This year I decided to participate in the Motherlode 400. The Motherlode is a 2-day gathering of vintage rides, mostly from Europe, and mostly of the sports car variety (though this year’s event did have a couple notable exceptions in the form of a ’76 Firebird and a Citroen Mehari, among various other outliers). Each day involves about 200 miles of backroads of the California Sierras and foothills, thus the 400 moniker. Elevations range from barely over 1000 feet to the rarefied airs at Sonora Pass at 9400 feet, with lots of twisties and single-lane roads twixt the two.

My intent for this year’s Motherlode was to give the Sprint 1600 its débutante party, but alas that plan was thwarted by a failed front main seal (I think), which caused oil to spew out onto just about everything in the engine compartment, including the exhaust headers.

Waiting for AAA. You can just see the oil dripping from the rails. Good times.

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Obviously it’s been a long time since my last post so I’ll do away with apologies and excuses and skip straight to the good stuff.

The catalyst for writing a new BP post is that my Volvo 122s has finally sold, and it sold sight-unseen to a guy up in Washington state. I’m usually on the other end of this kind of transaction, so I was both impressed and nervous about it, knowing that a car shows better in photos and in fantasies than it ever can in person. Still, the buyer knew what he wanted and somehow between CA and WA mine was the only 4-door automatic that he could find in his months of searching. As I write this, he’s hopefully arrived in Redding without any incident. I’m a tiny bit sad that California is losing a genuine black plate survivor, but the new owner has promised to send me the plates (such as they are) when he gets home, so maybe they’ll still see some use.

The Volvo departs. The Super remains. The neighbors sigh.

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It’s been a while since my last post. My workaday work picked up somewhat and time for the Sprint became harder to come by. It doesn’t help at all that it’s now getting dark around 5.

In any case, I’ll start with the good news: the Sprint is now parked in my driveway, i.e., at home and not in a warehouse in San Leandro. I wish I could say I drove it home myself but the truth is that I had to use my AAA card again. (I have two of my four yearly-allotted tows left. I don’t remember the last year I didn’t need and use all four tows. Bring a Trailer? Nah.)

Tow truck #1. I requested a flatbed but this guy showed up. While I was waiting for him I reinstalled the passenger side door panel. He tried to fit the Sprint onto his lifter thing and it was too narrow (which is to say, too old and too far removed from a Honda Accord). Four hours later, a flatbed finished the job.

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If you have ever replaced the shoes on a three-shoe system such as Alfa decided to produce on its interim 101 / 1600 cars, I feel your pain. Changing out brake shoes isn’t nearly as much fun as it sounds, and to most intelligent people it sounds like a pain in the arsenal. You are alternately fighting with springs, visibility, and the general slipperiness of things that are supposed to be slippery in operation, but which you wish were oh-so-grippy on installation.

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