>From lurk mode to first post to the list....
The following article was printed in the Motoring section of the
London Times on Saturday December 3, 1994. It is provided for your
enjoyment. A friend of mine sent it to me to provide encouragement
during the slow, on-going restoration of my MGB. Enjoy!
Regards,
Patrick Kane 64 MGB
pkane@us.dhl.com GHN3L 28132
Burlingame, California
Back to lurk mode!!!
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"The garage man fell for my scarlet woman"
Jack Crossley tells how he spent thousands of pounds on making a
sporty MGB as attractive as the first day he saw her nearly 26 years
ago.
My MGB and I have been together now for 26 years, but another man has
started buying her expensive gifts, and sending me the bills. I admit
I have not always looked after her according to the guidelines laid down
in the MGB owners' handbook. Neither have I always been faithful.
It was a sizzling affair when it all started in 1968. A scarlet woman
she was: Post Office red and called UYF 834F.
She always seemed to enjoy our fishing trips together, spraying through
falling tides on hard-packed bass beaches. Most times I got her out
before the salt of the rising tide began to eat at her wire wheels.
And she never complained when I let my schoolboy sons bump her
across vast Scottish quarries or the cracked runways of Battle of
Britain aerodromes.
She saved their lives once when another car came head on at me on a
S-bend in Sussex. With the three boys in the back, I had to swerve
violently and I was certain we would overturn. Many another car would
have flipped out of control. But 834F held the road without even a
complaining screech of rubber. I owe a lot to her and I should have
looked after her better.
As a roadster, she should not have been made to follow motorbikes
scrambling over the tank-testing grounds at Aldershot in Hampshire; she
should not have towed dinghies up the steep pebble beaches of Pagham
harbour in Sussex; she should not have been driven on to the cockle
beds of Loch Fyne in Argyll.
Remarkable, apart from developing a crotchety reverse gear, 834F
continued to purr whenever I stroked her into action. And she
particularly enjoyed the high-speed trip from London to Scotland on
the night I missed the overnight Motorail sleeper.
I am not going to reveal how long it took to get a then middle-aged
MGB to Stirling to join a fishing party before dawn. Certainly it was
illegal. Looking back, I regard it as impossible. But I remember the
glow when I arrived ahead of time to be greeted by a friend driving a
modern MGB. How vital and alluring my dear 834F looked alongside
this Johnny-come-lately; the confidence of pillar-box red versus a
simpering tangerine, like a girl wearing the wrong colour lipstick; the
shining chrome bumper versus black rubber, like mascara shovelled on
under the headlights.
I could go on, but much of the rest of the story is one of shame.
Flash company cars came my way: power-steering, electric windows,
air-conditioning, automatic gearboxes. The office paying for dents.
I neglected 834F; she was left for years, ungaraged, in the salt air of
a beachhouse garden. Bits began to fall off her, rust spots pockmarked
her once blooming red cheeks.
And then renaissance. Two years ago I started going to Cornwall,
fishing and writing. I found a garage in Polperro and drove my old
wrinkly there from Chichester. But by then we had grown apart, lost
the bond of trust. It was felt prudent for my wife Kate to follow in
the office limo.
Dear 834F gave a vintage performance: the throaty road at the first turn
of the ignition (remember to pull the choke out); the hunger to devour
road (remember to push the choke in).
We went that weekend, for a celebratory spin along the narrow, twisting
ribbons the Cornish call roads. This is a marvellous experience in an
old sports car. Thirty miles an hour feels like 70, and devilish with
the lid off; the wind in your face and the comradely waves of other MG
drivers.
We stopped for a quick drink at the Ferry Boat pub, which sits on the
steep slipway to the Bodinnick-Fowey ferry. On returning to the car,
we needed to reverse to get back on the road to Polperro. We had
forgotten that 834F was cantankerous about reversing - and Bodinnick's
slipway was a gradient too far for 834F. She was determined to go
nowhere but forward.
So we had to drive on to the ferry, take a scenic trip round Fowey's
one-way system, reboard the ferry from the western approach, and take
on the Bodinnick incline in forward gear.
Next stop, Central Garage, Polperro; Prop: David Pickering, an MGB
lover about to come out of the closet.
My instructions to him were to fix the reverse gear, clean up the worst
of the rust, and do enough to get 834F through the next MoT. "Smarten
her up a little bit." Those last six words were fatal, for my pocket.
My idea of a smart car falls well short of Mr Pickering's perfectionist
world: mine, a lick of paint here, a dab of fibre glass there and a
windscreen clean enough to see through would have sent me away a
happy man. But 834F reawoke memories for Mr Pickering, a serial
sports car fiend from the days when AA men saluted smartly from their
motorbikes equipped with tool-packed sidecars.
He spent a large part of that winter stripping 834F down to parts of
her anatomy never seen by man since she left the factory floor. There
was a time when she looked like one of those crashed aeroplanes being
reassembled by investigators. Then, lovingly, each rotting component
was either repaired or replaced. Many of the bits essential to make
834F strong again were crafted in his workshop.
By the time the essential work was finished the embers of Mr Pickering's
early desires became furnace fierce. He began saying things like, "You
can't put that old carpet back in her" and "The number plates are not MG
originals." Here was a man who could not bear the object of his love to
be less than perfect. How could I break his heart?
"Do," I said, "whatever you feel needs doing."
On the day Mr Pickering unveiled his masterpiece my love for the scarlet
woman was rekindled. He had restored 834F to the thing of beauty that
I had paid a few hundred pounds for. That the bill was about four times
what I paid for her mattered not: a small price to pay for buying back
the youth of two silly buffers old enough to know better.
The story ought to finish there, but no. Mr Pickering mentioned that
"Leather seat covers would be nice."
Mr Pickering has been working on 834F, on and off, for a couple of
years and the cost has been in the region of 3,000 pounds. The car
is now worth around 6,000 to 8,000 pounds.
Ron Gammons, vice-president of the MG Car Club, says: "An old MG
in perfect condition, the bees knees, could be worth 16,000 pounds."
Basic Parts - The basic parts needed for Jack Crossley's MGB included:
wood-rimmed alloy steering wheel, chrome sill insets, chrome wing
strips, two-tone horn, original MG-style number plates, halogen
headlamp conversion assembly, door linings, two front wings, inner
wing splash panels, inner wing trumpet (a funnel-shaped section of the
chassis), sound-proof anti-vibration padding, sun visor kit, hand-made
floor pan, polished wooden gearstick knob with MG badge, front lower
panel beneath bumper.
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