SAFE Winch Launching

On Wednesday, August 2, 2017 at 1:30:49 PM UTC-4, Bob Whelan wrote:
Wait, this is a soaring forum, how the heck did we segue to Lucas
stuff?............ ;-)

Buddy of mine arrived at the airport on Sunday in a TR-6. Whoa, says I,
last time I rode in one of those (1987) it caught on fire!

College buddy of mine had a TR-4 for about a year. When it ran it was great
fun, those times it ran w/o drama...which didn't include the time smoke &
flames shot from the steering column while he was merging onto a
heavily-traveled 4-lane interstate, and another time a rear wire wheel
overtook the car (fortunately, at slow speed in a housing development).
Funnily enough, the steering column short "cured itself" after a short,
ignition-off, head-scratching/recovery spell on the shoulder; no previously
extant electrical gremlins ever subsequently noted! Ah, the good-ol' days of
cotton-insulated wiring (already brittle by 1972!).

And, yes, he was reluctant to drive it at night...

Unfortunately, he never took up soaring.

Bob W.


While I was in highschool, a friend's dad bought a beat up 1964 TR-4a to tinker with. Us kids learned quite a lot on that old heap. Even at 15 I was impressed by the (Lucas, of course) fusebox on the inside fender well: two big ass 25 amp fuses, open to the elements. One for headlights. One for everything else.

By the time we could keep that thing running, we were pretty good shade tree mechanics!

T8