British cars? Yeah, I worked on a few.....(snicker).....I know they provide more laughs for me nowadays as I look back. And why you ask? Let's start with Girling brakes.

Oh let's not. They weren't completely at fault on this one as the Bendix and Dunlop folks had a hand in it. Customer with 64 E-Type coupe is smelling something. I take the car down the road and as soon as I hit the brakes I knew the rears were gone. The guy smells asbestos but doesn't notice the brakes barely work? Even though you could also HEAR the scraping? I turned around and had to brake hard twice on the way back just to interest the damn thing in stopping at all....caliper froze up. It was late evening and as I pulled onto the drive my partner dropped his cigarette and turned quickly around the corner returning with a extinguisher before I stopped. He didn't have to tell me to get out. We looked underneath and there was no fire yet but the rotor was glowing and those onboard rotors were mounted right next to the gas tank. Obviously not all a brake problem as the fuel tank could have been elsewhere and the owner was about unobservant as all hell. However, that simpleass Girling caliper design combined with the cheap crap they made them from were always a problem. Not everything was so dramatic..................


Smith instrumentation! My word, what fine devices to measure speed, rpm, oil pressure, water temperature, and the like.. The only problem was they had a prevarication problem. What they read often did not reflect reality or even a close approximation thereof. Sometimes they opted to read nothing at all until you began to check them when they all worked perfectly. The one thing they did reflect was sunlight and if there had been sunlight at night this would have been useful when you opted for turning on the Lucas supplied electrics.

"Joe Lucas says don't go out after dark." This was their slogan and good advice it was. You never knew what, where, or when, but there was no if about it. When you left Point A, something supplied by Lucas would break before Point B (Coil?), and another before Point C(voltage regulator?). It could have been the ignition switch or the wiring itself though. Can't blame Lucas for all the wiring problems. Evidently British car workers felt it was okay to stretch a foot of wire to 18 inches or in another case bury 5 foot of excess wiring behind the headlight. Before Point D though you'd have a mysterious fuel problem supplied to you by those fine SU carbs.

S-U.....Stands for Sorta' Useless. As carbs go, they were. Carbs are interesting devices relying on laws of physics and a few bits and pieces of brass and pot metal to supply a perfect fuel mixture under all speeds and driving conditions. They really can't do this which made Fuel Injection such a godsend (except Lucas Injection of course). The SU is a side draft carb relying on "constant depression" which they give to many owners and a lot of mechanics. Generally the simplistic design was okay til you tried to make two of them work together. This was quite achievable but somewhere before Point D things would go to hell and one of them would have to come apart and get generally fucked with til it worked. You never could tell much about what went wrong because you'd reassemble them just as they were most times. The temptation was to simply smash them to bits with any hammer available. I know a guy who succumbed to the temptation. Wasn't me but I knew the feeling.

I love British cars and especially those gems from my era of wrenching them. They provide me with more tales per car than any other country. Wanna' hear Lotus tales? Or the about the Jag that got even? No.....you don't....


Spaw