1959 Peerless Part 4

After owning the Peerless for several years I started having both transmission and engine problems. About the same time a friend of mine who owned a Triumph sports car had a fire in his garage. His car was declared totaled by his insurance company. Turns out while the outside and inside of the car was ruined the engine and transmission were in good shape. Since his running gear was in much better shape, I purchased his car and towed it to my house.

I had never done an engine and transmission swap before, but how hard could it be? Well a little harder than I thought. I did it by rigging a pulley in my garage and started taking things apart. I can't recall how long it took, but many nights and weekends to pull his stuff out and have his car towed away. Pull my engine and transmission out and then install his. I'm sure I will never do this again. I also had a lot of small parts, nuts, bolts and what have you left over. Still not sure where they all went.

The swap turned out ok. The new parts worked fine and it eliminated the prior problems I had. The only major difference was the electric overdrive. I did not know how to removed the old one and add it to the new stuff, so I wound up with a four speed box without the fancy overdrive capabilities.

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1959 Peerless Part 3

A continuation of the Peerless saga. My peerless came with a four speed manual transmission and an electric overdrive. I still don't understand how it worked, but you were able to shift from first to second to second over (switch on) then to third (switch off) third over (switch on) to fourth (switch off) and then to the final overdrive. Still sounds strange to me after all of those years. I never did shift in this pattern, but it could be done.

So after a short time the overdrive stopped working. I found a shop that could work on it and they fixed it. As I think back, it was a waste of money as I only drove the car in Los Angeles and never really needed the overdrive feature.

The main problem with the transmission came up after a year or so of owning the car. If you went down a hill in fourth gear and took your foot off of the gas to allow a little compression braking the gear shift would pop out of fourth into neutral. It was a little strange trying to get back into gear. After a while I got tired of this I took the car back to the same shop for more work. This time the car was worked on for several weeks before I got it back. The problem was fixed for a couple of years and then started up again.

Tomorrow the saga continues.

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1959 Peerless Part 2

Yesterday I mentioned one of the strangest cars I have ever had. Today I'll continue the story on how I found the car. I had just moved into the Los Angeles area from the state of Washington. I was driving a brand new Rover 2000TC, which was the worst car I have ever owned. Another long story I'll tell down the line.

It seemed that the Rover was always causing me problems and I decided to sell it. I could not decide what I wanted to purchase so I started looking around at used cars. Took a ride in a Jaguar E type, and a used Maserati, but was not in love. While reading the classified ads I came across a car called a Peerless. Beats me what attracted me to the ad, but I called the guy up - or at least tried to. Seems he was a fire man at a station north of L.A., and you can't talk directly to them, just leave a message. I left the message and he called me back the next day. We made an appointment and I meet him outside of the station.

He was a much better salesman than I was a buyer. For example, he did not want to start the car up and let it idle as he claimed the oil would not flow correctly until the car was warmed up correctly. So most of my information was gained with the car turned off. However, I did get to take it on a long drive, and warm it up, before buying it.

I was really interested in the car as I had never seen or heard of a Peerless before. It was very low to the ground, and painted gold (!), but a nice gold. Looked like it was going very fast while it was standing still. Two front seats and a jump bench in the back, which a very small child might fit into. Very, very detailed because I guess firemen have a lot of extra time on their hands. Interesting story about the car and it's history. Following is from Wikipedia:

"The prototype of this British-built sports saloon which was alloy bodied and initially named Warwick, was designed by Bernie Rodger for company founders John Gordon and James Byrnes[1].

The car had been renamed the Peerless GT by the time series production started in 1957. It featured Triumph TR3 running gear in a tubular space frame with de Dion tube rear suspension clothed in attractive fibreglass 4-seater bodywork. While the car had good performance it was expensive to produce and the overall fit and finish was not as good as that of similarly priced models from mainstream manufacturers. The Phase II version had an improved body largely moulded in one piece.
About 325 were made.

A works car was entered in the 1958 24 Hours of Le Mans finishing 16th.
Production ceased in 1960 after about 325 examples had been produced."

Anyway I was hooked and two days later it was mine.

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1959 Peerless

One of the strangest cars I have ever owned was a 1959 Peerless. While there was an American car of the same name, this particular car was built in England. A Jaguar dealer in England built a unique car for himself and entered in the 24 hour La Mans race. As I understand it, the car did not win anything, but did finish the race. People who saw the Peerless wanted to buy one, so a company was formed and cars were built in the U.K.

Mine was number 176 our of a run of about 200. It was built on a TR2 chassis with some modifications, like a De Dion tube rear suspension with a Jaguar differential. The engine and interior was the standard TR2. Some real differences was that the body was handmade fiberglass and a very unique shape. Other oddities included two gas tanks. They were mounted under the side doors and you had a long step to get over them to get to the seats. Of course if you were hit in the side of the car it would probably cause an explosion.

I had the car for around 8 years and I experience a lot of strange problems, such as the gas tanks leaking and gas coming out through the fiberglass.

More on this car tomorrow.

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Strange Acting Ferrari

I have a 1984 308 GTB Ferrari. I purchased it in June 2000 at about 34,000 miles. It has around 85,000 on it now. I'm not sure of the exact number as the speedometer died and was out of the car for a while being repaired. I guessed the speed using the tach.

Recently it started acting strange again. I say again because I have been towed home too many times to remember. Right now if I take it out for a drive it will sometimes seem to die. That is the engine will quite running for a couple of seconds and then come back to life with a giant backfire. Once I thought the mufflers would be leaving us with the lurch and sound. When the engine decides to stop running I can be anywhere, but usually in the fast lane on a freeway. I feel like an old time pilot who is always on the lookout for a landing field in case his plane dies. In the past I have had to move from the inside fast lane to the outside slow lane to park this beast off the road. It's always interesting trying to do this with no power - only momentum.

I'm trying to figure out why the engine is stopping, but no luck so far. My mechanic says that unless I can come up with a hard problem (dead in the water) he's not sure what to look for.

So my dilemma is how to get it to fail without getting killed. It won't die unless it's moving. It does not do this at idle. So to get a hard failure I have to be driving somewhere and let the car die. Park it safely and have it towed in. Ah well, fun and games with an exotic.

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Porsche - One of My Favorite Cars

Years ago I had a 1960 Porsche Super 90 356 B Cabriolet. That's a convertible for my English speaking friends. The Super 90 designation stood for 90 horsepower. Sounds funny now but it was one of the top of the line Porsche's that year, as the Normal or standard Porsche had only 60 horsepower. This was still the car with the air cooled engine hanging out the back. If you have never driven one, then you can't appreciate how easy it was to over steer a car. Great fun in the dry, but a car you really had to watch out for in the wet. Slight mistake and the rear end would break away.

Just like today's exotic sports cars the price on the parts was out of this world. However, for some things you could go to your local VW dealer and buy their version at much lower prices. And if you compared the two items you would find them identical. But over the years less and less of Porsche's parts came from the VW factory.

Sometimes you have winner and do not realize that it's one of those cars that will appreciate over time. When I sold it for around $2,000 I thought I had a made a good deal. If I wanted to buy it back today I could not afford it. I just checked on Hemmnings.com and they have one for $119,500. Aw well.

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Most Researched 2009 Sedan?

If you go to Kelly Blue Book online (http://www.kbb.com) you will find that the 2009 Honda Accord is the most researched sedan on their site. Why? I would guess that it is the most popular sedan in America and people want to know more about the 2009 models.

If you are one of them, here are some key facts:

Best Mileage - Manual transmission models 22 City and 31 highway
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