Differential Tech Session - 10/27/02 On a beautiful Autumn day Pierre and I left San Francisco for Santa Cruz, where Chris Obert was holding a tech session on rebuilding the early-style 124 differential. We headed down the coast to Half Moon Bay, then up 92 to the east to meet Keith at the Northern end of Skyline Boulevard. Keith showed up driving his father's Aqua Velva blue spider. What's with the Bullocks and their odd-colored spiders? We got going South on Skyline, a fantastic road which rides the ridge between the coast and silicon valley. I can be crowded at times with motorcyclists and (blech) bicyclists, but it's still a fantastic road, twisty and fast alternating between dark, cool redwood groves and wide-open grasslands. Well, about 10 miles into the drive, I noticed that Keith and Pierre were no longer behind me. I circled back and found them on the side of the road. Keith's car was losing power, like a loss of spark or fuel. We checked a few things out, but couldn't find anything. The car started back up, and seemed to have full power, so off we went again. Sure enough, another 10 miles or so later, and the car was acting up again. This time the tools came out, looking for a clogged filter, but everything looked OK. Just before the junction with Route 9 that would take us to Santa Cruz, we encountered our first MINI. This joker was ambling along at 45 mph, oblivious to the line of cars behind him. It was a shame, really. Driven properly (fast), that car could be really fun on a road like this. Little did I know... When we reached the junction with 9, we saw about 20 of the under-driven little cars leaving the rest stop and heading down Route 9 -- right where we were going. Route 9 is one of my favorite roads in the bay area - non-stop curves, great pavement and downhill almost the whole way to Santa Cruz, through some cool little mountain towns. Usually not too much traffic as it parallels the four-lane highway Route 17. I was looking forward to seeing what these little MINIs could do on this road, but early on, they kept pulling over to let us pass. Well at least some of them did. We followed a line of these idiots for about 10 miles, and they refused to pull over at the turnoffs. We started getting impatient, flashing lights and honking horns, but they were clueless. We did manage to piss off a guy in a pickup truck who couldn't figure out what the honking and flashing was about. (Un)Fortunately, Keith's car went on the fritz again, so we pulled over to stare cluelessly at it some more and let the MINIs get ahead. 50 of them must have slooooowly passed by as we sat there. Further down the road there was a parking lot FULL of them, musta been over 100 of 'em. We pulled over one more time at a traffic light for a one-lane stretch of road, and a sweet AS Spider pulled up. An transfer of Mirafiori cards was made, and he let us pull out in front of him. 15 minutes later we finally made it to Obert's. Very late. We had missed the "morning session," but got to see most of the rebuilding procedure on a sample diff. Very cool seeing how to get the crush sleeve to crush and checking rolling torque. Then it was adjusting the lash and presto! - rebuilt diff. OK, maybe I'm skipping a couple of steps. Just in time for lunch. [help me remember his name] brought some homemade sausage and they were delicious. Afterwards, Keith and I wandered around the toy store that is Chris's backyard. Very cool. Conveniently I had brought along a trashed diff, and we set about rebuilding it in the afternoon session. Chris looked over my shoulder, and let me know when I was messing up, and $25 in parts later, I was taking home a rebuilt diff! All in all, a great day, and I'm even pretty sure Keith made it back home to Turlock. Mucho thanks to Chris for hosting the event and teaching us so much! -Dan

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