Here it is, my first swap meet posting! This weekend I found out that it's
more fun to go to a meet if you have cars to show/sell! We drove to LA
Friday afternoon in my cousin Tony's '76 Midget. Worked on it and his '59
MGA Saturday, and went to the meet at the Orange County Fairgrounds Sunday
morning. The meet was much smaller than Palo Alto, about 100 cars and some
parts vendors. A bunch of Jensens and Minis, not nearly the percentage of
MGs as Palo Alto, a few Jags. Have to mention the aqua-colored Bugeye with
a completely cherry engine compartment, a real crowd-pleaser. We pulled in
at about 8:30 and got some immediate attention with the MGA, there was only
1 other MGA there at that time. It's not easy trying to look like you know
what you're doing putting the top down and setting up while a half-dozen
people stare at you and take pictures. It wasn't long before a very eager
fellow struck up a conversation and then started trying to buy the car. We
were really there to sell the Midget but he wasn't going to let the 'A' go
and without any persuasion came up to the price Tony asked. So not long
after getting there we were in the market for another car. Unfortunately
nothing grabbed our attention enough to buy. I really like the looks of the
Jensen-Healy but don't want to get into one of those twin-cams. Dare I ask
if there are any conversions of these beauties? By the way, I saw a TR-7
with a Chevy 350 in it, don't know how you can drive a car with no ground
clearance! I wanted to bring up a coincidence regarding MGA's; we saw about
4 or 5 others yesterday, of different years, and the odometers all read
between 17k and 21k miles. I didn't ask the owners if the odometers worked,
in fact we just got Tony's working Saturday, the cable was loose at the
dashboard end. So I ask, is it common for the speedometers to fail at this
point on these cars?
That's about it for my adventures this weekend, oh, the ride up Hwy. 5 with
the top down yesterday was real nice, it was somewhere in the 80's and sunny.
Didn't have to put the top up until we crossed over the hill toward Monterey
after dark.
-Dan
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