[Anyone on the racers list will have seen this already, but
it's appropriate to this bunch of folks too --sf]
Andy Banta called me a day or so after he went to the
British Car swap meet up in Amador County with a pair
of race cars he'd seen offered for sale. One, a $600
Spitfire, was interesting but more work than I wanted
to put into it. The other one, an MGB roller, seemed
to fit my interest and experiences a lot better. I
filed it away and decided to look at it after my funds
became available.
This Tuesday night, on my return from Yosemite, I got a
call from Jeff Zurschmeide, another FizzBall Racing
member, who was at Andy's house. "The guy who's selling
this MGB is getting antsy," Jeff said, "and Andy thinks
you ought to go take a look at it." We decided to go
on Thursday night and I started thinking about it.
Andy and I trundled over hill and dale in his tow vehicle,
one of the stoutest Chevy trucks I've ever seen (let's
just say that it has an anvil for a hood ornament and
a sticker on the tailgate in OSHA safety yellow and black
that reads "WEIRD LOAD") made more comfortable by the
use of MGB seats in place of the stock bench. We made our
way to a farm outside of Westley, California ("where?" asked
Kim) to see one of the more eclectic but interesting
assortments of British cars I've run across in a long
time. The owner, Butch Gilbert, builds vintage race cars
as his main business, when he's not running the 40-acre
farm on which the shop sits.
The three stars that were visible from the street were: a
Morgan Super Sport set up for vintage racing, in correct
British Racing Green (the color my street B is where the
new paint has chipped off); a black-and-burgundy XK150
coupe in concours condition; and this shiny black MGB
race car with a red-yellow-orange stripe running around
the bonnet and down the front wings. "Naaaah," I thought,
"that can't be the car he's selling, not at the price
he's asking. It must be one of those heaps in the
back."
Well, it turned out that that *was* the race car he had
for sale. I inspected it up and down, in and out. It was
a little dusty and cobwebby in spots -- the last race in the
logbooks was November 7, 1987 -- but it was straight, unrusted,
and possessed of the trickest suspension I've seen since
working on Car 0 with Miq Millman. Fronts are Carrera
coilovers, with the threaded lower spring perch that the
threaded shock housing passes through. The lower control
arms have been relocated to move the roll center upward (and
now I have to buy "Prepare/Tune to Win" so that I know why
that's good :-). Brakes are stock, yes, stock MGB but with
Ferodo DS11 pads and ducting from the headlight sockets which
have been replaced with wire mesh. The rear end is really
pretty slick. It still uses the lever shocks -- "they work just
fine at the back, so why reinvent the wheel?" says Butch --
and the leaf springs are augmented by radius rods, a Panhard
rod that's about the thickness of a Sprite axle, and a really
slick restraining rod that goes from a bolt welded to the top
of the diff back to an extension of the roll cage that goes
behind the fuel cell.
Brakes feel very tight; I'll probably want to flush the old
fluid and maybe even rebuild the calipers. Butch says that
the stock calipers work fine but require rebuilding after
about every fourth race, just because the heat expansion
makes them retain fluid, which means the pistons don't retract
fully.
In any case, I bought the car. It looks really sharp -- probably
the best looking car I own (which isn't saying much), and probably
the best-looking car in the FizzBall stable (which isn't saying
much more). It needs a motor, trans, and driveshaft, and I have
to investigate the left rear wheel bearing, but this car is pretty
close to race ready. If necessary, I'll build the motor and trans
in my street B and swap them into the race car to start getting
seat time at autocrosses and drivers' schools.
And what's amazing about it is that I paid the same for this as I
did for my street B -- $1800. The front subframe would cost almost
that much to duplicate...
Oh yes. He's got a name already. Kim was looking over the
interior, which is a nice shop grey (black roll cage and a black
crinkle-finish dash). "Can we paint it zolatone grey?" she asked.
"Then it'll be like a rock."
"Gibraltar," I said. "We'll call him Gibraltar." And any Peter
Ustinov fans will understand the resonance of that name.
--Scott "One misses the Rock when one isn't on it" Fisher
--
--
"I wanna see big ugly cars mashing into each other." --Andy,
on his motivation for flagging the NASCAR race at Sears Point.
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