Admit your Garage Mistakes

[Squalo]

My best car-related effort was when I was 17, when I took an unregistered hot EH I'd been building up for a quick spin to the shops to buy christmas wrapping paper... having overlooked the fact that I had not put the two lower engine mount bolts in. I could have walked it and soon enough I was wishing I had.

So, I get to the uphill T-intersection where you turn right to go into the main street of the small town I live in, wait for traffic to pass, then let the clutch out - she stalls. A competition clutch and a Waggot 44/74 solid cam will do that... clutch in, under-dash handbrake on, start her again - then stall again and get honked by the guy behind.

I fire her up again with an almighty rev and dump the clutch, the triple SUs open up and she lays rubber right through first gear. Big rubber too, 14x8 Cheviot Armorlites with 245/50 Eagers on the back, 14x7 front with 205/60s, so the sound is accompanied by a heap of tyre smoke.

I shift to second and keep on it, but then back off as we're heading into the strip of shops along the main street, and it's a Saturday morning with all the locals doing their last minute Christmas stuff. A few heads are already turning, and more start to swivel, because the motor has jumped clean off its mounts and landed on the front crossmember, pinning the SU throttle linkage wide open... the SUs are sans aircleaners, and the noise is astonishing.

So she keeps accelerating like a demon towards the redline and I have to go for third, and during the shift the motor goes to about 7k with the 2-1/4" exhaust system screaming, and me finally getting a handle on what is going on... now with the whole street of people completely stopped and staring with mouths open I push the clutch in, the motor revs its tits off, and I turn the key off... all the noise and fury ceases immediately and now I'm coasting through town at nearly 80mph. To make matters worse, a hose has split so there is also a massive stream of steam billowing from the engine bay.

I have no traffic in front of me and I was damned if I was going to stop right in the main street after that, so I coast past all the shops and pull over a few hundred metres later. Sprint the 300m down a side street to my parents hardware shop and call a mate who comes down with his trolley jack, and a pair of bolts and lower radiator hose out of his HR project. We put it all back together on the side of the road, praying that the police are busy elsewhere, and I take it straight back home, I never did get that christmas wrapping paper.

I was well known in the town because everyone knew my parents, but luckily that was the first time the car had ever left my shed - so no-one had a clue who the mad bastard in the primered EH sedan was...