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The winter racing season has been a good one with plenty of cold temperatures and plenty of ice to run on at Newfound Lake in Bristol, NH. The BMW Club puts on a great event and everyone should try it at least once. It's amazing how much practice you can get in at 11 mph with absolutely no traction. And you can run anything that you can drive up to the lake. I would suggest something with good heat since you'll spend a lot of time in the car if it's really cold. Something with a radiator is best as the heat from one of our air-cooled four bangers isn't usually enough to keep the ice off the floor. But of course the old saying of "run what you brung" is still in effect. Years ago we had a fellow show up at our autocrosses with a Volvo 122S two door automatic. He actually did a pretty good job with it after a couple years of practice. As we got to know him better we asked why he ran a car that was clearly never intended to be an autocrosser. He said it was because that was the car that his grandmother had given him. So just about any car is suitable remember it's all just for fun anyway. The winter has seen its share of completed winter tasks. There were new heater cables needed on a couple of 356's. One was an A , the other a C coupe. The heater control knobs are different but the result is the same, pull the cable to close the flaps to direct the hot (?) air into the car instead of onto the ground. The A has a knob that is turned which moves a lever which tightens the two cables of single strand wire. I looked up the mechanics of it in an Elfrink manual, which had a diagram showing how to bend the wire to secure it to the lever. The wire had broken back by the heater boxes so I pulled it out from the front being careful to wrap the cable in a cloth as it came out of the tube on the floor. You'll only have to pull a dirty greasy cable into the interior of a Porsche once to always remember this little trick. The stiff wire of a pair of heater cables can leave the mark of Zorro all over the seats and door panels in the blink of an eye. Out on the work bench was the remains of the cable that had been wired onto the lever some 44 years ago looking exactly like the illustration in the manual that was printed 40 years ago. I always replace the cable with braided stainless steel cable of the correct size and length from my local hardware store. I use just one piece rather than two separate lines because it's easier to connect to the lever. Plus the local stuff is $.19 per foot (9 feet needed) as compared to the $28.00 for the cables from one of the vintage parts suppliers. I remember thinking years ago how clever I was to use the braided cable instead of the single wire line that the factory used. It would easily last twice as long as the stock item. But then the stock wire lasted 44 years so who 's really the wiser here? The 356C heater system is the same except that it uses just a lever that you pull at the base of the gearshift to tighten the cables instead of a knob to turn. The R &R part of this repair is a little tougher since you have to remove the entire gearshift base to get at the bottom of the lever where the cables attach. This will give you the opportunity the bolt the fixture back to the floor incorrectly and lose either first and third or second and fourth. With a little practice you'll be able to do this job with no second adjustment. Of course since they only break every 40 years or so you won't get much practice. Axle boots were on the list this winter also. It seems that these rubber boots are not lasting as long as they used to. I don't ever remember replacing a single axle boot in the early days. Maybe that was because I was in college at the time, always parked in the dirt and never looked under the car unless something made a noise. Now anything that leaves a drip on the garage floor is like an alarm going off in a bank. Plus the heavy weight gear oil that is in all the early swing axle transmissions smells something awful. Not like motor oil at all, but more like the odor that you get from a pile of dead leaves that have been under a snowbank all winter. There just isn't a way to replace one of those axle boots without getting some of that foul smelling oil on your hands and arms. The little bolts, washers, and nuts that hold the seam together are too small to be handled with gloves on, so prepare to get the oil all under your nails while the axle tube drips it on your arm. Great fun, even the dog will avoid you for few hours after the job is complete. This year I paid up and got the synthetic oil for the transmission. I couldn't remember when (or if ) the fluid had ever been changed. It seemed like a lot had spilled out while I changed the boots, or at least I seemed to be wearing a lot. The real trick is getting the oil out of those little one quart containers into the transmission fill hole which is up on the side of the case. There is a lot of things in the way that will make this job difficult. Like brake lines, heater cables (didn't I just put those in?), axle tubes and heater cans. I've read stories about guys that heat up the oil in a microwave to make pouring easier. This synthetic seemed to pour pretty easily and putting anything from the garage onto Leigh's microwave would earn me a month on the couch. So that was out. It was just a matter of filling the container from the halfway mark to full seven or eight times. It seemed that no matter how hard I squeezed it or how much I compressed the container, half the oil was still in the bottle. No problem, just keep adding 1/2 a quart at a time. I now have one container left with a little over 1/2 quart left in it. I think there was a children's story about this very problem and the crow filled the bottle with pebbles or some such solution which I couldn't recall. I got it done my way and besides the stains from the synthetic seemed to match stains from the old stuff on my shirt. That pretty much takes care of the under body stuff that was on my list. Might as well change the oil while under the back of the car. It only takes a minute to pull the plug. Changing the oil every spring is a good routine to get into if you don't drive enough each year to hit 2500 miles between changes. Besides it will make you feel like you're really doing something while you wait for the next heater cable failure. Keep the Faith ! |
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