My schedule has been so hectic that I have been reduced to trying to swap the transmission and clean up the engine bay with only a week until the Vancouver All British Field Meet. I’m not sure whether I’ll make it, frankly, but I’ll give it a shot. Seen above is the car Thursday night, just before my spanners and ham hands descended on it.

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Looks like the Rover has attracted a bidder on eBay, so if everything goes according to Hoyle, the car should have a new owner soon. There is still a day or two left in the auction, which can be found here.

For the time being, I’m going to finish the GT as originally planned and put it into “daily” service. However, I do need to lose a car, and the SD1 should probably go. I wanted to drive one for awhile, and can definitely see the appeal, but the GT is more my speed. The Rover has been in daily service all winter and has proven itself to be a very nice machine. (I can never get over the tight turning circle for a relatively large car…I think you could put my Ford truck on full lock and easily drive the Rover around inside the circling Ford without any danger of hitting it.)
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UPDATE: The stupid thing is NOT fixed. Grrr. Next step…but back to the original post:

The Triumph 955i’s misfire has been cured with the swap in of a new coil pack. This is just a bit distressing as the bike has less than 3000 miles on it, you’d think the life span would be measured in tens of thousands of miles…but maybe just shy of a decade is the other expiration date. Trying to figure out which cylinder was misfiring was a puzzle–the ODB reader thought the bike was running just fine even when it clearly wasn’t. A friend reminded me I had an infrared thermometer, and the solution was at my fingertips.
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I have the leaky stuff with wheels on back on the newly-finished side of the shop building (aka “Rusty Keep”). I’m also fixing a minor paint flaw on the roof of the GT. There must have been a bit of contamination on the metal when it was sprayed. In all, a spot about the size of a pencil eraser was affected, right near the back edge of the roof.
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Mark Jones of Britsport of Seattle is almost ready to paint the E-Type and sent me these photos today. I’m going to drop by the shop to peek at it on Friday. Very exciting. I guess I should get the rest of my parts out of storage!
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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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