More problems fixed

11 October 2001

Since my last report, I got a new 'reverse lockout plate' -- a part you can still get at Porsche dealers -- and fitted it to the car's shifter.

Actually, I disassembled and de-greased the entire thing, and then put it back together with the new part. At some point, someone had decided that it was necessary to fully grease the springs in the assembly. Coil springs work by exploiting the torsional rigidity of the wire from which they're made. They do not require lubrication, and they will not work any better with lubrication. They will just make a mess.

Anyway, I put grease only where there ought to be grease, and put the whole thing back together, and the shifting is much nicer. It's still the sloppiest-shifting car I've ever owned (and I've owned some doozies), so I think there are still some bushings missing or improperly installed somewhere in the shift linkage. I hope to get the car in the air this weekend and give all this a thorough inspection.

I also made a half-hearted stab at adjusting the ride height of the front of the car. I was unable to turn the bolt at all, even when using my largest breaker bar. There must be something I'm missing -- and I think the bolts have been undercoated, too. I'm also going to try to fix this this weekend, and see if there's anything obvious that might be lubricated in the front end. Everything is allegedly "permanently lubricated", of course, but the car still squeaks a little bit when turning and going over bumps at low speeds.

Hell, it might make the noise at high speeds as well, but I certainly wouldn't know. This is, to put it mildly, one noisy car. There's a lot of clatter and fan noise from the engine to begin with; when you add into that the all-but-blown-out muffler and the free-flowing air filters, you get a hell of a lot of noise.

On one of the Austin pages, I give my impression of the sound of this car starting up in the morning. I might as well reproduce the sound here:

Whirrgronk whummwhummawhummawhummawhummabubbwhumma bubba pop pop whum bubba bubb bubb bubb pop pop pop bubbbbbbbbbbbbb pop pop pop pop pop pop bubba bubba bubba bubba bubba bubba.

By this point, the car is running happily and there's a huge cloud of smoke behind you. Give it another minute or two and it's pretty well warmed up.