Do Not Anger the Electrons!

The very same gremlins were at work on Sunday.
Different car - Same garage!
Picture drawn by Luke Deikis

I admit it...I'm a bit of a Luddite. But I have given in to some modernization when it seemed in the service of better reliability or longevity. This was my agenda when a friend and I transistorized the fuel pump on Morris 25 years ago one afternoon while sitting in a motel room in Wildwood, NJ sipping Schmidt's beer and munching roasted garbanzos. But I have also learned that technology can come back to bite you later on. Solid state devices tend to fail without warning, stranding you at the worst moment, in the sleaziest neighborhood, or in front of the most surly trucker. Conversely, they sometimes choose to expire in unpredictable fits of opposition, stepping in and out of your life intermittently, intent on driving you bananas.

A number of years ago, I replaced the electromechanical points and condenser in my ignition system with an optically tiggered transistorized "black box" that would never need adjustment and had no moving parts. It has worked flawlessly for at least 10 years. Last year I had a spare fuel pump professionally rebuilt. This would be good insurance on the rally, I reasoned, and my old pump could be a reliable spare part. Following the same logic, I sent out my voltage regulator to have its mysterious copper-wound bobbins and contacts replaced with even more mysterious transistors and diodes. Hey, these are the things that get rockets to the moon! I even decided I could be the only person I knew whose dash-mounted electric clock in his MG actually worked. More transistors.

This was PRE-installation!

How did it work, all this modernity? I have come to believe that Joseph Lucas, the Prince of Darkness, was getting cross with me for meddling. Five miles into testing my new motor, the transistorized regulator stopped regulating and had to be replaced with a genuine made in the U.K. mechnical control box. No, it won't miraculously limit overload of the generator, but it will make the little red light on my dashboard go out like it's supposed to, and keep the battery charged within certain limits. Then, last Saturday, the morning of my departure send-off at the Ypsilanti warehouse monthly coffee klatch, I started to experience an intermittent dying of the engine, as though the key were being turned off. This problem finally came back in spades as I was leaving for the rally with the car packed and my little camping trailer in tow. I literally made it 2 blocks. Dead in the water.

Many hours later, with the help of friends Elliott Andrews and Eric Marshall, the gremlin was discovered to be an intermittent dead short in the ignition system hiding inside of that transistorized black box. A spare replacement box was no better. Fortunately, I had all of the little mechanical bits that came out of the distributor many years ago...for just such an eventuality. What I didn't have was the skill to diagnose and track down the problem in order to realize these old parts could make the car run again. Saved again by friends who worked on a very hot and humid afternoon to get me on my way.

This is what I call an inauspicious beginning to a 3200-mile motor trip. But, by 6:30 pm on Sunday night, I was again on the road and heading south. My intention was to intersect the rally at Cincinnati which was the second night's stop. I pulled across the Covington bridge around midnight, just in time to get lost trying to follow the GPS. I got old-fashioned once again: Switched that abrasive woman off and asked directions at a gas station.

Too late to scout out a place to camp, I took a room at the Holiday Inn, had a much needed shower, and got a few hours of shut eye before setting off in the morning for St. Louis. Hot, sunburned, and relatively happy, I checked into the Renaissance Center Hotel, found an Irish pub a block away, and enjoyed the hospitality of the St. Louis MG Club over a pint of Guiness. Joseph Lucas, are you listening?  And the clock... it stopped after two days.