Cars: Love 'em or Hate 'em

Fortunately our eldest son was blessed with good mechanical skills, and today lives on Maryland"s Eastern Shore converting old diesel Mercedes to run on vegetable oil, in his spare time. According to him, the Mercedes is not really broken-in until after 200,000 miles. He drives to his local McDonald's or Bonanza Steakhouse and fills up with used and discarded frying oil and gets about 800 miles per tank, almost for free. The process is a little more complicated, and the conversion costs about $1,300 to $1,500, but the encouraging thing to me is that he is beating the oil company's at their own game, and instead of polluting the air with diesel smoke he smells like French fries.

Some other good friends gave us an old, but well maintained Volkswagen Rabbit with a documented service record that showed a receipt for every part added and mechanical action taken to the car. It was both inspiring and a little intimidating. Our eldest son took a shine to the car, on which he decided to practice his mechanical skills. He wanted to change the radio, enlarge the speakers, woofers, tweeters and all that electronic stuff which is also a mystery to me, and in the process fried the wire buss behind the dashboard, and blew the electrical system. If we had known what we were doing, the repairs could probably have been accomplished with some effort, but since neither of us did at that point, another one landed in the junk yard.

After yet another breakdown, my friend Dan loaned me his late 70s Volvo which ran fine for another week, until driving home one night, I parked, turned off the ignition, and was shocked by a loud blast. “Now what,” I exclaimed, watching the trails of smoke wind into the air through a light rain that was falling. I called Dan, and he seemed to understand so I spent the evening holding the umbrella while Dan went under the hood and fixed whatever was wrong.

This “curse,” as it has been called, really isn't fair because I love cars, and occasionally try my hand at repairing them. My desire usually recedes quickly when I can go no farther for lack of the right tool or mechanical insight, and must call a tow truck to take it to the garage and let the pros put it back together.

The bank and I bought a new 1967 Sunbeam Alpine, which was the most fun I've had with a car. I even bought the shop manual with all those breakout drawings of the cars' inner workings, which made me feel good but didn't help much. I put the top down and left Seattle on the only sunny day in the month of June one year bound for California, pledging not to put up the top until I returned. I kept the pledge until approaching San Francisco in the fog two days later when my light weight coat wasn't enough to keep warm. On the way back somewhere in central Oregon's Interstate-5 “wilderness.” I heard a “clunk,” and the car slowed to about 30 mph, running rough. The mechanic said the Alpine had a tendency to throw a rod at about 2,000 miles and that they would fix it for free.

I went through my sports car racing stage, where all I did was watch, but at one event a race car did a perfect 180 degree spin - horizontally - right in front of where I was sitting. Without thinking I jumped over the restraining fence, ran out on the track, helped the track marshals turn the car right side up, and then nonchalantly walked back successfully dodging several race cars. As I reached my Sunbeam, the loud speaker was admonishing some nut to stay off the track because the management could not guarantee his safety.

I have more stories, but the point is that some people should seek psychiatric help to control their compulsions. My compulsion is obvious, but I've tried substituting with horses and they aren't that much cheaper or easier to maintain.