Thursday afternoon I went up to Warren, Vermont in the Mad River* Valley to fetch a TR3. I had heard that Rte 100 was open again up thru the towns of Rochester, Hancock & Granville which had been cut off from the rest of the state.
End of The Line. Click to Enlarge
My assumption was this meant that Vt. Rte 107 which connects it to Bethel was also open. It wasn’t. As you can see, Rte. 107 now dead ends in the White River. It’s gonna be a while before this road is open again.
We are putting togther the Healey Blue over O.E.W. Austin Healey which was recently painted by Jason Marechaux and his crew at East Coast Collision & Restoration. This Phase One BJ8 has a few mods, such as the fully-side draft HD8 carburetors which are blowing thru a DMD manifold into a stage 2 Denis Welsh aluminum cylinder head
Butch marks out to install a high volume AZX 1405 fuel pump. Click to Enlarge
To cope with the potential fuel demand, we’re going with the AZX1405 high volume fuel pump which is sitting on the driver’s floor in this picture. This fuel pump is more commonly found in a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, or in the trunk of a “Series 3 Jaguar E-type V12″, to quote the company’s official nomenclature. This is one of the solid state pumps with which we have been experiencing a zero failure rate over the last ten years or so. We keep this pump in stock. If you’ve been thinking about more fuel volume, give us a bell and we’ll tell you how we install it.
Butch helps John run a TR3 overdrive harness
Earlier this week I tasked John with making the overdrive in this TR3 operational. It’s original to the car, as evidenced by the “LO” (LHD/Overdrive) chassis number suffix. For Triumph applications, it’s usually the ground side of the electrical circuit which is switched. Much confusion had obviously ensued with the wiring of this one, because the switch was, and now still is, wired hot. The simple fix here was to replace the veritable ‘spaghetti junction’ of wiring with an “A” type Triumph O/D harness, which we keep around for occasions just such as this.
An MG TC in its element; John comes back from a roadtest on a rainy day
You know our mantra: road test, road test, road test. John gave this MG TC the once over and finished his road test in the rain earlier this week.
V.O.R. Back about 25 years ago when the automotive aftermarket was still largely manual entry, lead times on pick, pack & ship could sometimes run to several days. But there was a magic phrase which wasn’t Rumplestiltskin, or even “Rapunzel Lay Down Your Golden Hair”that got your order moving at warp speed. No it wasn’t “Neutrino” either. The magic phrase was “Vehicle Off Road”, and in fact the mere utterance of even the initials would often get you your critical order on your doorstep overnight. Of course in the internet age, it’s kind of fallen into disuse.
Trivia Question: How did the *Mad River get its name ? As usual, the first three correct answers are good for a free oil filter, if we stock it.
