Today is Christopher Goolsbee’s 19th birthday. Happy Birthday Chris!
He’s away at college, so we celebrated last weekend when he was home from Spring Break.
Nicholas & I took his second drive on public roads today. Here’s a shot of him at the wheel, on our driveway about to depart:
He did well. In our first drive last week we went around the driveway a lot, then did two laps around our neighborhood. This time we went straight onto the road, and after some warm-up in the neighborhood, we went down the hill to SR 530 for some highway miles. Over to the Trafton General Store, then down into Arlington for a run to the hardware store, the Co-op for some fence materials, and then out SR 530 almost to I-5 to buy some Diesel for the Jeep. (It is still not warm enough for B100 driving and I like to keep the Jeep’s max mixture @ B80 anyway.) Sue drove my Jetta today just so Nick & I could take the Jeep. The Jeep has a slushbox, while the VW has a manual transmission. I’ll teach him to drive a stick soon, and in fact, like Chris he’ll likely take his driver’s test with the Jetta, but for now I’m easing him into the fundamentals without the complications of clutch/throttle interplay.
After we got home and emptied the stuff we bought, I tended to the BioDiesel batch in process, then went to the garage to work on the Jaguar. The big cat has been slumbering most of the winter in the garage since the barn hibernation last winter was interrupted by mice. I did take it out for a drive one sunny but COLD day in January. I meant to address a long list of minor issues with the car over the winter, but never did. I figured now is as good a time as any to get started! First Item: Fix my cooling fan for good.
Here is a view of the critical bits. The red/black wire is part of my “hack” that put a fused wire from the dashboard “map light” toggle switch directly to the fan. This allowed me to manually operate it. The fan SHOULD be temperature activated using a thermoswitch in the radiator header tank, wired to that relay you can see below the header tank at the top of the photo above. via that blue wire you see at the bottom of the photo. The “T” shaped connector drives the fan. I’m pretty sure none of this stuff is stock, beyond the thermoswitch (called an” Otter Switch” by Jaguar). You can’t see the Otter Switch installed in any of my photos as it is put in the most difficult spot to reach on the header tank and requires you to lie on top of the engine and use a mirror to see it! I used a turkey baster to suck out the coolant from the header tank, then climbed atop the XK and using a mirror and flat screwdriver removed the old Otter Switch. Here it is with the new CoolCat replacement thermoswitch:
Above: Old Otter switch on the left, new CoolCat Thermoswitch on the right. New relay (yet to be installed) upper right.
With a bit of struggle I was able to get the new switch installed. I re-wired up the fan and old relay, and decided to go for a test drive. It was a nice Saturday, so Nick & I went to the Burger King Cruise-In:
There I ran into some old friends…
John Gumbinger was there with his Pontiac Le Mans that he’s owned from the early 70s. Restored in the mid-90s, it still looks great. John USUALLY drives a Nash of some sort, but not today.
Rob McLane, one of my neighbors and whose son played little league baseball with Nick many many years ago, finally has his Model A pickup running. It is sort of a rat rod with lots of homebuilt fabrication and cut/paste going on. I like it, in a crazy sort of way.
Parked next to us was a Volvo p1800 I had not seen before:
I spoke briefly with the owner, but we had to get home to take the whole family out to dinner, so we had to dash. Nick drove us all down to La Hacienda for Cadillac Margaritas and a yummy dinner. He then drove us back, so now he has 4 drives under his belt.
I learnt to drive in the same manner Chuck and so have my kids… started off on autos and polished things off in manuals (when they were available in the household).
good luck with the cat’s fan
Jerome
Send that kid to driving school, http://www.advanceddrivingdynamics.com/Why.ivnu, and you should go too!
How is the new cooling switch working?
Love the seats in the Model A. Though not as plush as the boat cushion on a milk crate we had in our ’42 Dodge Power Wagon. To complete the nautical theme we had an outboard motor fuel tank for gas… Just squeeze the bulb a couple times, turn the key and she’d fire right up.
Thermoswitch is working great!
BTW Mark, I think I found some sunglasses of yours in the car (actually Nick found them). Sort of clip-ons for eyeglasses. Sound familiar?
–chuck
Dan he is taking Driver’s Ed. I’m just supplementing it with more realistic and practical lessons.
As for the HPDE stuff, I’ve offered it to my boys and one day we’ll all do it together.
–chuck
Driver’s Ed here in Maryland is a complete joke and the so-called driving test is a toodle around a parking lot with cones and a grouchy DMV employee.
Of course, it wasn’t much different in my day, where we only had 3 required hours of classroom instruction and no behind the wheel training requirements. But we did have a real road test.
Our real driving skills were aquired with rear wheel drive cars in snowy parking lots 🙂
I’ve been trying to find a driving course, locally, similar to the one Dan linked to. No luck yet.
“BTW Mark, I think I found some sunglasses of yours in the car (actually Nick found them). Sort of clip-ons for eyeglasses. Sound familiar?”
I have my primary set (they’re magnetic) I did have another set that had spring clips. I don’t think I left them in the Jag though. Thanks for asking!
Mark, I cannot recommend highly enough MasterDrive. They’ve a website but don’t know they’ve expanded out your way. I think it’s among the BEST driving schools in the USA…even biased as one might expect me to be (ex-instructor), I believe it’s better than any here in Colorado.
Driver’s Ed here in Washington, along with the Driver’s test here is Washington is pretty much run by the propaganda wing of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. They won’t teach or test your actual driving skills, but you will learn more about alcohol and the laws surrounding it from these latter-day Carrie Nations so as to be able to pass the bar as a DUI attorney. It is completely absurd.
Paul, thanks for the tip. No MasterDrive in the mid-atlantic region, yet. Will keep googling…..