Rental Car Story IV

One of the rental companies brought over two Federalised 328's. These were essentially new cars with only a few thousand miles put on them during the delivery and conversion process. Both of the cars were immediately placed into rental service. Within the first month or so, one of the cars blew the oil cooler hose right out of the end fitting. Fortunately, the renter shut down and stopped immediately. We cleaned up the mess, put on a new oil cooler line and the car went back to work. Within another month or so, the oil cooler hose blew out of the fitting again. This renter, too, was on top of the situation and immediately shut down and stopped.

The owner said that he didn't think that he was going to be lucky enough to keep getting renters that were going to save his cars from these failures. After some discussion, we decided to take the Ferrari fittings and weld on some Aeroquip fittings and make a single Aeroquip line from the block to the oil filter base and toss the oil coolers into the spare parts pile.

The cars were run on Mobile 1 oil, that the owner changed on a very regular and frequent schedule. We did the belts every 25K miles. Of course, we did multiple water pumps and many clutches. These cars just ran, and ran, and ran. When this fellow closed his business and left the Islands, one of these cars had 140K on the odometer and we never even had the cam covers off. The other car had about 120K on the odometer. This car did have a gearbox rebuild.

Now that I think about it, I cannot remember if the speedometers were actually changed. I remember some of the conversions at the time simply put a MPH face onto the original Euro speedometer. Even if the odometer numbers were for KM, this was 100% rental service mileage. One can't help but have respect for the cars.

 

Hi Mike

Thanks very much for your suggestion and input. I have been having a little debate with myself over this very issue. I was quite surprised to log on after a pretty extended absence and see that a Hawaii section had been added. I have been making a small effort to add some interest and content to keep things active. At the same time, I realise that other sections may actually be more appropriate and would have a wider audience.

I am not really up to speed on forum etiquette, but had it in my head that cross-posting was frowned upon. I see that you have a very impressive post count. In your opinion, should I just post the story in the 3X8 or perhaps post a link to this section?