Odd Job – Morley’s World #485

Funny how spring makes one get around to doing those tasks left idle for sometime.

In the spring, a not-so-young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of …

…Finally getting around to all those dopey, fiddly little jobs he should have done over winter. Winter, three years ago.

It’s funny, isn’t it, the way we put up with flaws and imperfections, even when they’re totally fixable. Seems to me that as long as the car is actually running and driving properly, those detailed jobs seem to get filed under Too-Hard.

But the warmer weather lately and the lure of the odd car show, suddenly meant I needed to get serious about some of these little jobs, before they became big jobs.

I decided to start with the Boxster. Like a zit between the Mona Lisa’s eyes, the driver’s pew of the Porker featured a gaping tear in the outside bolster.

Common enough problem, and one that occurs when big fat blokes get in and out of the car on a regular basis. And no, I refer to the previous fat-bastard owner, because the gash in the chair was there when I bought the car. I used it as a pretty handy bargaining chip, as it happened.

Anyway, job one was to liberate the seat from the rest of the car, mainly ’cos trimmers like it that way. Even if a trimmer is prepared to remove and refit the seat for you, not all of them have the storage space to stash a seatless car for a few days, while they do the job.

And in any case, taking just the seat to the trim shop meant that my beautiful Boxster didn’t sit in a corner of somebody else’s factory, being used as a work-bench or the local rat drop-in centre.

Of course, it was while working out how to remove the seat that I hit the first snag of what should have been a simple job.

Porsche, in its infinite wisdom, had decreed that the seat, although held in by just four fasteners, would be secured by a Torx socket-headed bolt (an E12, for the sticklers out there).

And while I did, in fact, possess a set of Torx keys, the matching socket set … not so much. So, down to the tool shop and $40 later I had the socket I needed. And eleven, I didn’t.

Really, the hardest thing about removing the Boxster chair was remembering to lower the roof before disconnecting the battery. Why? Because an open roof is a much easier way to extract the seat, than trying to jiggle it through the door opening.

The Porker’s new pew.

And why disconnect the battery? Because the seat is electrically adjustable and if you disconnect the cable with the battery still hooked up, the computer is a fair chance to crack the sads, and throw a fault code which will manifest as a dashboard warning light. No thanks.

The other tricky bit was finding a ratchet driver with enough length to overcome the Force-of-Ten-Elephants locking compound, Porsche specifies for the bolts.

Once the chair is free of the floor, you have to pull a little slidey thingy on the wiring connector, at which point the wiring lets go of the pew and you’re out and off to the trimmers with the chair in the back of the parts chaser.

Now, one of the beaut things about working in an industrial zone – as the MBC most assuredly is – is that you have access to plenty of people who can do the jobs you can’t/don’t want to do.

And just around the corner (more or less) in Wantirna South, is a trimming shop called Inside Cars which is run by a young feller named Adam who is always busy, but never too busy to say g’day and talk about cars.

So that’s where the Boxster seat went. From any angle, it was pretty obvious that the seat needed a new panel sewn in, but to match the colour in a traditional way was going to require me buying a whole hide. About a grand to you, sir. And that’s before Adam does his thing with it. Crikey.

But Adam had a solution. He reckoned he could replace the panel and then have a mob he deals with recolour the leather, for an exact match with the lovely terracotta interior of my Porker.

Initially, I’m sceptical, but as you can see from the pics, the match is as close to perfect as you’ll get and possibly closer than a new hide would have been anyway, as the recolouring allows for any fading of the original leather which still makes up 95 per cent of the seat.

While he was at it, Adam repacked and reglued the foam in the cushion which had bunched up under the leather, and then put it all back together and handed it and a very modest invoice over the counter to me.

Back to the MBC, out with the E12 Torx socket and before you know it, the seat is back in, the wiring is connected and no codes thrown. Magic. Just remember to lower the roof first, kids.

RECESSION PROTECTION

The other job I tackled recently was to protect the engine of the Charger from the horrors of unleaded fuel. As we older blokes understand, old cast-iron cylinder heads don’t appreciate the lack of lead in modern (unleaded, d’uh) petrol.

Valve seat recession is the major one, and even though I run the old girl on the 98-octane brew, even at $2.30 a litre, the stuff still doesn’t have lead in it.

But what I couldn’t remember was whether, when the engine was rebuilt many years ago, my brother (who built it) switched the head to hardened valve seats.

I reckon he probably did, given the amount of porting work he lavished on the old 265, but when I asked him, he reverted to type and shrugged his shoulders, claiming he couldn’t remember. He’ll get a job as a State Premier if he keeps that up.

Hello old friend. Time to put you in to action.

So I’m none the wiser and still concerned about my precious cylinder head. As it happened, however, I was committing a neatness at the MBC a day or two later when I stumbled across one of those Flashlube kits. Remember them?

They use the engine’s vacuum to draw in a few drops of upper cylinder lubricant every minute; just enough to cushion the valves and seats. I’ve had this kit lying around for so long, I can’t even remember where or how I got it.

It must have been lurking around for at least 20 years, but from what I can gather, you can still buy them new.

Anyway, I could have just decided to add a bottle of lubricant every time I filled up (which is pretty often in this thing, trust me) but finding this kit was clearly a sign. So I decided to go all old-school and fit it.

“That’s funny, my name’s Ethyl too.”

It’s a simple job, too. You drill two holes, bolt the bottle-holder to whatever sheet metal is handy in the engine bay (below the vacuum source to prevent the contents siphoning into the engine when it’s not running) then tap into a vacuum port on the base of the carby.

Fill up the bottle with the special lubricant, start the engine and fiddle the screw adjuster so that the drip rate is about 12 to 15 drips a minute via the sight-glass (for a big motor like this one). All you need to do then is keep an eye on the contents of the bottle and not let it run dry.

I’m sure there are more sophisticated kits out there now, but there’s something beaut about matching tech for tech. In this case a stone-age, pushrod dinosaur of an engine with a gloriously simple lubricant delivery system.

On-board lubing system.

And this one has no pumps, no wiring and no worries. Love it. And another job ticked off.

NO STANDING MOAN

Thanks to a system that seems constantly to be trying to offer me less for more, the gummint in this once fine state of Victoria has closed most of the motor registry offices.

Not that I was too fond of the old one which resembled a third-world earthquake, but the new one is farther away from the MBC and, because it now services about three or four closed offices, is busier than a kebab van at closing time. And smells worse.

But here’s how you know the world has gone completely barking mad: This new motor registry office is in a big, shiny new building, but lacks the one thing that I would have thought would be a motor registry must-have. Yep, there’s no car park.

Morley and Higgins discussing the liquid on the ground, or the colour of the Charger.

You either park in the shopping centre across the highway (I bet centre management loves that) or you find a place to squeeze into in a suburban street a few blocks away, doubtless endearing the concept to the locals, too.

It’s so ridiculous, the registry’s website actually makes mention of the fact that, even though it’s primary purpose is to deal with cars and the people who drive them, there’s no on-site parking.

This has to be up there with a dog park with no trees, a vegetarian steakhouse, a boat-ramp in the desert or a brothel with no beds. Then again, if the banks don’t seem to need branches any more…

T TIME

I’m really enjoying car-show season. Maybe it was COVID lockdowns that have made me keener than ever to get out on a weekend, or maybe it’s just the sniff of spring in the air, but I find myself attending at least one car show or swap meet every weekend right now. And it’s brilliant.

Sometimes I’ve dusted off one of the leaking, dribbling, derelicts that live at the MBC, other times I’ve gone in the parts chaser and just been a gawker.

But every time I’ve either run in to people I haven’t seen in ages, or met new and interesting folk who happen to know more about this stuff than I do. Sometimes both.

Most recently, I was at the Ford Flathead Festival which, as the name suggests, centres around the mighty flathead engines that Ford used so successfully for so many years.

Henry Ford tinkering, as was his want.

Having recently inherited a Model T, I figured I could do worse than wander down there and ask a few questions about ‘my’ car. (Actually, let’s be honest here, it’ll always be my father-in-law’s car, and I fully understand I’m just looking after it for him.)

Anyhow, until last weekend I didn’t really know what year the car was, let alone whether it was assembled here prior to Ford’s Geelong production line which opened in 1925.

My hunch was that it was a ’25 or ’26 model and, indeed, had been assembled on the fledgling Geelong assembly plant in the old Dalgety Wool Store. Naturally, I was wrong.

Even though I had just a couple of grainy, low-light photos on my phone, the first fella I spotted driving a Model T turned out to be an absolute wealth of knowledge on the subject.

Even with just my crappy snapshot to guide him, he was instantly able to tell me that my car is a 1924 model. So, it would have been built on a rolling chassis imported from Canada, and assembled here by one of the many companies that were making bodies for Model Ts in Australia before Geelong was established.

And by looking closely at the mudguard outline and the shape of the windscreen post, he was also able to inform me that the company in question was Melbourne-based Tarrants.

The next step for me now is to get back to the farm where the T lives, dust it off and clean it, and then get a heap more photos of it so I can continue the identification process and find the handful of bits that are either missing or are scattered around the farm somewhere.

Only Morley knows the barn and the find well.

The plan then is to get it running, preserve the patina, replace the bits the rats have eaten and then take my mother-in-law for a gallop in the T around the farm roads for old times’ sake.

Exactly what I’m going to do with the car beyond that is a mystery, but I don’t think I could bring myself to paint it or even restore it, beyond getting it working properly. And I know for certain I can never sell it. Watch this space.

From Unique Cars #485, Nov 2023

Photography: Dave Morley/Chrysler/Ethyl Corporation/Ford/Unique Cars Archives