Butch checks the wiring diagram

The Electorate has spoken, or possibly more precisely the Electoral College has spoken.  Politics being the endless source of entertainment it is, you can interpret the results any way you want to.  I will simply say that the Obama Economy has been very good to us.

Butch has been busy the latter part of this week turning this two seater Austin Healey BN7 into a runner before it goes off again for paint.  We have been admiring it from afar, about ten feet away for at least the last six weeks, unable to get to it because of a force field caused by attractive nuisances like the Westlands Aristocrat.. or Lobster to use its period nickname.

John sets up the Mark IX rear axle

Regular readers of this column are probably aware that we have converted the Jaguar Mark IX sedan seen here to a 3.54 rear axle ratio with a Dana 44 limited slip (“In order to be able to make a graceful exit from a wet show field” according to owner Bob Mitchell).  The differential side end thrust of the axle half shafts is controlled by a couple of top-hat shaped spacers in the diff cage, but we didn’t have them, finally tracking them down in England.

The end float is then controlled with shims underneath the seal carrier on the outside flange of the axle housing.  The axle didn’t need ’em in its original iteration, but the spacers were a little long so shimming was in order, and John found a set in an XK 140 axle which has been separated from its XK 140 for the last 40 years or so.

Steve strips an E-type IRS

Vermont missed the misery wrought by Hurricane Sandy, however we’ve been innundated lately with Jaguar E-types.  In this picture Steve can be seen tearing down an Independent Rear Suspension unit for the primary purpose of overhauling the brake calipers and discs, but also for the secondary purpose of repairing some dumb tow-guy damage to the IRS cage where it has been torn by a “J”-hook used to tie the car down on a wrecker.

David pulls down a C75B Shorrock supercharger

Meanwhile, I’ve managed a momentary escape from the shackles which have bound me increasingly to my desk this year.  I will tell you that a truly zen-like sense of peace and contentment washes over me anytime I manage to get a set of wrenches in my hands for more than 40 minutes.  It’s what makes this such a wonderful way to earn a living.  Like the Motorhead slogan used to go:  “World Peace thru British Cars”.  Amen to that Brother.

sump pump on standby in the cellar of the shop

New York & New Jersey were hit hard we have been told, and considerable uncertainty reigned here on Sunday when we made the decision to pack up the vulnerable machinery from the lower shop where Hurricane Irene left her high water mark at 32 inches just over a year ago.

We were completely recovered from that deluge in about a week, almost the same amount of time it took for Vt-Trans to reopen the roads sufficiently for Butch to be able to get to work without detouring thru Greenfield, Massachusetts.  So Patrick and I packed everything up on his flatbed  Sunday afternoon and parked it in the barn.  Nothing much really happened here, but we’re simply awestruck by the amount of damage less than 200 miles away.

Steve repairs the windshield while putting a top on a TC

We spent Monday distracting ourselves with work while waiting for the other shoe to fall.  Steve has been putting a new top on Larry Perry’s MG TC.  The previous top was a semi-permanent installation that was not intended to be folded.  The Hershey AACA first place badge on the badge bar attests to this.  Steve had a little trouble with the mounting peg for the top on the left side, it broke.  He took a quick ride over to Abingdon Spares for a replacement, which uncharacteristically didn’t fit !   So Steve, with some help from Butch fixed it.  When he stripped the windshield he discovered that the right side peg had also been repaired sometime in the past.

Warner ball hones an MGB cylinder block

Lane Construction called off work Monday & Tuesday so Warner came in pulled down John McCracken’s MGB engine for a ring & valve job.  He boxed the head and sent it to River City Machine in White River Junction.  After a quick application of the ridge reamer he dropped the oil pan and pulled out the pistons & connecting rods and ball honed the cylinders with the Flex-Hone tool.

Flex-Hones are both the world’s most sophisticated cylinder wall prep tools and arguably the easiest to use.  Because the globules of abrasive are suspended on nylon filaments the tool conforms to the shape of worn cylinder bores like these and imparts a uniform finish that is simply unobtainable with conventional rigid-stone tools.

Click the picture for a closer look.  It’s why our engines don’t use oil.

It took us more than two hours to load up Patrick’s flatbed, but fortunately it’s a dump body, so unloading took about 45 seconds.  A close perusal of the debris field here will reveal a number of interesting components including, but not limited to a dual underhead cam hemi, an MGC overdrive transmission and some six cylinder Jaguar engine parts destined for the strip, clean, blast & paint process.  Click to enlarge the picture and see what else you can find.  We had already re-shelved several six cylinder engine blocks and some transmissions.

Butch at the wheel of the Westland Aristocrat

“The car had been seen off and on from 1977 to 1981 in various open sheds or fully exposed to the weather”  So wrote Dick Sanders in the opening remarks of his monograph on the Westland Aristocrat.

This is certainly one of the more esoteric automobiles to have passed thru our doors for  some fettling.  The chassis plate identifies it as “W2″, which suggests that somewhere, at sometime there may have been a “W1″.  Was it also red, we might wonder ?  Indeed, Dick has heard there may even have been three.

Dick Sanders fires up the Aristocrat

Dick’s tale begins around 1964 when the car, wearing Vermont registration number E 1495 was on the lot of Burlington, Vermont car dealer Carpenter & Mayforth, who may have also been agents for Saab, Citroen and even Borgward !  The visual evidence indicates they were also a Ford dealer, as well as maintaining an interesting and eclectic inventory of used, mostly british sports cars.  Where are they now, one wonders ?

A brief road test

The Aristocrat has a tubular frame and uses Morris Minor “A” series running gear.  It appears to have a Burman steering gear which is quite reluctant to turn.  The engine cooling, while hardly straighforward, seems adequate, but the cable routing for the clutch has the appearance of having been very much a last minute lash up.  Not much was known of it’s early history, apart from its presence at the Westland Motor Co. factory  having been noted by J.E. Smith, a consulting engineer in early 1958.

Butch took it for a low speed road test during which  even O.J. Simpson would have had time for a nap.

Funny how things work out sometimes.  Not long after Dick had forwarded his Westlands Aristocrat history to me, our friend Larry Perry stopped in, took a look at it and blurted out, “I know that car, that’s the Lobster.  Vance Smith had it parked out front at Tucker Motors in Marblehead back in 1959 when it was new !  Nobody wanted to buy it, and the mechanics called it the lobster because of the red paint“.

Tucker Motors never managed to move the car as a retail sale, apparently, and Larry simply noted that one day it wasn’t there anymore.  However, he was eager to see it again, and with an unusual shape like that, who wouldn’t be ?  And so more than 50 years on, a reunion of sorts took place here at Sports Car Services on a sunny and pleasant fall morning earlier this week.

Larry Perry reminisces to Dick about the "Lobster"