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The Lat he, continued from page 34

I was usually able to talk myself into this ?modus loved parts-- parts of all shapes and sizes. Most of
operandi? for a whole bunch of esoteric reasons. these you could find if you were a good scrounger
However in order to fix things , and especially but every once in a while the best solution was to
unique things, you needed tools. And sometimes make one- if you could.
you also had to make the tool(s).
All I need , Now, is a Lat he
This inevitably leads one down the path of
acquiring an ever broader and more useful array One of the best tools for such tasks was the lathe
of tools. To me there was no more useful tool than and I wanted one badly. Life went on and I
a drill press; it did not take long to figure out that progressed through a ?62 TR3, a ?62 3.8 MKII a ?65
with a few more capabilities, such as a controlled MGB (which I thrashed through many gymkhanas,
feed and cutting ability, you would really have auto crosses and big track time trials) and a ?70 XJ6.
something. Marriage and a family caused a hiatus from the cars
but after a number of years the ?itch? came back
This ?more capable? machine was , of course , a with a vengeance when I came across another sad
lathe. Fast forward to my addiction for old British Jaguar-- but still no lathe!
cars.
After snagging my last , and now only remaining
Beware- This Way Can Lead t o Madness British car, (the ?70 E-Type) the need only grew. The
car had been badly mistreated, abused and
This turned out to be a great hobby but every rose
unloved; but it had found a home and I needed a
has its thorns. And as we all know, these things
lathe!
are festooned with thorns. A big problem was that
while these ?sporty-cars? are great to look at and Eureka!
fun to drive, they are also high maintenance
beasts. In a stroke of pure serendipity a friend at work,
who knew of my interest in old cars and machines,
I remember my reaction upon getting under my put me on to an ?old machine? that a neighbor of
first Jaguar ( 1957 3.4 Saloon) and seeing more his was looking to sell. The neighbor was an older
grease fittings than you could shake a stick at. lady who was moving and had this ?thing? in her
Many folks on this side of the pond bought these basement that had belonged to her husband. She
cars thinking you could treat them like any garden wanted to clean out the house and was happy to
variety Ford or Chevy ? Au contraire mes amis. find someone who wanted the machine .

At best they were neglected or worse, they We negotiated a price and all I had to do was get it
suffered at the hands of badly trained ?mechanics? home. Even though it would be described as a
who did more harm than good. So , quite often, ?bench top lathe? it still was a couple of hundred
when one of us types acquired one of these pounds of cast iron and steel.
beauties, it came with a lot of ?baggage?.
I rented a small truck and proceeded to
It soon became abundantly clear that in order to disassemble it and load it up. As I was finishing up
play with these ?big boy toys? you had to have a lot the lady stopped me and pointed to three boxes on
of extra money or a lot of patience and the ability the floor and said ? I believe these parts go with the
to learn. Scratch the first two but fortunately I was machine so please take them?. It would take
blessed with the ability to learn. another story to describe what was in the boxes but
suffice it to say any budding machinist would love
One of the first things I learned is that these cars
to have had this stuff.
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