Came dangerously close to buying another britcar this weekend.
Spotted a white 1975 MG Midget for $750/obo. A closer inspection
showed the body to be in good shape, the interior to be in excellent
shape, the top brand new and the engine compartment somewhat dirty.
The owner wasn't around for any further testing. I did pop off the
oil filler cap for a sniff and caught gasoline vapors. What would
that indicate? Bad rings?
Actually, the main reason I didn't buy it was the insurance situation.
If I remember correctly from the last time I discussed this with an
insurance agent, adding liability coverage for a second car costs roughly
the same as the first car. It *seems* like it shouldn't cost anything
extra. After all, you can only drive one car at a time.
This suggests an obvious scam. Register it in my girlfriend's name and
then drive it under the "occasional use of a third-party car" clause on
my current insurance.
On a more useful note, I had occasion to use a vinyl repair kit on the
MGB, so I thought I'd briefly report my experiences to the group in
the hopes that they might someday prove useful to someone out there.
I had two holes/tears to repair on the B. The first was a
pencil-sized hole in the driver's side seat which occurred when a
pencil-sized pen :-) in my back pocket pierced the vinyl. The second
was an inch long tear in the hood (convertible top) near the passenger
side quarter window. The window itself is torn as well.
The vinyl repair kit I used was purchased from JC Whitney. It came
with various colored vinyl goop, a heating iron (basically a soldering
iron with a circular, roughly nickel-sized flat head), backing cloth,
contact cement and some "graining" papers. The general idea is to
glue some backing cloth into the hole/tear with the contact cement,
spread on some vinyl goop with a putty knife, and then set the whole
deal with the heating iron. The graining papers are used to roughly
match the finish of the vinyl being repaired. The technique isn't
difficult to learn.
The repair on the seat worked well. Unfortunately, the MGB seats have
a deep grain that wasn't matched by any of the graining papers (which
have fairly shallow grains and don't seem particularly useful), so the
resulting repair looks like a cigarette burn. However, the repair has
been fairly durable.
The repair on the hood went less well. The good news is that the
backing cloth and contact cement did a good job of closing the tear
and prevent it from spreading. The cloth shows no signs of separating
from the hood despite several foldings/unfoldings. The bad news is
that the repair vinyl has split. The repair vinyl is somewhat softer
and "crumblier" than good vinyl, and it apparently can't take the
stress of folding/unfolding. Frankly, I didn't expect the repair to
work very well on the hood, but I am pleased that the backing cloth is
holding.
Now, can someone tell me how to clean my yellowing and fogging plastic
windows? Sure wish you could totally unzip and remove (replace) the
MGB back window.
-- Scott Turner
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