Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

There have been times in my life–and I bet in yours, too–when I’ve found myself in a While-You’re-Up death spiral.

You know…you rise from the sofa during a commercial break and before you’ve had a chance to lock your knees your Significant Other says, “While you’re up, would you mind…?” That dot-dot-dot is always a small thing, like getting a can of soda, something you can’t legitimately refuse, not in polite society, and so you agree, except when you get to the kitchen, you find that there isn’t any soda in the fridge. You go to the pantry and find another pack of soda, only it’s warm. A quick peek in the freezer shows that you’re also out of ice. So you go down to the garage and get a bag of ice from the deep-freeze. Then, back upstairs, you bring back a can of soda and a glass of ice, only to be met with a smile and a “And maybe some chips? While you’re up?”

These are the moments that test marriages.

An example: one Thanksgiving, not too long ago, I got While-You’re-Upped from simply attending the feast to acting as sous chef to doing most of the cooking to actually setting the entire menu and creating the shopping list. While-You’re-Up-ism is a combination of slippery slopes and thin-edged wedges, often difficult to identify until you’re already hip-deep in trouble.

Such has been our experience with Pepper, the classic 1962 Triumph TR3-B we purchased a little over a year ago.

Pepper has turned out to be the biggest While-You’re-Up death-spiral experience of my life (to date, that is…one never knows). We bought in haste, and now repent at leisure, and though we both adore the car and the tours we take in her, it has been a trial. Truth is, if we didn’t love having, driving, and touring in the car as much as we do, she’d have been gone before the ink on the paperwork was dry.

My first, star-spangled, giddy-eyed goofball impression of the car blinded me to the obvious pitfalls of the purchase, but our first trip to the auto shop slapped a clear sense of reality into my noggin. The car–as beautiful and seemingly well-maintained as it appeared to be–was a shambles.

Over the months, we’ve pretty much repaired or replaced every moving part in the car (and several non-moving parts). The list has grown so long that some friends have–rather unkindly–asked if there was anything on the car that worked when we bought her. Unkind as it is, in all honesty, it’s a fair question.

While everything on the car did work when we bought her, none of it worked well. It didn’t take long, once we opened things up and started looking closer, for the While-You’re-Up juggernaut to begin accelerating to warp speed.

Right off, there were a lot of obvious (even to me) repairs that it needed. I mean, even I know that the carburetors are not supposed to leak gasoline on the exhaust manifold. The steering was lax, too, which was an immediate safety concern. The steering led to the discovery that the front suspension was all out of alignment, and that led to the discovery that the entire frame had been bent, probably during a T-bone accident or roll-over. The decision to replace the entire frame led to pulling the engine, which led to the discovery that the bearings and cam-shaft were worn. The transmission, likewise, had parts that were worn to nubbins, and it just didn’t make sense to put bad/worn/broken parts back into the car, so those went on the docket, too.

We’ve owned the car for fifteen months and of that time, she’s been in the shop for about six months. This last visit has been the longest, as the repairs are the most extensive. Pepper is due to come back to us in a couple weeks, hopefully by Valentine’s Day: nothing says romance more than a bundled-up, ear-muffed, top-down drive through near-freezing temperatures in the Pacific Northwest.

In the end, we’ve essentially bought the car, twice over. It’s been a frustrating, maddening, crazy-making, hair-tearing time, but for both of us, our overriding desire at this moment is this: we want Pepper back so we can go for drives and enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime gift we’ve given ourselves.

So, you ask, what exactly have we done to the car?

What they did:

• Completely new frame
• Rebuilt engine, including new bearings, machined cam shaft, and new rocker arm
• Rebuilt transmission
• Refurbished rear suspension
• Rebuilt front suspension
• Rebuilt steering column and steering box
• Rebuilt carburetors
• Rebuilt distributor
• New clutch
• New transmission case
• New radiator
• New brakes, front and rear
• New hubs, front and rear
• New exhaust system
• New fuel pump
• New shims and brackets and gaskets

What I did:

• New headlamps
• Refurbished tail lamps
• New side curtain brackets
• New dashboard knobs
• New choke cable
• New locks and door hardware
• New seat hardware
• New seat belts
• New hardware for soft-top
• New stone guards

It’s easier to list what didn’t need work:

• Differential
• Electrical system
• Body panels and fittings
• Starter motor
• Alternator

Now that is a While-You’re-Up death spiral. Still and all, I’ll be glad when she’s back in the garage, ready to provide a stress-busting toodle along the backroads of Puget Sound.

k