Highs in the mid-70s!

Today was forecast to be a nice day and indeed it was. I decided last night that I was going to head down to E@RTC in the morning. There won't be very many warm dry weekends left this year and I definitely wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. Before I left the house, I took a little time to clean some of the dust off the paint, clean the wheels and dress the tires.



As expected, there was the throng of Lambos and the other regulars, but it seems like something out of the ordinary always shows up. I parked next to a Giallo Fly '78 308 GTS and behind me were four Tesla Roadsters. I had never actually seen a Tesla in person so I talked to one of the owners for quite a bit. I learned lots of new things about how the Tesla works. It'd be really cool to own one, but the price would need to come down dramatically before I could possibly afford one.



Next up was a Harley Davidson motorcycle with a dual front tire conversion. A local guy is developing this as a retrofit kit for all modern Harleys. The unique thing about this setup vs. other 3 wheeled bikes is that the bike can still lean into turns like a normal motorcycle. Hopefully, he can get the funding he needs to get the product from prototype to market. Check it out at his website. He's got some cool videos of the mechanism in action.



Also something else I'd never seen before in person was an Ariel Atom. It's hard to describe what this thing is. You could call it a go-cart on steroids. It's basically a tube chassis with a big engine. The owner was talking to some onlookers when he started digging around on the floorboards. He pulled out a strip of rubber that had been flung into the cockpit. Apparently this is something that happens quite often with an Atom. During hard cornering, rubber is scrubbed off the tires and since the Atom is completely open, some of this rubber winds up with the driver. Also, there's no windshield so you need to wear a helmet with a faceshield. Crazy stuff.



On my way home, I had to make a stop to get some new lighting fixtures for the house. A Home Depot run in the 308? Why not?

Fakes and the real thing

When I was 308 shopping, I had multiple RSS feeds set up in my reader and I looked at a LOT of ads. Even though I now own a 308, I still have these feeds going and still look at ads to see what the market is like. In short, the market sucks (for a seller) and it's definitely a buyer's market. Every now and again, I see an ad for fake 308s -- the most famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) is the Pontiac Mera.

Based on the Pontiac Fiero, the Mera rebody was actually a dealer option in 1987. I remember seeing pictures of these back in the day and thinking that maybe this was the only way I could get something close to a real 308.



Have a close look at the picture above. Can you tell which one is the fake? From the back at this angle, it's actually pretty tough to tell the difference. It's obvious from the front and sides but from the back, these cars would fool a lot of people. The real 308 is on the right and the Mera is on the left.

The kicker is that 308 prices are so ridiculously low now that it makes no sense to have a fake. I'm shocked at the lengths some Mera owners go to to make their darned Fiero look like a Ferrari. Have a look at this joker. How much did he spend on that fake Ferrari interior?

Here comes the rain again

Well, it's that time of year again. The brief clear days of summer are becoming few and far between and drive time has been severely limited. It's been either raining or threatening rain so now I'm planning my winter projects. I should have the time to put on the rest of the parts that are stacking up. I need to fix my parking brake handle, do some work on the rear brake calipers and I still need to find the source of that annoying rattle in the back. If I can afford it, I may even try to attack the 2nd gear syncro. I found a used transaxle locally that's supposedly in good shape. The price is reasonable for a used 308 tranny so I may go that route. Strange that a "reasonable price" for a used transaxle will get you a used Honda Civic.

The infamous 308 Trouble Light

Years ago, I bought battery charger for my motorcycle battery called the Xtreme Battery Doc. I've found that in addition to keeping my moto battery topped off, it does a good job on the 308 battery. The problem is that getting to the battery to hook up to the battery leads was a pain (open bonnet, remove spare, remove batt cover) so I wanted to install a "normal" cigarette lighter socket. There is a cigarette lighter socket in the 308 console, but it's not the "normal" lighter socket you see today. Rather, it has a small hole where you put the cigarette and I think you pull the black plastic outside ring to heat it up. Honestly, I have no idea how this thing is supposed to work because I've never tried it.



I kind of like the look of the console lighter, so I decided to leave that one alone and try to replace the trouble light socket with a normal socket. On all 308s, there is a 12v socket under the dash to the left of the steering wheel. As part of the 308 tool kit (which I am missing), there is a small 12v trouble light that plugs into this socket. I don't know anyone who has actually used their light or the socket. Having a light has become more of a concours bragging rights thing, as in, "I have the original tool kit roll complete with carb tool, spare bulb holder and trouble light." I've seen pictures of the light, but never one in person. Anyhow, I was willing to sacrifice the trouble light socket for a place to plug in my battery charger.

I went to Napa and bought one of those generic sockets and proceeded to unscrew the underdash piece holding the clock, oil temp gauge and trouble light socket ('78 GTS, before they relocated the gauges to the console). When I set out all the pieces on the workbench, I noticed something interesting.



The battery charger came with three different attachments -- alligator clips, ring connectors and a cigarette lighter plug. I never noticed before but the cig plug had a plastic piece snapped on the business end. When I removed this piece, the plug end was exactly the right size and shape to fit perfectly into the trouble light socket!





You can see that it's a perfect fit -- even down to the ridge on the center shaft to lock into the socket. I put everything back together and sure enough, it works as I would expect. The socket is not keyed so I can just plug in the charger at any point to maintain the battery. Best part is I didn't have to make any modifications at all.

I tried searching online, but it doesn't look like this charger is made anymore. What I'm really interested to know is, what kind of plug is this that fits into the 308 trouble light socket?