Never know when you might need one of these…story by Pete Vack
John sat there and looked at the strange, delta shaped piece of metal for a two or three minutes before it came to him. There was a hole in the top of the triangle, and the other two sides were shaped like a small fork, somewhat like the letter A. His mind sought desperately to connect it to some previous experience. Finally, it registered. “Of course, this is the dumb collar that keeps the distributor locked down on a Fiat 600!” The relief (for anytime one finally recalls something a euphoric moment follows) was also accompanied by further memories. “The first time I recall seeing this device in action was when my friend’s Abarth 750 was running erratically at Lime Rock, must have been 1984-85. He couldn’t get the collar to hold the distributor tight enough. There went his weekend.”
Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen
Sorting through years of spare parts is akin to turning the pages of a treasured family photo album. A long table was full of parts, bits and pieces of a life, tangled indicators of what went right and what went wrong. They were from what John called his Fiat years. “Of course there were alot of things I’d like to forget about those years,” he said. He once looked all over for a Weber repair kit for his daughter’s Fiat 1200. After months of searching, he found one and proudly gave it to her for her 16th birthday. [Read more…] about Old Parts, Old Arts, Old …