And in the mail today was a copy of the B's birth Certificate from British Heritage. The car rolled off the line on a Wednesday, May 5, 1976 and was shipped to the USA on May 11th. As she was "born" on Cinco de Mayo it was entirely appropriate and a little surprising that we had already decided to nickname her "Abeja" which is Spanish for bee.

The '76 didn't have a factory sway bar and it has been in my plan to get one in but those springs scared me. Well my local MG Club had a Tech-Day and we just had at her.

Took three guys kneeling on the bumper to keep enough weight on the car so that the trolley jack under the spring pan would compress the springs enough for removal and installation of the spring pan bolts and control the release of the spring tension. Without their weight the car would just rise up from the jackstands.

Everything in the suspension came apart quite nicely with no frozen parts but did discover loads of up-and-down play in the right kingpin. A PO had installed one of the kingpins with the phosphor-bronze washer and the thrust washer (there was only one) in wrong order and not sufficient shimmed to take out the play. The PB washer was getting gouged. That was all corrected and everything went back together just fine.

Installed the bar, new front A-arms, replaced exxisting standard A-arm bushings with V8 bushes all around and replaced lower trunnions (I had bought lower trunnion kits in case I needed to cut the existing ones off to get the A-arm off - it wasn't necessary as it turned out but figured what the heck I had the new ones there and the bushes came out easily so did it).

All done and buttoned up in about 3.5-4 hours in the driveway. Would have been less if not for the kingpin discovery.

Now that I have dealt with springs once and seen how it is done, I wouldn't be too worried about doing it again if the need arises (shock arms, etc.) provided I can get some heavy-weight volunteers to hold the car down.

Installed refurbished LE Wheels with new Yokohama Avid Touring P185/70R14's. Installed windblocker and new top cover. Work in progress on installing correct (72-76) radio console to replace existing (68-71) console and taking advantage of having the console out to install a voltmeter.

The B is still slumbering in the son's garage and I am busy refinishing a set of LE rims. I don't know what type of clear coat or lacquer the factory used in 1980 but that stuff doesn't want to come off easily. If I wear my thumbs off sanding I'll just have to keep the ROstyles on for this season.