We had a busy day today at the shop! After several cups of fresh, hot coffee to brace our bodies against the cold, we moved about a dozen cars into the parking lot.
Curt finished the Volvo and then worked on the MGA for which he's just completed the gearbox; Casey worked on a 1977 MGB with a faulty servo and faulty rear brakes, along with a host of electrical problems. Gosh -- there is nothing wrong with the original wiring in the car. Why some owners or mechanics cut into the wiring, add wires (in a rainbow of colors), wire around and through switches, blinkers, -- well, it makes our job more difficult! I worked nearly all day fabricating the repair panel for the Sunbeam Tiger and welding it into place.
Around technical hour I heard from the vet in Reno who was successful in getting his car started after 20 years -- but now has to be the brakes and clutch operational so the car hauler can get it from there to here by driving it on his trailer. They don't want to move "immobile" cars! A fellow from Tallahasee called to thank me for the work I did on his distributor -- and to tell me that I was right, it wasn't the distributor that was the problem with a high speed miss. After quite a lot of inspection he found the jet tube on his rear HS carburetter twisted -- restricting the free flow of fuel to the jet. Another fellow called whose 78 B would start on the "start" sequence but then quit when he relaxed the key to "on." He used an ohmmeter to diagnose the problem and missed it! A word to the wise here -- always use a test light! Don't use an ohmmeter or continuity tester. A test light carries current, an ohmmeter does not.
Later in the day Jim and his friend Chris stopped by. Jim has an XK150 that he took all apart and is now in his ??? year of putting it back together. "This winter!" is his goal for completion.
Bruce from Orion glass stopped by midday to drop off an MGB windscreen (which fits the Aconite MGB pictured above -- did you notice there was no windscreen?) and to pick up another. He returned by the end of the day with the second. Bruce has repaired more MGB windscreens than any glass man on the planet (well....).
I hadn't heard from my good friend Bob Connell at Connell's MG Service in Indianapolis for several months so I gave him a call on Friday. They'd had eight inches of snow that day so he missed work that day. We discussed the Moss superchargers for some time. Bob hopes to stop around sometime this Christmas -- in his MGB!
The best staff story from this weekend was from Andrew. He was out snowboarding at Cannonsburg. Trevor works there as staff. Andrew was on the slopes and his girlfriend's sister came too close and whopped him in the shin with her snowboard. Andrew said it hurt but he kept on trying the slopes. After about an hour he said his foot felt unnaturally wet, plus his shin was really starting to throb. He went inside, started to take his boot off, only to discover it was full of blood! I missed the part about how he got to the emergency room or an immediate care center, but once there, and with his boot removed, he said they had to cut away the sock. He got five stitches on his shin. That's about the same number he got when he ran his finger into the end mill on our drill press last year. Andrew said they washed out his boot and it ran red for minutes. I'm glad it wasn't on workman's comp! He wasn't even limping today, so it would appear he's much better!
If you've made it this far, you'll want to learn about the Lucas Service sign. Twenty years, or so, ago, Mark Kenworthy, Brandon DeHaan, Marty Boysen, and some of the fellows from the shop would travel down south, look through the automotive want ads -- in Nashville, for instance -- go out and buy a car to two, bring them back to Grand Rapids, clean them up and sell them for a bit of a profit. On one venture they were caravaning north, with several MGs, on some expressway when a fellow came up beside them and motioned them over. He was all excited! He owned MGs, wanted to talk MGs right there on the side of the road. "Where ya'll from," he asked the guys. They told him they were returning to Grand Rapids, Michigan. "Oh man," exclaims the fellow, "Do you know John Twist." They all laughed, "We all work for John Twist." The fellow was so excited he went to his car, pulled out the Lucas sign, and made the guys promise to give it to me -- which they did. I have long since misplaced the name of the sign's original owner, but there it hangs in our parts department!
