A Mostly British Obsession
The work on the shop is coming to a close, though it’s nowhere near “done”. However, I have too many other projects backed up, such as getting Reg the 1963 MGB back on the road after the fuel pump packed in last fall. Here I have the MGB on stands, ready to dive underneath and remove the offending component.
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I’ll have an update on the shop and the GT in the next few days, I hope, but in the meantime, here’s the poster I designed for this year’s All British Field Meet in Bellevue, Washington.
I agreed to help my friend Steve by building the web site, online databases, various other software pieces and doing the graphic design for the meet. Steve was clueless generous enough to take up the mantle of organizing the show after Arnie Taub passed away–and is doing a bang-up job.
This year the show honors 80 years of the MG Car Club of England, and 50 years of the Jaguar E-Type. By coincidence, I have an E-Type which is 50 years old this November, though at this juncture I’m pretty sure it will not be running by its birthday. I had hopes a few months ago, but my to-do list is so long with things not E-Type that I just don’t think I’ll be able to find enough time to get her back on her feet by then.
You can learn more about this year’s show at abfm.com
The problematic alternator on the SD1 finally burned out–but I found a rebuilt Range Rover alternator from the late 1980s on eBay for $80 and figured “what the heck.” It fits just fine, and while there is an extra connector on the back (I think for a tach on the RR) it seems to work fine. Sure beats $300 to have the original Motorola rebuilt. Of course, whenever you do a job like this, you run into the previous owner’s bodges…
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To start the new year, and with not much else going on, here’s a set of photos of my long-sold 1966 Coupe. I have the hankering to get one of these again but looking at current prices don’t see how that would happen without a lot of good luck. If you want to trade yours for a nicely restored ’67 MGB GT, just let me know. (I think a ‘winky face’ is supposed to follow that!)
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Everyone has been posting the excellent youtube clip featuring the overview of the 1967 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, so I thought I’d post this equally excellent walk-through with the legendary Jackie Stewart, circa 1971 or 1972.
My friend Jim has decided to sell off a lot of his model car collection, and I couldn’t resist a few despite not really being a model collector, per se. Having purchased a few “regular” models (ie, the kind you can buy in a store) from his stash, I asked about this one, my favorite: It’s a scratch-built resin model, made by the man himself, in about 1:24 scale.
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Did what I could to salvage a cruddy low-light shot of the Beezer, taken this past summer. The Casio Exilim is really awful at low-light–hoping to get a new pocket camera soon.
This shot, taken with my cruddy-in-low-light older Casio camera, was from last July en route to the All British Field Meet. I was last aboard that early ferry and so got to park back a bit from the other cars on the boat.
It’s shiny (tacky!) chrome and ridiculously over-sized…but my new air cleaner actually filters the air going into the engine on the SD1. Found on eBay for not much money, surely it reminds the thoughtful viewer of the triangular Rover badge on the front of the car. (Surely! Well, maybe I’ll try to find a Rover-viking-ship decal to decorate it.)
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It’s fairly surprising that there isn’t a contiguous pool of oil covering the floor entirely on this side of the new shop building, especially from the prodigiously leaking pair comprising the SD1 and Reg the MGB roadster. (The BSA leaks, but that doesn’t count; the GT doesn’t leak at all.)
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