Sometime around 5:00 Thursday morning a man living at 4 Whitfield Lane, Coram, N.Y. looked out his window and saw a sight that must have astounded him, the MG TD which he hadn’t driven in almost 30 years just sitting out there ready to go.
It would also be accurate to say that I was also astounded by his reaction, which was far from gratitude. Perhaps he was momentarily taken aback by the $5,000.00 open balance repair order thoughtfully left on the passenger seat with a British Invasion of Stowe registration package. Whatever the reason, what he received was excellent value for the money because it was another of those situations where we put pride ahead of profit margin. When I rolled his MG off the trailer the odometer reading was exactly 80,250 miles, including 85 we put on running it in.
The driving assessment sugars off like this: Myron runs up hills in 4th gear that most TD’s struggle up in 3rd. Doors close well now and the suspension is tight. Lights, horn & wipers are all working. There is some pedal pulsation from the clapped-out brake drums and it’s whiny in 1st & reverse, but that’s a fair trade-off with the used cluster gear we put in when we discovered a number of teeth had been cleaned off the 2nd speed wheel.
I got kind of a late start and a flat tire (right rear in the first picture) just south of Hartford, Connecticut on Interestate 91 caused me to miss the last outbound Port Jefferson Ferry of the night which added 200 miles to the round trip. It was also a fine night for road contruction, and there was plenty of it on the New England Thruway. After midnight traffic was light and moving well on the Long Island Expressway, which is also sometimes referred to during the day as the world’s longest parking lot.
Meanwhile over in bay #3 Butch has been wrestling with an with an ignorance problem vis a vis the very well presented series 2 E-type OTS seen here. Even though almost everybody in the world knows it, it would seem that there are still a few people who don’t know that even with Concours-only Trailer Queens, which this car isn’t, you still have to grease the splined hubs or terrible things will happen.
Warner can tell you about the extreme consequences. He managed to clean the splines completely off the right front hub on his MGC GT when he first got it, although that problem was an inheritance. All he knew initially is that when he came to an abrupt halt on a fast road the car stopped but the R/F knock-off hub kept right on going, so he summoned me to bring another and in short order he lost that one, too.
The consequences here were just that the wheels wouldn’t come off initially. Igor had also used his biggest hammer and the knock-off’s were on W-A-Y too tight ! After a heroic struggle Butch finally got the right rear wheel off, but the left rear only succumbed to his ministrations after a dozen full lock, power-on circles with the knock-off only done up hand tight. It works but it ain’t pretty to watch. A rear wheel bearing service also ensued.