on my way to work Sunday (had to get a stupid program debugged).
I noticed a rather nice '67 MGBGT up on jackstands, sans front
suspension, as I rode past, I saw someone sitting next to it, up
to his elbows in solvent. Since meet another enthusiast seemed
a lot more interesting than the program that I was supposed to
be working on, I stopped to say hi, introduce myself and check
out the toy.
It turns out that Chris is in need of:
1) a rebuildable MGB block (and I think crank).
2) a machiniist that can ream MGB Kingpin Bushings
preferably in the Santa Cruz area.
His name and number are:
Chris Attias 429-9739
He would like to have the car back on the road in time for the
All British Day on the Green in palo Alto.
It turns out, that he used to have a sprite, and was in SMOG,
so I described my car. The way that he remembered it was kind of
funny to me. Have you ever done something that seemed totally
reasonable and perfectly straightforward, at the time. But
years later, complete strangers will say, "Hey, weren't you the
person that..."
About two years ago, Mini Mania was putting on one of their
series 'A' swap meets. I had just gotten my sprite back on the
road and was very annoyed at the way that it drove with the
Weber (40 DCOE). Mini Mania advertised an 1
HS4 conversion for a series a, on sale, one only (used).
I decided that this was the way to go.
I drove over, and realized that the best way to find out
if it would work, was to put it on the car. Mini-Mania
had a large supply of manifold gaskets, as well as any other
hoo-haws that I might need to make the swap work, and if it
didn't, I could just buy another gasket, and put the weber
back on.
About 45 minutes later, the swap complete, problems overcome,
I fired up the sprite, tuned the carbs, took it for a test drive,
pronounced the operation a success and swapped the Weber and some
money for a ported and flowbenched head.
I cannot understand why this made such an impression,
We have all performed far more intricate mechanical feats at roadside,
without the benefit of a specialty parts store 50 feet away.
But in doing this one small job, I seemed to have gained such
notoriety, that on the average of about twice a year, when I describe
my sprite to someone, that incident springs immediately to theeir mind.
LRC
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