A Jag-Lover's Tale

VII. The First Drive

I reached down, struggled with and then released the hand-brake, pulled my foot from the brake pedal, and held my breath. I was rolling. In a moment of caution, I stepped on the brake pedal. The car stopped. Brakes! What a concept.

Ryan stepped up to the window to inform me that a loud clicking noise was coming from the rear wheels. Rather than do any damage, I stopped it there and Ryan set about checking the clearance in the fender wells. I had noticed, when doing the brakes, that one tire had rubbed on the inside of the fender well at some time before I bought the car. We checked that too, but there was still no obvious source for the noise. It was getting late, so I backed into the garage and shut it down.

Wheels, wheels, what had I done to the wheels. I thought about a bad bearing for a moment or so, but then I remembered how well the bearings seemed to work while I was racing up the neighbor's driveway. What else...

I had been forced to make a rather unorthodox attachment of the hand-brake pads. The rivets which are supposed to be used cost about $6 each, and there are eight of them. There is no rational reason why copper rivets cost $6 each, except that no one makes this particular variety any more. In a fit of pique (after all, what is $48 in the grander scheme of things), I substituted brass screws with nuts on the ends. All of the shear is taken up by the pad and carrier, the rivet just holds the assembly together. Was the screw rubbing on the inside of the wheel?

I checked the fender skirts the next morning before jacking up the back end. The clearance was on the order of a fingerwidth; close, but was it rubbing? Upon removal, the skirts showed no evidence of rubbing. I raised both sides of the rear end, slipped in the jack stands, and pulled the wheels. The brass screws showed no signs of rubbing, but I smacked them with a hammer for good measure, to provide clearance and to better secure the nuts.

Since the back was already up and on stands, I started the car and dropped it in gear. No noise at all. Either something was rubbing on the wheel, or the noise only happened when the wheel was loaded.

As I was lifting the wheel back into place I noticed a shiny spot on one of the old bridge pipes. Ah-ha! A couple of taps with a rubber mallet customized the pipe sufficiently that it was no longer rubbing on the wheel. I tightened down the lug nuts and went to the other side. Same problem, same solution.

My friend Phil happened along as I was setting the car down. Phil is not terribly mechanical, he owns only one wrench, but he has helped out from time to time. I invited him to join me on the first drive of any length. The Jag wasn't insured yet (a legal requirement in California), so our outing was limited to nearby residential streets, where the cops with their insurance detectors likely would not be found (later that evening I drove brazenly past a donut shop on my way to the gas station). The clicking was gone.

I was taking it easy, as the engine had less than a couple of hours of operation on it, and who knows what other problems would crop up. It took a moment to find the turn indicator, and a few turns to remember that I needed to manually shut it off. The right indicator didn't seem to work, but that turned out to be a burned out bulb. Everything else was working wonderfully, and my confidence began to build.

On a long straight stretch, on the way back home, I opened the throttle just a bit. The transmission made a try for third. After a great deal of searching, and with some fanfare, the shift was made.

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