Thousand Dollar Supercar

I have the exact same ones as those, and I've polished some of them on a buffing wheel or by hand. I get worse results and it takes me longer. Where do you get the acid? Are you going to coat the metal with something to prevent it tarnishing again?

Thanks, but I've already got an emergency spare ECU from an '80s XJ6 (XJ40) which had the same 3.6l AJ6 engine. Also, I really doubt the ECU from a Ford-era V8 would run my non-cat inline six with a distributor and an oldschool hydraulic auto. But do look me up if you're throwing out the supercharged AJ16 engine and box of an X306 XJR / XJR6 or a set of 16inch lattice alloys from an XJ40 3.2 sport.

Possibly, but the smallest relay I could find in my spares would draw slightly more than the 0.4VA which the switch was rated for. I reasoned that the big old starter relay would be worse and might eventually kill the switch. My Alfa's ignition key switch started to misbehave in the end, and I ended up hooking up a starter button under the dash.

I replaced the stub axle on the other side of the car. Experience made the second one easier. Here's a new one flanked by the old two. Surprisingly, not only is the car a little smoother at motorway speeds, the steering also feels better. Motorway smoothness is still not 10/10 (which is what any car should achieve if it doesn't have anything wrong with it) - there must be still be some worn universal joints or splines or bearings or something out of balance, but I can live with it now. You can sense that when originally in good order and powered by a smooth V12, this car must have felt like gliding. The first owner probably felt smug for a good couple of days at least. I also figured out what was causing the universal joint vibration under harder initial acceleration - the driveshaft hanger bearing bracket thingy had moved, allowing a universal joint to hit a random pipe which runs alongside it in the driveshaft tunnel. The outer bits of the joint have been polished shiny from the impacts: We'll pretend we didn't see that design flaw. Now that some mechanical maladies have been addressed, I can get back to doing pointless stuff, yay! So I figured out that the growler face is actually a separate piece from the surrounding switch blank: Put out his eyeses! I put some teeny red LEDs into the eyes and picked some appropriate resistors so they can run safely from 12V. I bought a pushbutton switch and made up a bracket to mount it to the rear of the blank. The growler face is now glued onto the button of this switch. When you boop his nose, his eyes light up then gradually fade out (achieved with a capacitor). I also wanted this switch to actually start the car. I found a relay in the engine bay which seems to engage the starter solenoid, but it was a grunty-looking thing and my small pushbutton switch has a very low current rating. I therefore rigged up a random MOSFET to handle the coil current of this starter relay without burning out my switch contacts, and amazingly it worked. Here's my poorly-insulated dodgy mess on the back of the switch blank: And now the moment you've all been waiting for: The switch is powered by hacking into the nearby electric window switch wiring, which has a permanent 12V supply. Don't ask me if it's possible to crank the engine over without the key, or when the car's in gear, or when it's already running and driving down the road... I don't know the answers to those questions. Until I fully trust my new switch, I've kept it so you can still start the car with the key and I haven't done any bug testing.

But it makes them modern and high tech! My nixie clock is still going after nearly 11 years. I have it set to power the tubes only at times when I'm typically home and awake. My valve radio has been less successful. I've replaced the capacitors which take the ripple out of its DC power supply several times now, and for the most recent replacement I finally used a higher voltage rating. This stops the 50Hz hum, but the radio's tone is still fairly unpleasant and it soon starts doing random fits of loud crackling. I guess I need to replace all the wax paper capacitors too. Unfortunately the motivation has reduced - Gold Sport, the last AM radio station playing western music, switched from classic rock to modern country .. I hope they know that was the final nail in the coffin for valve radios.

It would be hypocritical of me not to give a thumbs up to a bar made of upcycled furniture, featuring Islay whisky and pointless lights... ...provided that no fireplaces were harmed in the making of said bar. I caution you not to store liqueurs in there or the ants will find them one day.

40mm carbs were on 1712cc boxer Alfas, which was the largest displacement the engine was produced in. The 1.5l twin carb versions of the motor had 36mm carbs. They brought out 16v heads and fuel injection for the final years of the 33, as seen here: https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/alfa-romeo/33/listing/5767061733

I dunno what they're worth, so it's probably best if I just list them and find out. I see you can get new China carbs on TradeMe these days, and I imagine that's what today's kids are all doing when they're hotting up their Beetles etc.

Yes, I've been meaning to list them for years but haven't got round to it. They were modified by old Murray at Weber Specialties... He ported the top plates to suit some 45mm(?) intake trumpets, inserted extra threaded rods to attach the trumpets, and swapped out the bearings of the throttle shafts(?) for a different design (because leaking air). I still have the trumpets and the 90-degree elbows from the 33 airbox. I also had the floats replaced not long after first buying the 33 approximately a million years ago. I've just found that I took photos for that listing which I never got around to placing.

A little piece of something got into one of my Alfa 33's carbs once and stopped the accelerator pump from working. I had to go find a sewing needle for a size comparison: I still have the carbs from the 33, but they're Dellorto DRLA40 rather than DRLA36.

When this thread went quiet I kinda figured everyone was hiding from petrol prices. They're not getting cheaper for a while. I've got a WOF for the Jag and I'm free Easter weekend except Sunday (I think).

I had kept this weekend free for it. I only just realised my WOF is expired, but hopefully I can fly straight through an inspection in time. If it's next weekend, I can only do Saturday.

OS is talking about a cruise to that area in about a month. How physically large is the liner when packed up? Can one person lift it?

I'll be there if I can. This might have been the last random OS cruise north of Auckland, back in the days of low resolution (2014):

Stop being lazy and do some mechanical stuff, Thousand Dollar Supercar. When I had a go at changing the front wheel bearings three years back , I noticed that the front stub axles / spindles were worn. I'm hoping this wear is the only remaining cause of vibrations at motorway speeds. Time to find out. You can see the stub axles have a taper which kinda presses into the suspension uprights. The proper way to remove them would probably be to take the uprights off the car and get a mechanic to press the axles out. No thanks. Alternatively, the Jaguar forums said to just loosen the Jesus nut (the one on the back side of the upright holding the stub axle in) and crank up the tension on the wheel bearings - the axle will dutifully pop out. I did this as much as I dared, including bashing the axle from the back with a hammer, no luck. Jaguar Barry's second suggestion was to drive around a bit with the Jesus nut loose, but I tried that for a week, still no luck. Back to the drawing board. Barry's third suggestion was to slip a piece of pipe over the axle, put a big washer on, then put the nut back on and crank the hell out of it. OK, but since the nut was a half-width type, I was worried that the thread would fail. Better get some full-width nuts for this puller jig plan. Big surprise, the threaded ends of the axles of this silly British car are 66 poofteenths of an inch, Worcestershire Imperial thread pitch, and nobody sells nuts for them. Nobody except The Bolt Shop, where I was able to buy individual 5/8" UNF nuts in full width, half width and nyloc, all off the shelf. Here's Barry's jig ready to go: I applied a decent amount of force. The washer started to bend. I tried hitting the axle from behind again, but I just ended up mangling the end of it and making it very difficult to remove the Jesus nut. Barry's final suggestion was a "blue-nosed wrench", but I don't have one of those. Fortunately, with enough scary force applied on an extension bar, victory! This old axle has less wear than the one on the other side of the car, but it's done now regardless. For my own records, I opted to grease the axle rather than loctite the bearings onto it (Barry opinions differ on this). Alas, I still have the other side of the car to do. This wrestling with mechanical stuff isn't my thing - I'm a lover, not a fighter.* The results better be worth it. *I'm neither a lover nor a fighter