Here’s a short one, a footnote in the trials and triumhs of the classic car owner. I’m posted at my desk, working away (sitting idly, really) and chuckling inside about fixing frustrations along the road, as it were.

My evening started with the realization that a familiar little tick-tick had become null, nonexistant, when I deem it to be quite a necessary thing in the proper and safe operation of a vehicle. My turn signals were dead! Non-op! Kaput! That’s simply asking for a frisk & a ticket. I rode into work cautiously, thankfully the late shift affords me a few less asshats to avoid on the blacktop for my 11-mile trek to the moneymaker. After settling in and enjoying dinner (a couple hamburgers from Nation’s in Alameda), I decided to get under the dash of the ’66 and investigate. My signals were npt flashing, though they were lighting; this is an obvious sign of a faulty or loose turn-signal flasher module. “Easy replacement”, I thought, “I’ll hit NAPA in the a.m. and blow a Lincoln. But wait- what if I simply test the connection?” So remove and reinsert I did, on the loose pigtail supplied by Mopar almost 50 years ago. A quick flick of the lever, and there it was…. a nice (if not too-loud) tic-tick of a sh*tty aftermarket TS module. Hate to have it go out again…. Maybe I’ll skip a cup of coffee and spend the $ on a MoPar unit instead?
Yeah, this was exercise 3,981 on the list of crap we old-car guys do to keep ’em alive. Still, compared to needing a Windows laptop to change the oil? I’ll take a loose socket now & then!

Addendum- while rereading this (after a good night’s sleep), I remembered another silly story of roadside fixes!

The year? 2006. Summer was hot, and Sacramento was a stomping ground for myself and my family, old steel aplenty. The 1958 beetle I had been restoring was well on its way to completion, and the daily ride was a sweet and fun little white-on-red ’63 bug whose motor was a bit long in the tooth, but kept me putting around town. I’ve forgotten my destination, but I remember the exact moment of horror; I was going under the J-street underpass, when some frayed steering-column wire shorted out and began intermittently beeping my horn (a Herbie-like toot that was too duymb to be useful in traffic!)…. every twitch of the wheel was another annention-grabbing TOOT! and people were literally pointing and laughing at the odd, noisy little car! Probably the most humiliating thing that’s happened to me since I started growing hair on my chest. I, of course, pulled over and hurriedly yanked the horn connection off under the fender, and scurried back to the garage to fix my TOOT!-ing away from the public eye….. but boy, my face must have matched those red vinyl seats for the rest of that day. Just another one of the joys of old toys!