Ballast Resistor The purpose of the ballast resistor is to reduce voltage going to the coil. Not all cars have a ballast resistor. If your coil has three wires connected to it, chances are that one of them is for a ballast resistor. If the ballast resistor is bad, the car may start but die…
My original intent was not to give technical advice in this column, but since I like playing weekend grease monkey as much as anybody else, I can’t resist sharing some of what I’ve learned. However, I’d like to impart a general approach rather than giving a tech tip that you’d end up forgetting anyway. So,…
1948-1998 —When we say we have experience, we mean it! Moss Motors Ltd. is known as the world’s largest and oldest supplier of parts for classic British sports cars, but it didn’t start out that way. As a matter of fact, it really didn’t start out as a parts business at all. If Alan Moss had bought a Ford…
Of all the specialist British car makers of the 1950s, the TVR Company of Blackpool, Lancashire, had the most intimate relationship with America. In fact, the company’s early survival was due primarily to one Ray Saidel, who was the proprietor of the Merrimack Street Garage in Manchester, New Hampshire. Ray’s father opened the garage in…
This year, I spent part of May and most of June on the east coast, first as a judge at the ever-more-enjoyable Greenwich Concours d’Elegance. Best of Show went to a Rolls Royce Silver Wraith convertible owned by well-known collector Noel Thompson. This choice pleased me particularly because it featured a massive yet rakish one-off…
Much more fun than writing an article is the process of defending it after the fact. How could I, a paid professional, so utterly butcher the spelling of Snoqualmie Pass? My good friend Jim Pesta called and told me about the time he had an experience like mine driving top down in the rain with…
The Mini didn’t make nearly the impression in the United States that it did in Europe, mainly because the idea of tiny cars competing with Detroit iron on the freeways didn’t sound like too safe a proposition. However, on the narrower main roads and tiny lanes of European towns and cities, the Mini quickly won…
When I encountered Moss Motoring‘s editor Ken Smith at the 1996 Triumphest at Big Bear Lake in 1996, he kindly suggested that I might try conveying some impressions of the British sports car scene here in the U.K. in a series of articles for the magazine, maybe with particular reference to Triumph TRs, my own…
