Here’s a short film showing the MG works in 1931, with the proverbial happy couple picking up their new Magna. The spray booth…oy. Word has it paint shop guys never lasted very long, you may get a hint as to why by watching this.

There is no sound, just title cards. The embed code they give doesn’t seem to actually embed the player here (not sure if it is supposed to or if this is just a “quirk”), but clicking on the image above will take you to British Pathe’s page featuring the video.

The final coats of clear went on the GT today, and it looks great. I need to flat it out with 1500 paper and polish it to get out the few nibs, and there is one run which needs to shrink for a few days and then get sanded out. Many thanks to Jim for his efforts in getting the car to this stage!
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By this time tomorrow, the painting of the GT will be done, unless the red gods decide something needs to go haywire. (I will still need to flat it out and polish it up.) Here you can see it in the first of its two final color coats, before any clear goes on.
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We’ve gone through and fixed most of the minor problems…the car has been completely wet-sanded with 600 in prep for another color coat. We’ll have to do a little spot-priming, first. (The bonnet is just casually thrown on the car here as we needed the workspace, hence the poor appearance!)
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I started the Ferguson today for the first time in awhile to let it run for half an hour. When I put it back in the carport I discovered the radiator was cracked pretty thoroughly where the inlet pipe enters the top tank. This is disheartening (if not a cause for rending garments); the winter here has been mild and the coolant is topped with antifreeze, so there is no reason it should have “just happened”–other than age, I guess. Not going to worry about it right this minute but a new rad will be winging it’s way here in the spring.

Jim got the first coat of Grampian Grey on tonight. It revealed we have a bit of work left to do, so he held off on the clear. We missed some sanding scratches and a couple of dings–staring at primer for ages will do that to you. Aside from a couple of minor points on the body, we completely spaced on one of the doors–it had three small door dings and a very small crease.
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The car just needs to be washed and re-masked for final base/clear to go on. Then the real work of polishing, purchasing and procrastinating begins.

I went to Bellingham to investigate an MG for sale for a friend today. I discovered the MGB in question was only 8 cars later than my ’63–built on the same day, maybe 60 yards apart on the line. To add to the twilight-zone feeling, the gentleman also had a ’67 GT parts car–painted Grampian Grey (a fairly rare color, for what it’s worth). That car was only a couple of hundred numbers earlier than my Grampian Grey ’67 GT.

The chill did not dissuade me from getting the BSA out of its den and taking it to the first-Saturday-of-the-month meeting of the “Whidbey Island European Sports Car Club,” which isn’t really a club at all, just an open gathering of like-minded folks at Gerry’s Kitchen in Freeland, Washington. We had a pretty good turnout of interesting machines, such as…
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