Roger Update

This week a couple of boxes were delivered. One contained a new gas tank for the Morris Minor. The tank was purchased on Ebay. Another box contained a new fuel pump which I purchased from Amazon (lowest price), and the final box contained spark plugs, distributor cap, rotor cap, points, condenser, coil, and plug wires which I purchased from the web site of one of our local parts house chains. I am still expecting a final box containing a new stainless steel gas cap.

Some of the parts go on the car, some will be used to repay the nice guy who loaned me some parts at the recent car show. Hopefully I will get around to delivering/installing all these one evening this week.

Garden Update

The garden is producing nicely. I pulled a couple varieties of tomatoes along with one strawberry, a couple onions and cucumbers to complement dinner tonight. I was hoping for a couple of squash as well but all the squash had been left on the vines too long (I was out of town for the week) and were too tough.

The okra is about knee high now. Several blooms but I did not spot any pods. These plants are mostly from the third planting. Apparently rabbits will even eat okra if they are hungry enough. I decided to put up the chicken wire fence after the rabbits got the okra.

The watermelon and cantaloupe vines are growing like mad. I spotted a couple of small melons on the vines. Looking forward to enjoying more of the results of gardening.

June, Where has it gone?

I spent this near Jacksonville, FL on business. This was my third trip to this location. I spent most of the week out side and I have never felt so hot in my life. I am certainly glad to be back home.

Last weekend on Friday, I went on a one night camping trip with a David M, and Chad E to Savage Gulf in TN. During this trip, which was also hot and humid, I decided I would never again go camping in June, July, August, and at least the first half of September. I definitely prefer cold weather camping – no snakes and no bugs (especially ticks).

Roger's Day Out

Today we took the Morris to a Euro-Brit car show. Lots of Triumphs, MGs, Austin Healeys and Volkswagens. Quite a few Range Rovers, Minis and Porsches. On Ferrari, one Lotus, and one Morris.

The trip, fewer than 10 miles, to the show was uneventful. That is until I stopped for parking directions. At that point Roger refused to start. That has not happened before (when I had gas in the tank – I have already run out twice because the fuel gauge doesn’t work). Fortunately the car is British so no one was surprised when it wouldn’t start.

I popped the bonnet and a bunch of guys leaned in under the hood. These guys were great. And knowledgeable. And prepared. After checking to make sure there was fuel, they checked for spark. The spark was weak. Eventually they had replaced the distributor cap, the rotor cap, and the spark plugs. And Roger was alive again. The amazing part was that they had all these parts with them. And more.

I got the name of the guy that supplied all the parts so I could replace them. I also learned a lot through the process. Basically the car didn’t want to start because the spark was weak – it basically needed a tune up. The weak spark alone was not the problem. The plugs were also really dirty. The plugs were dirty because the car was running rich. And the car was running rich because the electric fuel pump was the wrong part.

Normally these cars have mechanical fuel pumps but they often get replaced with electronic equivalents. The problem was that this one pushes about 5-7 pounds of pressure where the carburetor only needs about 2 pounds. The increased gas pressure basically forces gas through the carb which is what has been causing the car to run rich. This all made complete sense, after it was explained.

The car has been running rich. I had been studying how to tune the carb in order to correct the problem. Using the instructions from my manual, I had tuned the carb down as lean as possible. I was baffled as to why it was running so rich. Now we know. We also know I need to replace the fuel pump. (One of the guys even offered to loan me one.)

I also found out that as the distributor wears out the car loses power at medium to high RPMs. I would say that based on this knowledge I would say my distributor was well worn. The car definitely felt peppier after the meta-tune-up.

And finally I received lots of good advice I plan to follow:

0. Replace the fuel pump. Soon.

1. Finish the tuneup. Replace the plug wires, the condenser, the coil, etc.

2. Carry some spare parts in the boot. Extra plugs, distributor cap, rotor cap. The parts are cheap and don’t take up much space.

3. Buy some extra tools and leave them in the boot as well. With a Harbor Freight nearby, I think I can accomplish this for about $20.

One of guys in my neighborhood invited me to this car show. I already knew about it and planned to attend. I had talked with him about my carburetor already. He was at the show and had brought me a copy of a tuneup guide for my carburetor. (Did I mention these guys were all really helpful.) Ernie is a very interesting and knowledgeable guy. He is also a Fiat guy. I believe he has 4 Fiats, maybe 5, 3 are convertibles. At least one is a parts car. He also has a couple of 1967 Datsun 1600s which are also convertibles and which I think are pretty awesome cars – I mentioned one in a post several years ago when I first saw one in a salvage yard. Most of his cars are still in the project stage and I suspect he is actually working on all of them. (And he is an accomplished brew master.)

Last night the local Euro-Brit car club went on a drive. I had wanted to attend but I was pretty sure Roger wasn’t up to it. It is a good thing I didn’t attempt the drive. Hopefully we will be up to it next year.

Overall, I had a very enjoyable day, even with the breakdown. The kids went with me and I think they had a pretty good time as well.

Pictures from the Garden

It, the garden, was supposed to be smaller this year, but it ended up larger. That is what happens when your trade in the shovel for a rototiller for preparing the ground.

[UPDATE: Sorry, the picture got lost during the blog shuffle.]



May 3rd and there is already a tomato on the vine.



And a couple of strawberries.



And a couple of strawberries from the wild strawberry vine.



Volunteer. Possibly okra.



Three more volunteers. Probably squash.



Another volunteer. Also okra?



And all the okra that I actually planted.

Rained Out, But No Rain

The car show that was rained out last weekend was reschedule for this weekend. Again we had rain fore-casted but since no rain was actually falling, I decided to go on. When I arrived at the Athens Town Square, I saw a single vintage car. It didn’t occur to me to check the Cars on the Square web site for the event. It turns out the event was reschedule yet again. This time for June 6th.

Mid-South Live Steamers

My backup plans for the day involved a trip to Columbia, Tennessee to see/ride the trains. Unfortunately the weather prediction there involves 100% chance of thunder storms. This is the second time in a row I canceled this trip due to rain. Checkout the pictures of previous events.

First

So here it is – same content different software. During the conversion from Blogger to Word Press I thought I had lost 10 posts. Which ones? Who knows. Upon further investigation, I found that I had several draft posts that had never been published … so no content was actually lost.

Perhaps someday I will include the missing posts in the Obsession Box Set release.

The blog has moved.

To find the most recent posts go to http://ram92.ods.org/blog/

Update: Now located at rickmartindale.blogspot.com

The End is Near

Blogger's support for FTP ends tomorrow so I am in the process of switching over to Word Press. Things will look different around here for while.

Tuesday night woodworking was not very productive. The greater we managed to make 24 precision cuts. OK, so maybe only 3 of them were precise, but we did try to at least cut the correct boards.

I also crawled under the Morris to find the gas leak. It turns out the leak is in the tank. This is quite unfortunate as the tank is pretty much full right now. And now it is slightly less full. And now ever so slightly less than it was a second ago. You get the picture. So in the very near future I suppose I will be dropping the tank, but first I must procrastinate for a while.

And finally it must be said Danny is now officially a bum. Bring on the summer and shred the list.

What I Did and Did Not Do This Week

Last week was spent standing in a field in the middle of Ohio. I got back home Saturday at about 1:00 AM.

We got a dog Friday afternoon. His name is Yoshi. He is about 1.5 years old.

A camping trip had been planned for the weekend, but it was canceled because several of us could not make it. Turns out we had bad weather too.

There was also a car show on Saturday that I wanted to go to. It was postponed until next weekend because of the weather.

And finally there was a wood working show this weekend and I managed to get there on Sunday afternoon.

Crazy Talk

Several folks have ask me if I had gotten rid of the Miata. That is of course crazy talk. I still have it and I still need to put that missing piece of the stripe back on.

The Morris Minor 1000

Hello Roger

Thursday night while browsing Craig's List, I came across an interesting ad: For Sale: 1967 Morris Minor, yada yada yada.



(To get a good idea how big this car is notice the Volkswagen Beetle in the adjacent spot.)

Thirty-six hours later it was parked in my driveway. When I saw the ad, I knew it would go quickly. I called the owner. He said two others had already made arrangements to come see the car. I made my appointment for earlier in the day!

This car is roughly the same size as a VW Beetle. The interior is spacious but sparse. The exterior styling is reminiscent of cars 20 years older that it. It has a very small engine (1 liter) and a fairly large trunk boot. The paint looks good in the pictures and from about 20' - closer than that you can tell it needs some attention.

It quit once on the trip home. The previous owner said the gas tank was full. The gauge showed the tank was full. Fewer than 15 miles later I was out of gas. The gauge still showed the tank was full - it was not. In what seemed like a fortuitous event, the car ran out of gas right in front of a gas station. Unfortunately it was an unattended commercial refueling station. None of my cards worked there. My neighbor Brian who was still following me at this point, went and bought a gas can and brought me back some gas. At this point I headed straight for the station and filled up the tank and the empty gas can, just in case.

Did I say it quit once? It also developed a vacuum leak on the way home. This is kind of the opposite of quitting. The leak caused the engine to idle high. Nothing that couldn't be dealt with if I ever made it back home. Because it was idling high, I turned the motor off each time I had to stop for a light. (This reminded me of my hyper-mile-ing experiments the summer of 2008.)

Each time I stopped, there were one or more people there to ask me about the car. Two British car guys stopped to chat, they both wished me luck which I understand one needs when they have a car from the UK. Lots of people waving also. I think this car was getting more attention than the 1925 Chevy truck did. Amazing.

It has a few problems, but nothing we can't live without. I hope to get it running a little smoother soon. It won't be too soon though, my calendar is booked pretty solid for the next couple weeks.

Several folks have asked me what I am going to do with this car. The short answer is nothing. I don't plan on restoring it - basically I just want to keep it running and go get a milk shake from time to time.

Oh, yeah, we have decided to call it Roger, a name that stuck very quickly.

Boring Stuff

Plowed up part of the yard for the garden today, right after I called my father-in-law to ask him if he put sugar in the gas tank. Turns out he didn't.

The tiller as it turns out is a bit finicky about being cranked. It will apparently run on old gas but refuses to be cranked using old gas. The trick to getting it to crank when the old gas is in the tank is to pour a little fresh fuel in the spark plug hole. Just enough to get it running. Once it is running, it will run fine on last years left over gasoline. I have learned this twice already in the last month.

Twice.

I finally got around to uploading some photos. Speaking of photos, I ordered myself a new camera recently. I have had such good look with the last one, a Canon Elph, I decided to get another one. My previous model apparently has been discontinue so after slogging through the specifications on Amazon and the Canon web site, I picked one out.

Don't expect this to turn into a photo blog. That would be too much work.

Sit Ubu Sit, Good Dog!

This is Ubu, our loaner dog. He is really a she and she thinks she is a kitty cat.

As Far As The Eye Can See

Somehow I ended up in Florida again. Two weeks ago I was here but in a different part of the state. This week I am here on business. Last time I was at Disney, this week I am in Jacksonville.

The weather was really nice when I arrived. I was disappointed when my rental car turned out not to be the yellow 2010 Corvette convertible parked next to my Ford sedan, or as the Europeans would say, salon. Maybe next time. Ha!

Trivia for the day - what group of workers went on a national strike in 1877?

Answer - Railroad workers.