I love my new toy - my 1976 MGB. The car if I understand the history right was originally from somewhere they don't have snow or salt, partially restored by an auto body shop in PA somewhere, driven for a few years, then sold through an auto auction to the dealer in NJ who sold it to me on e-bay.

They tried to do everything right - but only for some reason got it 80% right or so. One example - they took the whole thing apart to paint it, did a nice job painting, and put it back together with all the original 1976 rubber parts. Not fun in the rain.

I've been doing one little project at a time, trying to bring the car up to 100%, and I'll post bits and pieces for anyone who is interested.

The forums have been a big help, with lots of good information on how other people have fixed the various issues I'm dealing with.

Last week's project was debugging the brake light circuit. Interesting symptom - the brake lights didn't work, but if you had the headlights on and held the brake pedal down, the engine would continue to run after you turned off the ignition! Seems the driver side brake light socket had a short between the brake terminal and the running light terminal, which would back feed around the ignition switch. Weird, and now fixed.

The latest project which took all of last week was rewiring the center console. Repaired all of the non-working lights, replaced the cigarette lighter with a new one (which was 1/8" longer, and needed to be shimmed to fit right) even preserving the cigarette lighter courtesy light. The stereo was hooked up so that when the ignition key was turned off you lost all the presets and the clock would revert to 12:00.. all of that's now fixed.

More fun to come..