[notfarnow]

My first car was an '86 Renault Lecar. I suppose I could stop there....

I bought it for $260 from the local Jeep/Eagle dealership... someone had taken it in for a tuneup, only to be told the headgasket was blown AGAIN. They refused to pay the bill or collect their car, so I bought it for the price of the headgasket job. It only had 60 000 km's and was immaculate. It had a great big canvas sunroof. and even had a set of 3 bolt mag wheels.

I buy a core engine and start building it up with Archer Racing performance stuff... Weber, headers, crossflow head, hot cam, big bore pistons (1.4 liters!!!). It was my first rebuild and I was meticulous and VERY careful.

On first highway run, I take it up to 6500 rpms, then all of a sudden things don't sound "right". I notice oil mist on windshield, then SMOKE... I kill the engine, pull overand get out. I notice a long line of engine oil behind the car. Sure enough, oil filter is nowhere to be seen, blew right off. Took a long time to figure out the cause... the "core" engine I had build up was from an '82, and I assumed the filters were the same as the 86. The threads changed in '84.

I was lucky though, when I disassembled the engine everything was still in spec. Put it back together and got 7 years sut of it before I got hit head-on in Montreal.