With all the stockings hung and house trimmed, I get to dirty my hands today. The car is now on jacks, wheels removed. In preparing for Amelia or any Concours show, for that matter, the wheel wells and suspension must be clean, clean, clean.

I use Turtle Wax Bug & Tar remover for the heavy cleaning. Lots and lots of cotton towels. Also handy were blast of compressed air. A word of caution: use safety glasses and air blast before you do too much cleaning with the Turtle Wax.

Later in the process, I'll get to "touch-up" paint. Scratches and chips are clearly visable now along with bolts begining to loose their body color. I'd rather just clean and polish first and then get out the paints one time only.

I forgot to mention an important step of erecting the soft top. The area of paint that will be covered by the top, and now inside the cockpit needs to be cleaned, clayed, polished and waxed. Rather than get the polishing machine out for a little area--and the machine would not faire well around the lift-the-dot studs--I hand polish this area. I cleaned the area with Griot's Speedshine, dried it with 100% cotton towels again from Griot's, and used their Fine Hand Polish. Granted, I used towels on the soft top and the leather seats but look at the pile of used dirty towels on the floor next to the garage door. I use alot of towels--once they are dirty in the least, I get a new one. I don't want grit grinding into my paint. Change towels often. By the time this process is over I will have washed my stack of 30 towels 4 or 5 times. Change towels often. Did I say that already?

The next two pictures are obviously the windscreen side pillars the LH one is not touched yet and suffers from a bad case of the dull and oxodized., The RH(decal) is darn near show-ready. Mothers Aluminum and MAG Polish does the heavy lifting and the Magic Wadding removed Mom's residue.

Yes, I'm going to The Show. I know how I got the nod--sorta. Some was luck and fate I suppose, but mostly its a method--a technique of restoring and detailing an early MGB to enough of a level to be invited to the Concours de Elegance at Amelia Island, Florida for the 2008 gathering. see: http://www.ameliaconcours.org/ For those unfamiliar, Amelia Island, although only in its 13th year, is considered the "Pebble Beach" of the East Coast. Very prestigious indeed! (this is where you should feel free to do your best Thurston Howell 3rd imitation, lovey.)

So why me? Well, I've had a bit of success in the British Car Show scene. While none of this is meant to sound like a braggart, its where I've been--just the facts. In 2003, I finished a 3rd restoration on car 22909. Its an Iris Blue '64 & it has overdrive and original everything--down to the 10-32 pozi-drive screws and genuine British bolts with their proper trademarks atop. I've owned the car since 1985 and for a decade, it was my daily driver. My wife & I were convinced by an old M.G. codger, the late great Bob Mason, technical advisor to the North American MGB Register, to attend the National Annual Convention in St. Louis that year. "You have the next Concours winner in your garage, Paul" Bob told me once after seeing some pictures of my restoration's progress. That really stoked me to finish it correctly. And I guess that I did by many standards. Not only was St. Louis my very first car show, I did win! Top Point M.G in the Concours and Best in Show. I did a repeat in Parsippany the following year. That show sandwiched at least a dozen more car shows in between that year. And each time, at each car show, we'd win first place. Or some big Cup, Trophy, Heritage Award, yadda, yadda.

People were really nice to us--at least with their votes and generaly, we were immediatley accepted into the M.G. club scene. But I noticed something brewing. I heard whispers of "Garage Queen" and "mine's a driver" and wondered when a garage queen became a driver. So for MG2005, I set out with one goal: Long distance award and Best on Show. 8080 miles later, mission accomplished! Now mind you, one doesn't go on an 8 thousand mile trip to just prove a point. Kathy & I had the trip of a lifetime. Glacier National Park, The Tetons, Idaho, Montana, Old Faithful, 100 mile an hour drives and memories stuffed so hard in my head that if I were a proper wordsmith I could write a great American novel. No fears of that happening!

But something else was happening at the next years car shows. People began not to talk to us so much. We had become the dreaded Trophy Hounds! And we were still winning. So the count is up to 18 shows and 18 First Places and I just got tired of extreme detailing of the car. Jeez, I must have had like 30 coats of wax on it at one point. Detailing the boot and polishing the undercarriage...after awhile, it was just getting a little nuts. And I wanted to just drive my old but now perfectly restored car. 100% reliable, go anywhere. So I have been. It looks like any other, pretty nice MGB. There's oil spray on the red engine paint. The brass fittings and heater return pipes are dull. There's a slight fuel leak on the front carb thats been there about 5,000 miles. I've got leaves in the cockpit and scraps of bits and pieces of who kn
ows what. Alot of chrome pieces are showing slight pitting and I likly could win some type of bug spatter contest. I don't even want to think about the undercarriage. In fact, it didn't get cleaned after the Olympia and back. That will be the biggest challenge. If you don't count the small paint bubbles on the rear doglegs...or the missing yellow paint on the fan blades.


Last Monday, I received a big fat envelope in the mail. It was from The Show! I knew what big and fat meant--the same as a pudgie college acceptance letter--I'm in! You don't even need to open it to know that. A thin letter is a ding letter. Ahh, glorious fat letter... Months ago, I was contacted by a Triple M guy who was involved with the show somehow--I'll explain all that later. Anyway, I agreed to submit photos and was asked whether I would accept an ivitation if one was offered....hmmmm....lt me think for a minute....

So there you have it. The 3 time National Car Show Winner who is now offically trashed, is gong to The Show! I have till the first week in March. 90 days...you do realixe I not doing this for a trophy. Just to be invited is a Win in my book. My invitation is framed and will have an honored spot on a garage wall. Heck, it may even rate a wall in the house!

My hope with this journal is to show the intersted how to detail a car for a show. I hope to do some small improvement every day or so & explain/demo/photo what I've done. I hope you enjoy and that in some way, you find it useful.

Since the Show "configuration" is top up, bonnet & boot lid open, the first step today was to empty the boot and put the top on for the first time in a year. I cleaned and polished the clear windows with Meguires Plastic Polish and gave the black vinyl a heavy dose of Griot's Vinyl Dressing. I did manage to remove a silver paint smudge from the black vinyl using a quick swipe of laquer thinner immediatly neutralized with copious amount of the Griot's. The silver paint staining is from the B.S. spray bomb paint I used on the spare tire clamp. Any day now, it will be sent off to LaBrandi's Plating in Harrisburg, PA for a proper nickel plating. Next, Connelly's Hide Food was generously applied and I even left a little residue to absorb into the leather while I wrote this. And that means the end of today's writing. I'm going to pour myself a drink and see if the Connnelly's has been absorbed.