broken down TR6

Drove up to Magic Wings in Deerfield, MA yesterday with wife and daughter. Indoor butterfly conservatory - hundreds of exotic butterflies from all over. 2 1/2 hour drive on Parkway and I-91. On the way up, I remarked about the absence of sports cars on a beautiful summer weekend day. Then I saw it- On the right shoulder, with hood (bonnet) up and owner standing alongside - a burgundy or plum TR 6. Waiting no doubt for AAA or Hagerty's tow truck. At about 70 mph on an interstate, I couldn't stop but could only hope it wasn't anything too serious. If it was a member or reader of this forum, please step forward and tell us what happened. That was the only sports car we saw other than a couple of newer Porsches.

It wasn’t me :eagerness:

Elliot, you were the first one to come to mind. Glad it wasn't you.

Thanks for thinking of me doc. I happened to be up in that neck of the woods last weekend but not with my 6.
I did drive it yesterday and thought of you! I stopped for gas and a tourist noticed my car and came over to chat. It turns out that this guy makes his living repairing Bentley’s and Rolls up in Long Island.

My guess is he wasn't driving an example, rather a Lincoln Navigator or somesuch?

You be right!
He was driving a high end SUV... nice down to earth guy. He also told me one of his clients flew him to Spain to repair a car that he had. Seems $ is not an issue with his clients. I told him if he needs a "helper" to let me know :thumbsup:

Most of our clients never had issue with the invoice. One instance was a guy with a Corniche drop-head, wanted the intermittent wipers to work. I told him it would be more "cost effective" if he just turned the wipers on and off at intervals... nope! He wanted the automagic interval thingie to work. I had to disassemble the entire instrument panel, all gauges and switches out, the box controlling the wiper timing was inaccessible otherwise. Part was $600, the time it took me to get at it and then put it all back together wasn't cheap either. He came in as I had all his parts laid out on long tables, asked if he could bring his wife in to see why it cost what it did to do the task... and also asked: "Will you be able to put all that back together?!?" mehheh... I shrugged and said: "Maybe" with a laugh.

I swear Rolls put that timer control box in the car before the windscreen and instrument panel were in place.

There were a couple folks we'll call "posers" but they were the exception.

DrEntropy said:

There were a couple folks we'll call "posers" but they were the exception.

Click to expand...

In the Mercedes tech world, the "posers" are the rule, not the exception.

You should have just bypassed the Rolls control box and used the dash switch to operate a FLAPS intermittent control relay.

I thought seriously about ginning up a 555/556 timer chip circuit to put in-line in place of that box (which likely used a T.I. 555 and a couple relays anyway!) but the guy was an "original equipment" sort. Humored him and charged for the task. *shrug*

The A/C expansion valve in my old MB 450SE failed years ago. Dealer estimated well over $1000 to replace it. Said they had to remove over half of the dash and console to get to it. I did find another German only shop that did the job for about half.

Had a gray market 280C come in the shop once, somebody had put a Chevy V-8 into it(!). Customer wanted the A/C to work, the engine swap shop didn't or couldn't make that happen. After my :WTF?!?! moment, we took it in. Old lump Frigidaire compressor, Chrysler vacuum controls... managed to sort it and can't recall what the amount of time we charged was, but do remember it took days of disassembly and sorting wiring/vacuum lines.

Those old piston compressors, like the York I had on a couple ford trucks and a couple Ford cars, took a lot of power to run compared to the ones today. One thing nice about the old Yorks was, they told you when they were going belly up by the racket they made!