Origin Story
The Very Beginning
In 1977 my dad, a med school student on a public health scholarship, opted to use his microscope stipend to buy a lightly-used 1972 MGB, and rented a microscope with the leftovers.
Five years ago, he and my mom drove that same car from Saratoga Springs, NY almost all the way to Tacoma, WA. It had to be towed the last 300 miles or so. Here’s a bonus video of their arrival at my house with the car. I had no idea they were coming and I hadn’t seen them in months. We all cried.
That car is now my long-term project, and is currently my active COVID-19 distraction. I’ll post some history, and sporadic progress updates on this page.
My Beginning
The first thing we did when we got the car was replace the stock distributor with a Pertronix flame thrower electronic distributor. I don’t have any photos or comments on that process, unfortunately, but it was pretty standard. The distributor was the most frequent point of failure and the last thing that failed during the 3000 mile journey, so that was the suggested first step to get it running again and luckily it worked. The timing is still a bit off and needs to be adjusted.
The first time I went for a drive in my newly-redistributed baby I made it surprisingly far from home before I got stuck. It turned out going under 30 MPH was fine and smooth, but once I tried to get up to 40 I had problems. I got stuck on Schuster Parkway in Tacoma, WA only half a mile from my destination. I panicked and couldn’t get the car started again. After I sat there for a little while, a very friendly stranger, his son, and a sympathetic lady cop came to my rescue. They got me off the parkway and into a nice, quiet, safe parking spot.
On the return trip I kept the car under 30 to limp home but ended up stuck on a hill in the dark, this time with my husband behind me in his car, and after starting and stalling a few times, he ended up just pushing us home. Side note: what kind of a monster puts a stop sign on a steep hill? Even my totally normal 2011 Honda hybrid had issues with that hill, but it was impossible to avoid it.
First Project
Needless to say, the Schuster experience put me off driving the car for a bit. I’m not terribly skilled at driving manual since I haven’t had much practice - I actually learned stick on this car when I was in high school and have honestly probably only driven it five times. And I have it on good authority from people who know what they’re talking about that this isn’t the easiest car to drive. I feel like if I were slightly more skilled or the car were slightly more forgiving, it would be a little less terrifying, but alas.
Once when my dad was visiting we took it around my neighborhood so I could show him what happened when I went over 40, and it seems like the engine is only firing on 2 cylinders. I’m not an expert (yet) but that’s not what you want.
So partially because it was something I always wanted to do with my dad, and partially because I would have a great excuse to not drive the car for a while, I decided my first project would be to replace the interior. The car still had its original vinyl interior, but the carpet had been replaced with some non-stock yellow carpet that sort of matches the car’s exterior paint color. The vinyl on the seats and dash was in bad shape and had been for as long as I’ve known the car, so I tore it all out to replace it with the custom kit from Moss.
Ripping out the interior was fun, but it uncovered a fair amount of rust that I wanted to fix before moving on. It doesn’t seem right to just cover up rust holes with new carpet and call it a day. But without the seats it seemed like an impossible task to get the car somewhere with the capability to repair some rust holes. So I started with some smaller tasks while I planned my next move.
…and then life happened. I got a dream job offer and we started to make plans to move from Washington to California. The car wasn’t a priority; we had to sell the house, find a new place to live, find a job for Matt, who was getting out of the army.
And that’s about where I ended up three years ago. We had the car shipped from WA to CA and it made it mostly unharmed, as did most of the pieces.
Since then I’ve done a little bit of work here and there, but it took a global pandemic to get me to really get in there.
To be continued.
