overnight I get a piston slap (or light clicking?) upon startup, which goes away after it warms up. I am thinking the last new set of oil rings are broken in and piston skirting is worn down on all pistons causing the noise? As long as the mileage is not changing can you offer any advice or figure just keep driving until it dies?

Sajeev answers:

Three short-blocks, hmm? Well, let’s hope the third time is indeed the charm, as what you are experiencing is the best its gonna get. We all have to take a leap of faith, because we must have faith that new short-locks are assembled/machined correctly to match the piston rings. You can’t dig in there and verify the work was done correctly for yourself. If this is an engine from Subaru, monitor its health (oil consumption, piston slap noise) and see if it degrades during the factory warranty period. I am hoping your current engine will outlast the 10-year-old chassis around it, and you can merely drive it until it dies. Hopefully that will be a long, long, long time from now.

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

***

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Danny writes:

Hi Sajeev,

I have a 2010 Nissan Frontier with a factory CD player, but it had no AUX input or Bluetooth connection to play music from my phone. After about two years of dealing with one of those sketchy Bluetooth adapters that plugs into the 12v outlet on the dash, I finally caved and ordered a stereo receiver and all the necessary accessories from Crutchfield.

The receiver works well, and even made my factory speakers sound a bit better, but despite getting all the replacement trim pieces and installing it all correctly, the dash now makes chittering noises anytime I drive over a bump in the road, and sometimes just when the truck is idling. If I press hard on the tray above the stereo, I can minimize some of the noise, but the new stereo support brackets and the little tray underneath the receiver are just not as robust as the original equipment.

Should I pull it all apart and start adding foam adhesive wherever I can? Thanks for your help!

Sajeev answers:

I have experienced similar issues when upgrading radios on Fords from the last 40 years, so I know you are on the right track with the comment about foam insulation. Sometimes you don’t need foam, because the factory radio has a rear support bracket. While many stereos from the Rad era have a rear bracket, I suspect those days are far behind us. So let’s take a look at the installation kit that came with your purchase:

That’s a lotta plastic! The problem is, these kits don’t necessarily replicate every bit the factory uses to firmly install a stereo. And the factory mounts are usually better quality, often made of metal instead of plastic. But this general information isn’t wholly relevant to the Nissan Frontier in question, so have a look at what Danny pulled out of his truck:

There is no provision for a rear support bracket (a centrally-located threaded hole, or a bolt to attach said bracket), but look at those beefy metal brackets on both sides! Odds are these can’t be reused on the aftermarket radio installation kit, so you do indeed need to use something to stop the vibration. I recommend the same structural packaging foam I mentioned for Project Valentino, but don’t go crazy with it; find the one spot that causes the vibration and add a wedge of foam there. Just a little wedge, not a strip, pad, or anything bigger.

Air circulation/heat management is generally paramount when it comes to aftermarket audio systems, especially if you are running the internal amplifier to power your speakers. Blocking the holes in its chassis could prematurely kill your new stereo, so get some double-sided tape or glue and affix the wedge of foam in a minimalist fashion.

Conservative use of foam insulation and glue is paramount here, as a little bit goes a long way. Hope this solves your problem!

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

***

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The trees are almost bare and the evening arrives sooner each day. We all know what that means: It’s time to tuck away our classics into storage. We may have published this article in 2018, but it’s still our go-to checklist, and we hope it serves you well. —Ed. 

Just when you thought you’d heard every suggestion and clever tip for properly storing your classic automobile, along comes another recommendation—or two, or three.

As you can imagine, we’ve shared plenty of ideas and advice about winter storage over the years. Some of those annual recommendations are repeated here. And some have been amended—for example, the fragrance of dryer sheets is way more pleasing to our noses than the stench of moth balls, and the fresh smell actually does a superior job of repelling mice.

Finally, each year we receive tried-and-true suggestions from our readers that we just have to share. In 2017, our resident do-it-yourself mechanic Rob Siegel received plenty of kudos for his winter prep story, which included some valuable myth busting, and his story also drew a number of storage ideas from readers.

Armed with information old and new, here are our top tips for storing your classic vehicle. Did we miss something important? Let us know in the comments section below. We’re all in this together.

Wash and wax

It may seem fruitless to wash the car when it is about to be put away for months, but it is an easy step that shouldn’t be overlooked. Water stains or bird droppings left on the car can permanently damage the paint. Make sure to clean the wheels and undersides of the fenders to get rid of mud, grease and tar. For added protection, give the car a coat of wax and treat any interior leather with a good conditioner.

Car cover

Even though your classic is stored in the garage in semi-stable temperatures and protected from the elements, a car cover will keep any spills or dust off of the paint. It can also protect from scratches while moving objects around the parked car.

Oil change

If you will be storing the vehicle for longer than 30 days, consider getting the oil changed. Used engine oil has contaminants that could damage the engine or lead to sludge buildup. (And if your transmission fluid is due for a change, do it now too. When spring rolls around, you’ll be happy you did.)

Fuel tank

Before any extended storage period, remember to fill the gas tank to prevent moisture from accumulating inside the fuel tank and to keep the seals from drying out. You should also pour in fuel stabilizer to prevent buildup and protect the engine from gum, varnish, and rust. This is especially critical in modern gasoline blended with ethanol, which gums up more easily. The fuel stabilizer will prevent the gas from deteriorating for up to 12 months.

Radiator

This is another area where fresh fluids will help prevent contaminants from slowly wearing down engine parts. If it’s time to flush the radiator fluid, doing it before winter storage is a good idea. Whether or not you put in new antifreeze, check your freezing point with a hydrometer or test strips to make sure you’re good for the lowest of winter temperatures.

Battery

An unattended battery will slowly lose its charge and eventually go bad, resulting in having to purchase a new battery in the spring. The easiest, low-tech solution is to disconnect the battery cables—the negative (ground) first, then the positive. You’ll likely lose any stereo presets, time, and other settings. If you want to keep those settings and ensure that your battery starts the moment you return, purchase a trickle charger. This device hooks up to your car battery on one end, then plugs into a wall outlet on the other and delivers just enough electrical power to keep the battery topped up. Warning: Do not use a trickle charger if you’re storing your car off property. In rare cases they’ve been known to spark a fire.

Parking brake

For general driving use it is a good idea to use the parking brake, but don’t do it when you leave a car in storage long term; if the brake pads make contact with the rotors for an extended period of time, they could fuse together. Instead of risking your emergency brake, purchase a tire chock or two to prevent the car from moving.

Tire care

If a vehicle is left stationary for too long, the tires could develop flat spots from the weight of the vehicle pressing down on the tires’ treads. This occurs at a faster rate in colder temperatures, especially with high-performance or low-profile tires, and in severe cases a flat spot becomes a permanent part of the tire, causing a need for replacement. If your car will be in storage for more than 30 days, consider taking off the wheels and placing the car on jack stands at all four corners. With that said, some argue that this procedure isn’t good for the suspension, and there’s always this consideration: If there’s a fire, you have no way to save your car.

If you don’t want to go through the hassle of jack stands, overinflate your tires slightly (2–5 pounds) to account for any air loss while it hibernates, and make sure the tires are on plywood, not in direct contact with the floor.

Repel rodents

A solid garage will keep your car dry and relatively warm, conditions that can also attract unwanted rodents during the cold winter months. There are plenty of places in your car for critters to hide and even more things for them to destroy. Prevent them from entering your car by covering any gaps where a mouse could enter, such as the exhaust pipe or an air intake; steel wool works well for this. Next, spread scented dryer sheets or Irish Spring soap shavings inside the car and moth balls around the perimeter of the vehicle. For a more proactive approach, also lay down a few mouse traps (although you’ll need to check regularly for casualties).

Maintain insurance

In order to save money, you might be tempted to cancel your auto insurance when your vehicle is in storage. Bad idea. If you remove coverage completely, you’ll be on your own if there’s a fire, the weight of snow collapses the roof, or your car is stolen. If you have classic car insurance, the policy covers a full year and takes winter storage into account in your annual premium.

Your comments/suggestions

• “A good friend of mine and ex-Ferrari race mechanic (Le Mans three times) recommends adding half a cup of automatic transmission fluid to the fuel tank before topping up, and then running the engine for 10 minutes. This applies ONLY to carburetor cars. The oil coats the fuel tank, lines and carb bowls and helps avoid corrosion. It will easily burn off when you restart the car.”
• A warning regarding car covers: “The only time I covered was years ago when stored in the shop side of my machine shed. No heat that year and the condensation from the concrete caused rust on my bumpers where the cover was tight. The next year I had it in the dirt floor shed and the mice used the cover ties as rope ladders to get in.”
• “I use the right amount of Camguard in the oil to protect the engine from rust. It’s good stuff.”
• “Your car’s biggest villain is rust, that’s why I clean the car inside and out, and wax it prior to putting it in storage. For extra protection, I generously wax the bumpers and other chrome surfaces, but I do not buff out the wax. Mildew can form on the interior; to prevent this I treat the vinyl, plastic, and rubber surfaces with a product such as Armor All.
• “Ideally, your car should be stored in a clean, dry garage. I prepare the floor of the storage area by laying down a layer of plastic drop cloth, followed by cardboard. The plastic drop cloth and cardboard act as a barrier to keep the moisture that is in the ground from seeping through the cement floor and attacking the underside of my car.”
• “Fog out the engine. I do this once the car is parked where it is to be stored for the winter, and while it is still warm from its trip. Remove the air cleaner and spray engine fogging oil into the carburetor with the engine running at a high idle. Once I see smoke coming out of the exhaust, I shut off the engine and replace the air cleaner. Fogging out the engine coats many of the internal engine surfaces, as well as the inside of the exhaust with a coating of oil designed to prevent rust formation.”

Relax, rest, and be patient

For those of us who live in cold weather states, there’s actually a great sense of relief when you finally complete your winter prep and all of your summer toys are safely put to bed before the snow flies. Relax; you’ve properly protected your classic. It won’t be long before the snow is waist-high and you’re longing for summer—and that long wait may be the most difficult part of the entire storage process. Practice patience and find something auto-related to capture your attention and bide your time. You’ll be cruising again before you know it. (Keep telling yourself that, anyway.)

***

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James writes:

I live in South Florida with an ever-growing elderly population. My question relates to the giant barcode stickers on the sides of many cars. Why do so many of these people leave these stuck to their back windows (almost always on the passenger side). Good luck? Fear? Ignorance? I notice this on a variety of makes/models.

Speaking of ignorance, I assume this is an inventory-related decal for transport?

Sajeev answers:

That’s a fair assumption. I also assumed those were inventory tags for rental agencies and loaner fleets that are part of luxury car dealerships. Those tags make life easier for employees and expedite the check out process for customers. But this is different, because you wrote, “giant barcode.” And thanks to the magic of Google, I learned there are 564 gated communities in Florida. Guess how they make those gates open/close at scale for all those residents?

I suspect you live close to several of these communities, and they all use barcodes to automatically open/close those gates. This feature, while hideous on a vehicle, ensures people willingly pay their HOA fees. Not all of your fellow motorists are enthusiasts, at least not with their daily driver. Slapping an ugly barcode on their ride is worth the time savings. It’s a huge benefit for residents of bougee communities on Halloween night, when Trick-or-Treaters would likely descend on said community of fancy decorations and an endless supply of candy.

Speaking of the wealthy locations, one such community avoids the tacky barcodes via interfacing with the local toll road authority’s RFID sticker transponder. I assume that costs more, and that some HOA’s are unwilling to pay for (monthly?) access to such a database when they could own the whole system instead. But the fancy places with more Land Rovers than Chevy trucks will demand the inconspicuous nature of the toll road interface. Nobody with a new AMG Mercedes-Benz wants a bar code on their window that makes it look like a hardware store purchase.

No matter how you slice it, a lot of Americans live in these suburban communities, and an efficient way to let people in and out is mandatory at this point. Ain’t technology grand?

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

***

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We previously discussed the concept of modern cars aging as gracefully as older vehicles, with a light patina on the metal body and trim. But the comments from the Hagerty community, about the increasingly complex electronic systems in modern cars, inspired this article. Knowing that new electronics eventually become out of the question, and used parts can be a risky endeavor, reaction from commenters was swift and conclusive:

@Paul: You can refinish peeling paint. There’s nothing you can do when the computers start failing and all the wrecking yard parts dry up.

@Steve: Failed electronics will kill cars more quickly and often than patina or decomposing trim. It’s happened to me on a couple of ’90s vehicles. On the other hand, my ’60s cars are very likely to continue looking great and operating properly well into the future. Simple is good.

@smtguy: Completely agree with you, Steve. Automotive electronics are slapped together as inexpensively as possible. They then have to endure the harsh environment of a car with temperature swings that can be in excess of 100 degrees, to say nothing about vibration, and obsolescence.

@GP: Every car I have owned from the late ’90s on has had its computer either outright die or malfunction to the point the car was unusable. Used replacement computers are no help because all too often they are coded to the original VIN, and no one is going to pay $2000 and up to buy a new computer for a Pontiac Aztek or Ford Flex that already looks like trash.

All valid points, but what’s being overlooked here is the fact that electronics can be rebuilt, be it with new internals, repaired circuits, or both. Rebuilding addresses the design flaws over time, often using OEM-grade (or better, in my experience) components for the circuit boards, and offering a warranty on the work.

Now that we know many of these items are not black boxes with mysterious components, the next issue to resolve is to find the person or company who can rebuild the component you need. Sometimes there’s a vendor on your favorite forum that has a good reputation with owners of your vehicle. (The same applies to Facebook Groups for your cars, and vendors on eBay.) Often doing a Google Near Me search gets you the service provider of your dreams, especially when you widen your search parameters to businesses outside of driving range.

History is littered with cases of consolidation of industries, and I’ve always wondered if someone was going to do the same for the automotive electronics space. Someone needs to scale up in order to carry the array of parts and also feature a deep roster of technicians to meet the demands of the ever-increasing needs of depreciated automobiles.

@JW: I think the biggest issue we will see in present cars as they age is the breakdown of their snazzy screens and infotainment systems. Their complexity almost guarantees they won’t be functional in 30–40 years. And it won’t be a matter of just replacing or rebuilding your broken speedo or tach.

Maybe there will be companies that can rebuild them, but will the proper chips and other electronics be available?

Not maybe, definitely. Even the buggy Cadillac CUE system can be repaired for under $300 with free round-trip shipping and a one- or two-day turnaround. Just remove the screen (or pay a mechanic), ship it to an electronics repair vendor, and you’ll be back in business in about a week.

That’s where a company called UpFix comes into play. The folks there have been repairing and reprogramming computer modules since 2006. In those early days, they focused on resetting airbag modules that freeze up after a collision, and their customer base of collision centers proved the business model had merit. But UpFix’s management noticed more and more electrical gremlins in the automotive landscape, so the model adapted to the market’s need, encompassing solutions to more diverse problems: What started out as resetting software on airbag modules became actual hardware repairs.

I spoke with Ernest Martynyuk, UpFix’s auto electronics division leader, about his company’s unique value proposition. If you’re like me, you’ve had components rebuilt by local Mom & Pop shops in the past, and they operate in less-than-ideal workspaces with limited staff and salty customer service. They get the job done, but some are merely a necessary evil to keep your car on the road. Martynyuk thinks his company does things differently, and UpFix’s facility suggests he’s operating with the professionalism of an OEM parts provider.

UpFix puts more more time into testing parts, Martynyuk says, than its smaller-scale competition. Further, it has an enviable stash of individual repair components, can reprogram a variety of applications, and possesses more specialty tools. But humans fix electronics, and UpFix also has more staff than a typical Mom & Pop. Even better, someone on the team frequently updates the website to ensure would-be customers understand what items they can fix, without needing to call or send an awkward email. (Many smaller operations still use websites that are more at home on a GeoCities domain.)

The more you poke around UpFix’s website, the more you realize they might be likely/willing to repair old parts from the 1990s OBD-II era, and even from older OBD-I vehicles. Martynyuk encourages this, as Upfix is willing and has a track record of repairing older modules from modern classics. Like other shops, they’ve repaired the usual pixelated problems from BMW displays of the 1990s, but have also mastered the more obscure. Consider the dashboard power supply of the Z31-generation Nissan 300ZX, and the failing gauge clusters of the oft-overlooked Suzuki XL-7. If you don’t find your vehicle in the website’s pull-down menus, Martynyuk encourages you to submit a repair request form.

It’s clear from our conversation that Martynyuk has a genuine curiosity and willingness to help owners of modern classics, and he’s in a position to ensure UpFix can work on oddball stuff for the likes of the Hagerty community. Although some of his smaller-scale competitors can say the same, they often focus on a single vehicle or a particular marque.

A company like UpFix is precisely what we classic car enthusiasts need, because it is indeed getting harder and harder to find someone to work on these old circuit boards, much less do it in a facility this impressive. The days of a majority of vehicles being made by three Detroit automakers are long gone; our reality is one of disparate global automakers using unique parts in a unique fashion. Even worse, all that technology was deemed antiquated by their parent companies decades ago.

UpFix is still growing into its large facility, hiring more technicians, stocking more components, and adding more workstations. Perhaps with this extra capacity comes an added willingness to repair a more diverse grouping of electronic modules. Martynyuk seems willing to take a shot at anything, so perhaps we have an alternative to overpriced service departments at new car dealerships. And maybe we finally have a safer bet than a junkyard or eBay listing for a used electronic component of questionable condition. That alone might be cause for celebration.

***

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My arrest-me-Signal-Red 1973 BMW E9 3.0CSi coupe is the unmistakable jewel in the crown of my not-a-collection. I never keep it in my rented more-humid-than-I’d-like storage—it’s always safe and sound in the garage at my house. In addition, I regard it as the best-sorted of any of my vintage cars. So when I needed to take it to BMW CCA Oktoberfest in Warwick, Rhode Island, a scant 70 miles south of my Boston-area home, I didn’t think twice about just checking the oil and the tires, reconnecting the battery, twisting the key, and driving it.

And when I did, the car lurched backwards. I’m lucky it didn’t crash into the back wall of the garage and incur tens of thousands of dollars of sheet metal damage.

I was so jarred by the event that it took me a moment to put the mechanics of it together. The shift lever was in reverse—I’d obviously left it there when I’d backed the car in—but I was certain that I’d stepped on the clutch. Or not? Regardless, the first thing I needed to do was shift it into neutral and try it again.

I couldn’t. The shift lever wouldn’t budge.

Hmmmmn.

The lever was so stuck in reverse that I began to think it might be a linkage issue, but I realized that, when coupled with the fact that the car lurched backward when I was sure I had my foot on the clutch, it was more likely that the clutch was the culprit. By applying an amount of brute force on the shift lever sufficient for me to worry about bending it or the linkage, I eventually popped it out of reverse and into neutral (in retrospect, I should’ve jacked up the back of the car to relieve the twist on the transmission likely being transmitted through the drivetrain). But when I tried rowing it engine-off-clutch-down through the gears, it took far more effort than usual.

I triple-checked that the gearbox was in neutral and I had the clutch pedal depressed (and the brake pedal too as insurance) and again started the car. As expected, it started without trying to take off anywhere, but with the engine running and the clutch depressed, I could not get it into any gear.

Clearly the clutch wasn’t working. But that can mean two very different things. It can mean that there’s a hydraulic or a mechanical failure. Or it can mean that the clutch disc is frozen between the flywheel and the clutch plate. And it’s surprisingly challenging to tell which it is.

Let’s back up (smoothly; no lurching) and enroll in Hack Mechanic Clutch 101 for a moment. The clutches in most manual-transmission cars work in pretty much the same way. The clutch itself has two pieces—the clutch plate and the clutch disc. The disc has a two-sided sacrificial surface made from material that’s not unlike a brake pad or shoe. In the center it has a splined hole through which the transmission input shaft passes. The disc is held against the flywheel by the clutch plate, which like the flywheel has a machined metal surface. The clutch plate assembly is bolted to the flywheel, but when the sprung “fingers” on the back of the clutch are pressed inward, the machined plate surface retracts backward, freeing the disc (I know, it’s counterintuitive).

Separate from but intimately related to the clutch itself is the clutch release mechanism, which consists of the release lever, the sleeve, and the throwout bearing. The throwout bearing is what actually presses against the clutch plate’s fingers. It slides up and down on a cylindrical sleeve inside the transmission bell housing. It’s called a release “bearing” because since the clutch plate is bolted to the flywheel, it and its fingers are always spinning, so in order for something to depress those rotating fingers, it needs to touch them and then spin with them. The throwout bearing is moved fore and aft by the release lever, which may use a see-saw design or a simple forward-throw configuration.

Lastly is the linkage connecting the clutch pedal to the release lever. Although some old cars have purely mechanical clutch linkages, and others—like vintage Volkswagens, Porsches, and my Lotus Europa—have a cable-actuated clutch, most cars have a hydraulic clutch linkage, where a clutch master cylinder behind the pedal is connected to a clutch slave cylinder on or in the bell housing.

Now that we’ve identified the actors, we can start the play. When your foot is off the clutch pedal, the sprung pressure in the clutch plate causes the clutch disc to be sandwiched between the plate and the flywheel, making them essentially a single unit. So as the flywheel turns, the disc turns. The splined fit between the disc and the transmission input shaft causes the shaft to rotate, which in turn sends power to the wheels via whatever gear the transmission is in, or idles in neutral.

When you depress the clutch pedal, that moves a piston in the clutch master cylinder. Fluid under pressure is sent to the clutch slave cylinder, which causes a piston inside it to move, which moves a rod sticking out the end. This pushes the release lever, which in turn slides the throwout bearing along the sleeve. The throwout bearing contacts the fingers on the back of the spinning clutch plate. It presses against them, retracting the machined surface of the plate. This frees the clutch disc. With the disc no longer sandwiched against the flywheel, the spinning engine is no longer coupled to the transmission, allowing the gears to be shifted.

Got it? This concludes Clutch 101. But there will be homework.

A number of things can go wrong with all this. As I’ve written, failed clutch hydraulics are one of the “Big Seven” things that frequently strand a vintage car. A bad clutch slave or clutch master cylinder usually manifests itself as a pedal that goes all the way to the floor, usually accompanied by visible fluid leakage. However, sometimes there’s no leakage and the pedal stills feels fine, but there’s a problem building hydraulic pressure. Other non-hydraulic issues are that the throwout bearing can go bad, sounding like a little lathe inside the bell housing. Or the release mechanism itself can fail, either jamming the pedal or making it floppy, as were the respective cases on two separate occasions with my 1970 Triumph GT6+ 45 years ago—once when the sleeve broke and again when the pivot broke through the release lever (ah, the joy of cars built from recycled WWII metal). And, of course, eventually the clutch disc wears down, resulting in the clutch slipping when power is applied. The clutch can also chatter if it’s contaminated with oil from a leaking rear main engine seal.

But the other thing that can happen on a car that’s been sitting is that the clutch can stick. Just like brake pads and shoes will stick to the rotors and drums if a car isn’t driven, the clutch disc can stick to the flywheel and/or the clutch plate. The standard methods of freeing it are letting the engine run for a while to warm things up, then cranking the starter with the transmission in gear and your foot on the clutch and brake pedals. Or jacking up the back of the car, starting it in gear, revving it up, then having someone drop the jack. Or spraying brake cleaner into the timing inspection hole (at least on BMWs) to try to break the bond of corrosion. I read one very clever solution in an Alfa forum from a guy who had a spare transmission and clutch assembly and figured out exactly where to drill a quarter-inch hole to reach in with a thin screwdriver and tap the surfaces apart, but most of us can’t do that.

I had the “frozen clutch or bad hydraulics” thing happen when my 1972 BMW 2002tii “Louie” was part of an exhibit in the BMW CCA Foundation museum. As the exhibit was ending and I was planning to fly down to pick up the car, the museum staff told me that the car would no longer go into gear when running. As part of sorting out the car just a year prior, I’d replaced both the clutch master and slave cylinders, so my brain automatically checked the “well, it can’t be that” box and I thus assumed the problem must be a frozen clutch, but nonetheless I went down with spare hydraulics just in case. When I got there, the clutch pedal felt fine to me and I saw no evidence of fluid leaking, further reinforcing the diagnosis that the clutch must be stuck. I did everything you’re supposed to do to free it, but it remained stuck. Finally I jacked up the car, put it on stands, crawled under it, had someone depress the clutch pedal, and watched the action of the slave cylinder and the clutch release lever—which is possible because, as per the photo above, on a stock BMW 2002 four-speed gearbox, the release lever protrudes through the side of the bellhousing.

To my surprise, I found that, although the pedal felt just fine, the release lever moved a little, then retreated back, indicating a hydraulic pressure-loss issue. The video of this can be seen here. Was the clutch slave cylinder bad, or was it the master? I didn’t know, so I replaced the year-old slave cylinder first because that was easier. Unfortunately, that didn’t fix it, but replacing the year-old master cylinder did. The correct release lever action can be seen here.

Unfortunately, the transmission in my 3.0CSi is different from that on the 2002—the release lever is wholly contained inside the bellhousing, so you can’t watch it in action. The real lesson from Louie was that if you can’t actually see what the hydraulics are doing, there’s not really a way to tell bad hydraulics from a frozen clutch. You need to try and rule one out as best as you can, and then go down the road of the other and hope that you’re not wrong.

I’ve only had stuck clutches twice before. One was on my Z3 after it sat outside all winter. It freed up fairly easily after I started the car in gear with my feet on the brake and clutch pedals. The other was a long-dead 2002 I’d hauled home. For that one, I had to use the blast-brake-cleaner-down-the-timing-inspection-hole trick to let it seep between the clutch plate, disc, and flywheel and soften the bond of corrosion that had formed. And then start it in gear.

Now, my pampered 3.0CSi certainly hadn’t been sitting out in the elements all winter—it was in my garage and had last been driven just three or four months ago. But it had been a rainy summer, and my garage certainly isn’t a humidity-controlled environment. So I tried cranking the starter with my foot on the clutch and the brake pedal pinned but had no success. I was about to try spraying brake cleaner down the timing inspection hole, but to my amazement, I couldn’t find any in the garage (inconceivable!).

So I had a look at the hydraulics. I jacked up the car, set it on stands, crawled beneath it, and inspected things closely. I saw no sign of fluid leakage. Although there was no way to directly visualize the motion of the release lever, I unbolted the clutch slave from the side of the gearbox, roped one of my kids into service, and had him gently depress the clutch pedal while I pressed the slave cylinder’s rod against the side of the gearbox to simulate the push-back from the clutch’s sprung fingers. I couldn’t find a spec for exactly how far the rod should extend, but it moved about an inch and stayed out as long as the clutch was depressed. Hack Mechanic verdict: There was nothing obviously wrong with the clutch hydraulics.

In the morning, I reattached the slave and set the car back down on the ground. I was about to run out for brake cleaner but thought I’d give another try at cranking the starter. This time I did it with the car in third gear, foot on the clutch, and the brake pedal mashed so hard I thought I might break the back of the Recaro. Mercifully, the clutch broke free. So it was a stuck clutch.

But even though the problem was solved, I couldn’t let go of the idea that there must be some way of telling a frozen clutch from bad hydraulics. I asked the question of two friends of mine, both professional wrenches on vintage European cars. Both offered the same “if it quacks like a duck” diagnostic approaches I’d already followed.

So I thought about it quite a bit. I wondered if there’s a difference between the disc being frozen to the flywheel versus to the clutch plate versus to both. I don’t think there is. The clutch plate is bolted to the flywheel, so the two always rotate together. The disc is always coupled directly to the transmission input shaft via the splines. So whether it’s stuck to one machined surface or the other or both, I think the effect is the same.

Then I wondered if you should be able to feel a stuck clutch as lack of motion in the pedal. Intuitively you’d think you could, as we’re trained to make sure that, during installation, the clutch disc slides smoothly on the transmission input shaft’s splines. Hell, you even put a dab of special lube on the splines to make sure it does. So if the clutch is seized, shouldn’t you feel the disc not sliding?

Surprisingly, no. Once you’ve bench-pressed the transmission upward, positioned the input shaft in the hole in the clutch disc, aligned the two with the precision of lenses on an optical bench, rotated the flange on the back of the transmission to get the splines to mesh, uttered a foul streak of blue language that no matter what you do it’s not going in, prayed to whatever god you believe in, then finally slid the transmission forward and heard that reassuring THOCK that indicates it’s in place, the disc really doesn’t move much on the shaft other than floating slightly away from the flywheel when the clutch is depressed in the same way that brake pads move slightly off a rotor. It should also move slightly closer to the flywheel as the disc wears down. But more to the point, what you feel when you depress the clutch pedal isn’t the disc sliding on the splines—it’s the throwout bearing pushing the clutch fingers and moving the plate backward.

On a closely related note, I’ve heard of a malady where the clutch disc sticks not to the flywheel but to the splines on the transmission shaft. This causes the disc to drag against the flywheel, creating hard shifting until things warm up.

So, no, I don’t think there’s an easy definitive frozen-clutch-versus-hydraulics test. If it happens to you, I’d say do what I did and try to rule out the hydraulics. See if the clutch pedal feels normal. Check if the clutch reservoir has lost any fluid and if the hydraulics are leaking. If the release lever is visible, watch it while someone depresses the clutch pedal. If it’s not, pull out the slave and put the rod under pressure while someone pushes fluid into it. If it passes all those tests, it’s probably a seized clutch. So try to free it. If you can’t despite doing everything, you’re faced with either pulling the transmission to get direct evidence that it’s seized, or replacing the hydraulics even though there’s nothing obviously wrong. Which one do you want to try first? I thought so.

But if anyone knows of a secret test, I’d love to hear it.

And yes, from now on, I won’t simply mash the clutch pedal when I start a car—I’ll shift it to neutral and then mash the clutch pedal.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

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Clayton writes:

Sajeev,

I recently (about 18 months ago) bought a 1996 Cobra Mustang—with 47,000 miles, the 4.6-liter aluminum DOHC motor, and a little sun damage on the paint—for a fair price (mid-teens). This purchase was based on my excellent experiences with a 1998 V-6 and a 1997 Mustang GT. So, my expectations were that I would have an even better experience with the more expensive, more powerful Cobra version of the SN95 Mustang.

On my eight-hour drive back home northward through the mountains of West Virginia, I noticed that the heat gauge was very high, at least compared to my previous Mustangs. Not quite in the red, but definitely in the high “Normal” range. This behavior continued as I started driving the Cobra on a semi-regular basis. Upon researching some forums and troubleshooting my new car, I came across a Technical Service Bulletin (TSB) 96-25-12 for the air-conditioning condenser, radiator, and fan for the first year of the Cobra 4.6L engine that basically said, “The fins on the A/C condenser are too tightly spaced, and if you live in a more southerly state, Ford will replace this condenser with a more free-flowing condenser, free of charge.” Some forums also added removing the grille insert. I went ahead and removed the grille insert, but I left the A/C condenser job for another day.

Fast-forward 12 months. The car now has 50,000 miles on it, and it began to misfire while driving it one morning. I immediately dropped it off at the Ford dealership for that “dealer only” inside knowledge that will definitely provide the right fix. The dealer provided the diagnosis: I had a fuel injector that appeared partially plugged, and I was due for new plugs and wires. Once he threw the repair cost at me, I told him that I was a “car guy” and I wasn’t going to pay $600 dollars to have someone change my plugs and wires, but to go ahead and change the fuel injector for me. (That way we both get ulcers from the situation, LOL.)

Meanwhile, I researched some forums to see what plugs to buy for the 4.6L DOHC. It seems that most people are using NGK’s that are one heat range lower than the factory plugs. I bought the NGK’s and some Ford High Performance replacement wires, and took care not to strip the aluminum heads. I got all the plugs and wires replaced, but here’s the kicker—the engine began running near the middle of the “Normal” range on the heat gauge!

I have put on another 1500 miles since the repair and it is running well. So here are some questions regarding my situation:

1. The TSB tells the dealer to change the A/C condenser to fix the problem. Why would the engineer in charge of the TSB not know that changing the spark plugs would result in the same positive result to cool the engine?
2. Is there some damage I am doing to my motor by running “colder” spark plugs?
3. Why, if the factory cooling system is deficient, would colder plugs even help?
4. It is possible to have an air leak that would cool the motor without throwing a code for the fuel mixture of the engine?

Sajeev answers:

As someone with this same motor (mostly) in their 1995 Lincoln Mark VIII, I thought I’d heard it all when it comes to the 32-valve 4.6-liter Modular Ford motor. I did all the online research back then and stuck with copper plugs in the factory heat range, as the Hot Rod Lincoln folks who bracket raced swore they ran cooler and had more power, proven via higher trap speeds on a consistent basis.

But that was 20-something years ago, and I probably got the justification all mixed up. But I still have some experience with this, so let me suggest an utterly shocking group of events that caused your situation:

• Those plugs needed replacement at 30,000 miles and are therefore heavily worn out.
• The previous owner never did an Italian tune up and just puttered around in traffic?
• The issues above caused a mild amount of pre-ignition and the misfire.
• Combined with the restrictive-ish cooling system of the 1996 Mustang, you have a perfect storm leading to a temperature gauge reading too hot in the normal range.

This could explain why new plugs magically fixed your hot running issue, and I wonder if using some in the stock heat range would also fix it. Not that I am suggesting you buy eight more plugs and undo your hard work, so perhaps let’s just answer your questions:

1. Remember that the level of wear in your plugs and a possible pre-ignition condition is the most obvious culprit, and maybe the notion of Ford running a colder plug from the factory meant adding too many deposits in the combustion chamber. Keep in mind an OEM engineer’s tolerance for a balancing of power/emissions/durability is far different from yours. Regarding that potential pre-ignition issue, I’d also check the intake manifold’s EGR valve passage(s) and see if it also needs a cleaning.
2. No damage will happen with colder plugs, but I bet there are combustion chamber deposits after all these years. Blow it all out with a few runs to redline in second gear and/or a Seafoam treatment.
3. It’s not that the cooling system is deficient, rather it might slip out of an acceptable range if another factor (worn out copper spark plugs, combustion chamber deposits) compounds the problem.
4. Any amount of an air leak would absolutely freak out the engine computer because the mass-air flow sensor no longer gives it accurate readings. You’d have much bigger drivability problems if that happened.

Whew! That was a marathon of a thought exercise for yours truly. Is my notion plausible? Got a better idea you’d like to share? Post it in the comments so the Hagerty Community can learn more.

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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