During the whole speedo debacle, I'd maintained the constant goal of getting things squared away by this past weekend. The Meadow Brook Concours d'Elegance was on Sunday, and I had a date...a girl who was actually excited about going with me. Impressing her with my LBC was a must, especially after I found out that her dad has a TR7.

So when I got the speedo back on Thursday, things were going according to plan. I hooked it up, things were good, go me! But apparently, having sensed that this issue was coming to a close, the car had been planning its next temper tantrum, designed to make sure I wouldn't forget who's boss.

As I pulled the car in from its speedo test drive and shut it off, I heard that wonderful sound of gushing fluid. I looked under the car to see foamy coolant flowing from the radiator overflow hose. Apparently the Green Monster doesn't like Concours.

I called Guy, my mechanic, and he said it was probably either a bad gasket, or worse case scenario, a crack. Long and short of it: no Meadow Brook for the MG. My biggest fear was that it would be a major problem, and I wouldn't have use of the car for the Dream Cruise. My dad is coming into town, and he's never met the car, so it's kind of a big deal.

Well, Guy scoured the cylinders and found no hint of a crack, though the gaskets had certainly seen better days. So it looks as if things are once again copacetic. He even said that it's got more power now, since the intake runners had been partially blocked with gunk.

Now all I have to do is pray that there are no issues over the next week and a half. Amen.

Well, when we last left our hero, he was waiting for his speedo back from West Valley Instruments. It arrived, and I hooked it up to the car to test it. Well, things for me are never that simple. The speedo read 80 mph, but according to the GPS I was only going 72. Since I'd recorded the number of cable rotations in 1/100th mile, it seemed like a mistake on the part of the shop. So I called up Morris at WVI and explained the situation.

He had me send the gauge back, and when I did so, he said that it checked out to factory spec. In his 40 years of doing business, he'd never seen an issue like this. Just my luck. He was also reluctant to calibrate it differently, since the 10.75 turns I recorded was so close to the 10.4 turns that a 1040 gauge would require, and it would mean my gauge would be miscalibrated.

I had him do it anyway, figuring I'd regret it when the gauge came back and read low, but upon receiving it, it seems to be dead on accurate. The moral of the story? I have no idea, but I do know that many things that seem simple and straightforward for other people turn out much more difficult for me.

Next...my car goes psychosomatic.

There were a few little things that were keeping my MGB further from perfection, so I decided to address them. I noticed that the headlight switch was all the way on the right, next to the heater knobs, and the heater switch was on the left, the closest one in reach. Well, this clearly didn't make sense, so I decided to swap them.

In theory, this was one of the simplest fixes to be done on the car. All there was to do was unscrew the trim rings around each switch, swap them through the back of the dash, and screw on the rings again. Well, getting those rings off, not a problem. Gettin' em back on? One of the most frustrating experiences of my life. No matter what I did, I couldn't get any traction on the threads of the switches. To get the rings off I'd used scissors as a "spanner", and trying the same thing to get them back on, I hacked up one of them pretty badly.

The next little project was the windshield fluid nozzles that didn't do anything. This was easily remedied by blowing into the bottle straw with some water to clear any air trapped in the system.

Finally the time came to fix my wobbly speedo. From what everyone was telling me, this was a simple matter of replacing the cable. I did so, and it seemed to do the trick, for a day. Soon, though, it began to make rubbing sounds, which drove me nuts over the course of my next long drive, forcing me to disconnect the cable from the speedo.

When I got home, I figured that I'd not had it seated well in the speedo, so I reattached it. I took it for a test drive, and it started making squealing sounds, and after a short distance, the speedo stopped working completely.

While I was without a working speedo, I used my tach. I'd had a friend lead me in her car, and using hand signals we established the speed at each rev range in 4th. This clearly wouldn't do for the long term, though. What followed was the most difficult and involved piece of diagnosis I've been involved with on the car.

First I hooked up the end of the cable to a drill. It spun the speedo fine. Next I hooked it up to the angle drive, with the same result. Finally I removed the speedo pinion and examined its teeth, along with the drive gear, and found them in pristine condition. While I had the pinion out, I connected its shaft to that of the cable, and turned it with my hand. While the tip of the cable looked a little worn, it seemed to have adequate traction within the pinion shaft.

I was at a complete loss as to where the disconnect in the chain could be. Finally, Guy suggested that I stick a screwdriver in the angle drive female and try to turn it while it was connected to the pinion. Sure enough, I was able to do so, which meant the angle drive tip was too worn out after all. While I was hesitant to abandon the factory solution, I broke down and bought an overdrive-length cable and connected it directly to the transmission. It worked like a charm.

It was of course at this point that I realized that the speedo's accuracy was way off. At 40 mph it read 54. I did some research, and settled on West Valley Instruments to rebuild it. They got the speedo yesterday, and should have it back in the mail by the end of the week.

Next on tap: fixing my sticky handbrake and lazy turn signals.

During the winter I'd discovered what has become some of my favorite bedtime reading: the Moss catalog. I love catalogs in general (Oh SkyMall, you complete me!) so when I found one with page after page of MG parts and accessories, I was a pig in shit. I must say, the Moss catalog, with it's detailed illustrations, has been light years more helpful than the crappy Lindsey Porter MGB book I got on Amazon.

Not only was I excited to find the catalog, but I was ecstatic to learn that Moss' headquarters were in Goleta, CA, right down the road from my Santa Barbara office. While I work from home in Michigan, I do go to SB fairly often, so I was very excited to make a pilgrimage to Moss on my next trip.

While there, I bought some 3-point seatbelts to replace the 2-pointers in my B, as well as a new turn signal assembly. Since I'd gotten the car, the turn signals had been one of the biggest issues. The detents were almost completely worn out, the signals didn't self-cancel after a turn, and the blinking was completely sporadic, with no guarantee of actual function, and when they did it was a rapid blinking as if a bulb were out, even though all were functioning.

When I finally got the car out for the spring, the turn signal was my first project. Installation seemed fairly easy and straightforward. It would not be.

While it was a fairly simple task to remove the steering column collar and connect the new assembly, the damn thing didn't work. Well, actually the left side blinker did, albeit briefly. Frustrated with the non-functioning right side blinker, I started troubleshooting, which included connecting different combinations of old and new assemblies, testing to see if the new part was bad.

As it turns out, when I connected the old part again, its right blinker didn't work anymore. And then when I reconnected the new assembly, neither of its blinkers worked. After an hour or so of work, I had successfully deactivated both turn signals. And what perfect timing! The next day I had the second club driving event.

Well, I decided that I'd go ahead and drive the car, using hand signals if necessary. As we pulled in for lunch, the person who'd been following me told me that not only did I not have any turn signals, but I'd been driving without the benefit of brake lights either. I had actually just replaced the brake light switch, and was horrified with this turn of events.

Luckily, Guy the mechanic was on the drive, and with a little tinkering he figured out the problem. With my pocket knife he scraped away a bunch of rust from the fuse box, which was creating extra resistance in the electrical system. I guess when I'd replaced the brake switch and blinker switches, the new voltage demand was too much for the already weak system, and it refused to report for duty.

Guy got the brake lights and turn signals working, but it was a fragile truce with the car's temperament. I realized that I'd have to ensure a more consistent flow of power, since there was still a major symptom: the horn didn't work.

In exploring this problem, I learned to use a new tool: the circuit tester. I played around in the engine bay until I figured out how to make the light glow. Then I realized that there was a pretty thick layer of rust over the fuse box contacts for the horn. I used a screwdriver to scrape some of it away, and the sound of the horn was one of the sweetest victories I've had with the car.

Still, the circuits that went through the fuse box weren't that strong, and the blinkers were still blinking rapidly. I finally broke down and spent the $12 on a new fuse box. It rewarded me with slower and stronger blinkers. But there were still long periods of inactivity in the signals. They would blink several times, and then take a 5 second vacation.

I tried to remedy this with a new flasher unit. This actually made the blinkers even slower and stronger, and their cadence is now actually very similar to that of a modern car. Still, the long dead periods remain. I'm realizing that I'll have to essentially test the entire blinker circuit to determine the weak spot. The task seems pretty daunting, but given my past successes, I'm confident of victory.

After enjoying the Green Monster for a short few months, I knew it was time to put my toy away for the winter. Luckily I have a friend with an empty garage, so we agreed on a small fee to house the MG until the thaw.

I heeded the conventional wisdom of storage, and locked it down with a fresh oil change and fuel stabilizer treatment, and disconnected the battery, hoping it would be much easier to start that way come spring. After several months of waiting, I eagerly headed out to the MG's "winter cottage" to retrieve her.

But after quite a string of failed attempts to get her going again, I was stumped. Starter fluid would fire the engine, but it would quickly die again. A check of the fuel lines indicated that no fuel was going to the engine, though the pump was making its proper clicking sounds, meaning it was alive and well.

Eventually, my friend's neighbor who lived nearby came over, while I wasn't around, and gave the car CPR. He got it working by priming the fuel pump, though I wish I'd been there to see what this actually entailed.

Unfortunately, though I'd been hoping to enlist his help in some of the smaller projects that needed to be done on the car, this episode, combined with the heavy garage door he'd had to lift to get to the car (its spring was broken) turned him off to the idea of providing me further assistance.

In hindsight, though, this was a blessing in disguise. Since I didn't have anyone to rely on to do the little jobs with me, I just started doing them myself, which has actually worked out pretty well. I was now ready to tackle some of the little electrical gremlins, which would be quite a learning experience.

As the weather had cooled, the engine's starting ability also grew very limited. It was suggested that I get the carbs tuned, so I took it to the local import shop that I'd found through a friend. They did a tune up, including new plugs and wires, and were about to try their hands at the carbs. While the car was in the shop, though, I went to my first MG club meeting. Several people there told me that it wasn't a good idea to trust the carbs to anyone but an experienced MG mechanic.

One of those people was Guy, an experienced MG mechanic. While no doubt Guy wanted to drum up some business for himself, I'm definitely glad I let him care for the Green Monster. After his proper tuning of the carbs, the car started much more easily. He also installed a Pertronix ignition system, which was explained would be a much more reliable system than the traditional points.

While I did have to foot a more significant bill than I'd expected for this tuning, I must say that Guy has come through for me in many ways since. He has helped me trouble-shoot on the phone many times, and even made the occasional house call at no charge when I'm in a bind.

It is pretty comforting to have an experienced "safety net" available, since I've encountered a few situations where I just didn't know where to start. I was actually very afraid of having no one to teach me the basics about maintenance. And while Guy has helped me in a hands-on way, part of the benefit of knowing him has been simply to have the confidence to start tinkering myself.