In the restoration of my B, there were two important mistakes I made.

If you’ve been reading my journal to this point, you’ve already heard my project was on a very tight budget; therefore I wasn’t in much of a hurry. Also, you’ve heard that my experience is in carpentry and property maintenance – not mechanics.
For those of you who’ve done home repair, you know that if you’ve had to take the plaster off of a wall for some reason, you try to do as much as you can while it’s down. You may have been repairing a pipe, but if there is some old wiring that will eventually need replacing or some insulation that should be upgraded, you do that at the same time. As long as the wall’s open, do everything you can do. I’ve also heard others on this board talk about while the engine was out of their car, they took advantage of the situation to paint the engine compartment or change their fuel lines or whatever. The same logic does not always follow however…

Mistake #1 -

As you’ve read, I’d gotten the engine started and Lou and I’d pulled it out to put it in the other car eventually, but I then violated a cardinal rule: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I thought, as long as I have the engine out of the car, I might as well pull it apart and clean everything up – check the specs and all that. So I bought the Dr. Doolin video – very instructive (and a really nice guy) and I tore my engine apart. It was something I could do that didn’t cost anything, and I thought it would be a learning experience.

I totally disassembled the engine. I even pulled the pistons out (I did label them, though). Now the thing I hear from most B experts is, “You did what? Why?” Apparently unless you are planning on seriously fixing a problem or upgrading an engine, people run them til they break. Now I know. Some tell me that now I’m stuck getting my cylinders rebored and upsizing my rings and so on. Others tell me that people replace their rings all the time without reboring the engine. I’ll ask the machinist what he thinks, cuz he’s done hundreds of Bs. Anyway, I’ve got boxes full of engine parts waiting to go to the machinist. He can tell me what needs replacing and what can be cleaned up and refitted.

Mistake #2 -

File this one under “it seemed cheap at the time.” I knew I was going to get new paint on the red car (“tubby”), but I wanted to make sure the paint job would be good, and also that I wasn’t painting over any old bondo or hidden rust that would come back to haunt me later. So I bought a few cans of Aircraft Paint Remover (amazing stuff). I proceeded to strip the entire car down to the metal using this paint remover and steel wool pads. The good news is that there was no bondo on the car whatsoever. None. And there was only minor surface rust on the floorboards. That’s the good news. Apparently, though, I shouldn’t have stripped the car. From the people I talk with, I’ve basically doubled the cost of a paint job without much benefit. Oh well – I may just end up priming the car myself, or even painting it myself.

Anyway, nothing I’ve done so far has ruined anything, and I’ll have a better car when I’m done – but I’ll do a better job of asking for advice as I go along.

My new MGB, “Phoebe” was now running, but she had a few physical problems – pretty serious rust in the floorboards, for one thing, and it appeared that her hood/bonnet must have flown open at some point. It looked like the hood had been seriously creased although most of the damage had been pounded out. Given the financial issues identified in post #1, I didn’t have much money to spend, but I decided to poke around on the internet and try to find a replacement hood. This evening ritual of scouring Ebay and all the regional Craigslist boards was a way to feel like I was making progress on my car without spending any money.

One evening in June, I happened upon an ad on the Portland (Oregon) Craigslist. The writer of the ad was in Camas, Washington. He was selling a 1979 MGB roadster “rolling tub”, which I later learned is simply a body shell with wheels - no interior, no engine, no gearbox. He was only asking $100 for the entire thing. I wrote and asked if the “tub” had a hood in decent shape. He said it did, and e-mailed me several pictures. The car looked to be sound, but I needed to be sure because, while a hood alone would be worth $100, I would need to rent a trailer for $100 and spend another $100 on gas getting to southern Washington and back. A hood in good shape may be worth $100, but very few are worth $300, so I needed to know there were other parts I could maybe sell and recoup my losses. Little did I know.

“Sprite Lou” was kind enough to offer up his truck to pull the flatbed, and we were able to combine my trip with his visit to another parts guy in Portland on the same day. That made sense because Portland and Camas are about 120 miles north of where we live, and gas was over $3 a gallon then.

We spent a fair amount of time in Portland looking at Spridget parts and made it up to Camas in the early afternoon. The person selling the tub is a regular on this board – Ken Cambell. You won’t meet a nicer guy. After some time oohing and ahhing over his restored B, we loaded up “tubby” and headed for home. It wasn’t until I’d gotten “tubby” unloaded that I realized what a great find I had.

This body was CLEAN and straight. A ding on one front fender, a little dent of one rear fender and a crease in one door. That was IT! More than anything else, when I peeled up the carpet, there was only the smallest amount of surface rust, and there was absolutely no rust in any of the other usual places. A thought began to form…

“Tubby” had a bad right front fender – “Phoebe” had a good right front fender. “Tubby” had a creased driver’s door – “Phoebe” had a clean driver’s door. “Tubby” had a seemingly perfect body otherwise, while “Phoebe” had rust issues that would be expensive to repair. Before I came upon “Tubby”, my original plan was to strip “Phoebe” down, and repaint her, and then put her back together. I did have some concerns because I knew this project would take a while as funds are very tight, and I was afraid I would not remember what went where if several months past between the tear-down and the rebuild. My new thought was to strip “Tubby” down the rest of the way and get her painted, then move everything from “Phoebe” into “Tubby” as parts were replaced/restored. This would allow the project to proceed in pace with my available funds, and so the fun continued…

When I bought “Phoebe” she had been sitting for about five years. Bob told me that she ran well (the former owner was a customer of the shop), but she was likely not drivable due to an inoperable brake master cylinder. Sports Car Shop was nice enough to actually deliver the car to my house on their trailer! First order of business – bring her back from the dead…

While I was working out the purchase transaction, I had stumbled upon the excellent “Awakening a Sleeping MGB” article I found on theautoist.com. While I didn’t end up following the article step by step, it was a very handy reference.

My first order of business, before I even brought her inside, was to give her a good washing. The removal of five years worth of mud revealed that the car was actually white! Once she was clean, I pushed her into the garage, put her up on jack stands and took off the hood. (see picture)What I did next was not rocket science.
1) Turn the engine over a few times by hand
2) Drain the oil
3) Change the oil filter
4) Fill crankcase with 20w50 motor oil
5) Hand turn the engine over a few more times
6) Drain the cooling system
7) Refill the cooling system with water and antifreeze
8) Change spark plugs
9) Change plug wires
10) Change rotor and distributor
11) Change air filter (Weber)
12) Change battery
13) Siphon out gas tank
14) Use fuel pump to finish draining the gas tank
15) Change fuel filter
16) Add fresh gas
17) Have Lou come over to help
18) Spray carburetor with carb cleaner
19) Attempt to start car
20) Add starting fluid to carb
21) Attempt to start car
22) Add more starting fluid to carb
23) Attempt to start car
24) After large puff of white smoke clears, admire car now idling.

Once I got her going, I was able to check for compression. It wasn’t a perfect check, since I couldn’t really get the engine warm enough to check it while hot, but I checked each cylinder three times over three cycles and they were all well within specs. Whew! Doesn’t appear to be burning oil and the absence of white gunk in the valve cover makes me believe that the head gasket is likely sound. So far, so good.

As she was running, I even ran her through the gears and all appeared to be in order - but more adventures lay ahead…

When I was younger and in college, I used to stop in at the "sports car" garage that was down the street from my house. They had a bulletin board in there that always had ads from people with various sports cars for sale. It seems like there were always a lot of BMW 2002's, but that's a topic for another day.

I always wanted a sports car, so a few years later (when I had a few bucks), I stopped in at our local lbc garage called, appropriately enough, "The Sports Car Shop" (www.sportscarshop.com). That's where I met Bob Macherione. I told him what I was looking for and he fixed me up with a '74 B he'd been saving for a future project. I can't say enough about his support and advice during my restoration - he let me use his sandblasting cabinet, he lent me tools, he sold me parts at cost, and he even offered to let me use the shop lift at no charge if I needed it. Years past, and I lost that car in a divorce... life happens.

Fast forward 20 years or so - I'm working with "Sprite Lou" and he tells me he's looking for a sports car. He ends up getting a '68 Sprite and I'm so jealous I can't see straight.

Here's a little more background - I'm a remodel guy. I put myself through college doing carpentry, painting, and whatever other work I could find. I'm good at swinging a hammer, but except for the '74 B mentioned above, I'm not much of a wrencher. I change my own oil and that type of stuff but if the level of tolerance is less that 1/16th of a inch, I'm not your guy.

I got remarried about ten years ago and inherited two terrific kids. Bless their heart and their mother's as well, because over the course of ten years they moved with me through three separate houses, all with constant construction, remodeling or additions going on. About 18 months ago, I got the urge to build a new house - and they said NO! Apparently they'd gotten tired of drywall dust on their cheerios every morning and they weren't happy that I had a reserved shopping cart at the local home improvement store with my name engraved on the handle. They said we could move IF and only if, we bought a house that didn't need any work. Sure, I said, and we found a dream house. It was so nice that we put down earnest money right away and arranged a short term loan so we could live in the new house while the old one sold.

Needless to say, as soon as we put the for sale sign up at the old house, the real estate market went to hades in a handbasket and we were left holding two mortgages.

As Bill Cosby used to say "I told you that story to tell you this one".

When Lou bought his Sprite, I was so jealous I couldn't see straight, but I was BROKE. On a whim, I sent an e-mail to the Sports Car Shop. Remember me, I asked? He said sure, and we caught up a little bit. He's doing high end restorations now, including his regular wrenching, and he had a '77 B that was taking up space in his parking lot. I explained the situation and he said, "I need the parking more than I need the money. I'll take payments." I explained to my darling wife that, in spite of being low on money, this car would be a terrific way to relieve stress and since I'm not allowed to do any home repairs... She saw the light, and I was the proud owner of a '77 MGB.