As mentioned above, when I got Penny she was lowered so much that the exhaust cutouts (branches off the exhaust pipes before they reach the mufflers, in case you want the car to be even louder than the default ‘absolutely deafening’) scraped the ground every time I went in or out of the garage.

To rectify this, I bought and installed new springs for the front suspension, in order to raise the car by about an inch and clear the driveway. I left the rear leaf spring suspension as-is, and the car is still lowered about an inch below stock.

I learned later that ‘replacing the springs’ is known in the car world as ‘rebuilding your suspension’, which sounds much cooler, and is a good example of how the car world is set up to feel intimidating to newcomers who didn’t grow up working on cars with their dads.

In this case perhaps it is an okay thing to feel intimidated, because replacing the springs involves using the most dangerous device conceivable – a spring compressor. This is basically a clamp you apply to the spring, pinching it smaller so it can be squeezed in or out of its compartment above the wheel. If it slips off (highly plausible), the energy stored in the compressed spring- more than the weight of a whole car- would easily take your head off.

Before I got this car, I used to foolishly think my VW bus was loud. This car is deafening to the point that it is impossible to hold a conversation while driving it. I haven’t even bothered to fix the (AM only) radio speakers.

I quickly realised that the biggest issue with the loudness was startup. My poor neighbours had to endure 3-5 minutes of roaring engine, while I coaxed it into waking up. Any less and the engine would just stall, still too cold.

Engines often have a choke system built in to help with this issue. Aptly named, a choke allows you to restrict the amount of air going in to your engine, so that the mixture of air and fuel gets ‘richer’, which allows it to burn easier when cold. Electric chokes have a really elegant design, where they have a coil of metal that expands as electricity flows through and it (and the car) warms up, opening the choke and letting more air in over time. This means you can start the car quicker burning more fuel, and ease off to the correct ratio as the car warms up.

When I went to investigate this, I found that Penny had an electric choke, but it wasn’t connected to anything. Apparently in the drag racing world, it’s preferable to have your choke fully open the whole way, and tune your engine knowing the fuel/air mixture is consistent. Luckily for me, I am not a drag racer, and value a shorter startup time much more than precision race turning.

I was able to pretty easily use some wire I had hanging around from installing a new wiring harness on Jamal to hook up the existing choke to the battery. One important thing was to find a connection that was only ‘on’ when the car was on (like your radio usually), so that the choke would be cold until you started the car, and then warm up when the electricity began to flow.

After figuring out how to hook it up and tune the choke to be in a good position when cold, the startup time dropped drastically to about 10-20 seconds. I think the neighbours probably still dread me driving though.

Penny has a parking brake that you press down with your foot, and it clicks. To release it, you pull on a tiny little finicky tab below the dashboard. I broke this mechanism almost immediately after getting the car. I maintain the mechanism is needlessly delicate, even though it did survive 50 years before meeting me.

I ordered a new e-brake housing and replaced it. This involved mounting it under the dash and then trying to pull the wire that goes from the brake itself to the pedal mechanism back far enough to hook it into place. It also involved totally failing to pull it anywhere near far enough, having a meltdown upside down under the dash, and employing a stronger friend to help. We finally managed to heave it far enough, using some backyard-engineered leverage tools.

The new brake release catch continues to be as flimsy as before, but I am now a lot more careful to handle it with care.