At 12:20 PM 7/7/2000 EDT, Ed at JustBrits@aol.com wrote:
>.... Barney, how about a "re-cap" of Parker??
Well, okay, but first a pertinent work about my own younger years. My
first car was a '56 MGA bought in '68 when I was 19. I would have been
into it earlier if I had the money. When the ignition light came on one
night a guy in a local gas station (service garage in those days) said "We
don't work on those foreign cars", but in fact it had the same generator as
dad's '53 Ford pick up truck and a lot of other American built cars. It
didn't take me very long to figure it out and install new brushes. I did
however have a big advantage in those days, as the guys behind the parts
counter at the local MG dealer had all the books and parts and were very
friendly and helpful, much like folks on this list.
As to Parker Whiteway, he bought a complete and (mostly) running MGA with
almost NO rust for $1000 at the age of 15. He is proud to say that he had
to mow a lot of lawns to buy his car. Before he even had a license to
drive he was doing some repairs and minor restoration work. He was not
bodging things up, but rather systematically fixing things that were bodged
up by the DPO. He had the car partly disassembled, but upon getting his
license he put it back together to use as a daily driver. So now he's 16,
has been driving for less than a year, but drives his MGA daily and gets it
out to nearly all the MG club driving events. He very quickly became quite
adept at autocrossing and regularly puts lots of more experienced folks to
shame on the track. He understands quite well that a car must be well
maintained to be reliable enough to drive daily and to compete and win at
autocross and rally. Every time he works on his car it gets better, more
reliable, and generally closer to original that it was when he bought it.
I don't think Parker is any great exception to the general condition of
younger mankind. I'm pretty sure this affect is garnered by an
understanding introduction to the hobby by someone from the older
generation. Kids love toys, and these old cars are basically just big go
carts. When they understand that these cars are really fun to drive (and
maybe attract a lot of attention) they can take an active interest and
expend considerable effort at maintainance to keep the fun rolling. And of
course these old cars are simple enough for a kid to learn to maintain.
Now for the philosophical part, to get this thread back on topic. If you
want to see some additional and competent mechanics out there to maintain
these cars, I suppose you should give some serious thought to hiring some
of these enthusiastic kids to work on your car before they get to far
involved in other careers. If they find that they may actually be able to
make a living doing what they enjoy, then we may still have some competent
and willing LBC mechanics in future years. There are lots of kids hired to
do computer programming because they're good at it, after a spinoff from
fun video games. I figure any kid who regularly maintains his own LBC is
probably going to evolve into a good LBC mechanic in a short time. We just
need to get them to keep it up as a career. Just a thought.
Barney Gaylord
1958 MGA with an attitude
http://www.ntsource.com/~barneymg
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