Patrick driving the E-type down to Lenox

Butch, John, Steve, Patrick and I went down to the Berkshire British Motorcar Festival in Lenox on Saturday, June 16, it turned out to be arguably the best day weather-wise of the month of June.

We ended up taking a pretty representitive variety of first rate cars.  You already know what Patrick was driving.  Steve and his lady friend Jean motored down separately in my MGC.  John took his father and semi-famous senior citizen enthusiast Larry Perry

Right to left behind TR3: John, his dad, Butch, Ray Boas

(see our “Press” page) in a fabulously sharp and original Opalescent Silver Blue Jaguar Mk2 Sedan , and after consultation with Richard Pignatello, it was decided that Ms. Piggy would benefit from an extended roadtest by Butch.

Our friend from Walpole, N.H. Ray Boas in his beautiful black TR3, and Chris Lapan (& Maryanne)    traveled down en MGB  along with Butch.

I snapped this picture under the E.C.C&R.

Butch readies his steed

Jason captures the moment, Butch, John & Ray roll out

tent with Eddie Johnson working the front table while John, his dad, Butch and Ray Boas are enjoying the atmosphere.  You can just see one of the two MG TD body tubs which is ongoing at East Coast Collision & Restoration, while Steve and Ian are putting together a rolling chassis in our downstairs workroom.

John does breakdown work

We have been completely bowled over this week with unscheduled work.  As a general rule, if you’re V.O.R. (Vehicle Off Road) we’re gonna let you jump our queue.  John can be seen here wrestling the distributor out of the Jaguar XK 120 Fixed Head Coupe seen here a few weeks back, and which conveniently choose to die in front of the Solon Post Office.  A heavy duty “red” ignition rotor restored it to apparent good health, but John also changed the points & condensor which arguably were also due.  It got a roadtest.

Marine Cpl. Reilly Clark puts the Jaguar thru its paces

Austin Healey 3000 Mk III

One day in 1966 Richard Pignatello walked into an Austin Healey dealership in New Jersey and drove out in a new British Racing Green Phase 2 Healey BJ8.  About 20 years later he freshened it up a bit with a dark blue paint job, and in the spring of 2002 he delivered it into our hands for a complete rebuild.

Richard had an idea for a new color which he described to us as “Ferrari Fly Yellow”, but when it came back from paint the first words out of my mouth were “Taxi-Cab !”.  We rebuilt it from stem to stern and Richard’s done his best to drive the wheels off it in the intervening ten years, but he’s kept it up and it’s still a tight, accurate and powerful car, which is the way we always do it.

Richard just sold his house in Warren and is moving to Florida.  Goodbye Piggy !

Oil pushing out of housing

The drivetrain in my MGB has been getting pretty howly-growly this spring, no surprise, I’ve put 150,000 miles on top of whatever was on it before.  At the 70,0000 miles service (2nd time around) all was well, but at 72,500 miles the left rear brake assembly was of the oil bath variety.  I flagged this for attention over the weekend, and last Saturday when I stripped off the rear hub it was obvious that the rear oil seal was making its escape.  A little further

Bearings yes, Cages no

investigation revealed the near complete failure of the rear wheel bearing.  In the second picture you can see that although the balls are still in the races the cages that separate them have almost completely collapsed.  I cleaned the swarf out of the axle tube and found a used MG TD rear wheel bearing (Ayuh, they’re the same) and reverse-sequenced the procedure.

Here are your two take-aways:  First, like windshield wipers, this kind of deterioration is progressive and a 3rd party look-over every so often is a useful check & balance.  Second: BMC rear axles bearings are lubricated by the gear oil.  Jaguar, Triumph and some others like Morgan are packed with grease.  These need to be stripped, cleaned and repacked every 50,000 miles or 25 years or so.  Saves a lot of unscheduled downtime.

Meet us at the Berkshire British Motor Festival Saturday, June 16

Scavanger Hunt: We are decamping en masse to the Berkshire British Motorcar Festival this weekend.  All of us (except 2nd Lt. Warner Clark) will be there and we are challenging you to find us.  Stop by the Sports Car Services/ East Coast Collision & Restoration tent Saturday and pick up a poster-sized copy of our program ad.  Then go out and track us down.  The first ten people who collect five signatues on their poster will receive (yeah, you guessed it) an oil filter of their choice, post paid.  Thanks to Larry Adams in Barre, Massachusetts who saw a poster where  I didn’t. A special thanks to Peter Bayer at Nisonger Instrument who turned around the tachometer for my recently Pertronix converted E-type V12 in time for the Berkshire  show this weekend.

Our summer intern Ian Levine started this week.  Cor’ Blimey, this young man is a hard worker

Blast-Man Ian at the controls

Rare Thursday picture of David working on an MGB

Cor’ Blimey the weather has been something.  Today was an unending mobius strip of alternating belts of heavy rains and blistering blue skies.  On a trip to Greenfield to fetch some relined brake shoes the roads were dry and the sun was hot all the way to the Border, and two and a half miles into Massachusetts the rain was coming down in buckets.  Coming back the weather alternated between blue sky  and heavy showers in bands that appeared to be about ten miles wide.

It’s lousy haying weather, and you can wear out a new convertible top in a month trying to keep up with the vicissitudes of the climate presently.

Steve blows the cobwebs off Myron

We are anticipating  the arrival of our summer intern Ian Levine next week.  Ian and Steve are about to spend a large amount of quality time with a couple of TD’s, putting a rolling chassis together and prepping Myron, seen here, for paint.

Myron, of course, is the TD I trundled out to Long Island for just after the first of the year.  Patrick tore down the engine and roughed in the brakes & suspension some months ago.  The machine work is

We have laid down a TD production line alongside an un-production line

shelved, sitting in my engine queue, and in about a month we’ll be looking to marry everything up again.

This is one of our useful strategies.  We like to have an original car wherever possible to use as a guide for a buildup.  Although we had several to choose from, are certain synergies inherent in this pairing.  As we said last week, Stay tuned for details.

Unipart GFE 422 update: It has been pointed out to us that the Mann W 917 is not really an optimum replacement filter.  It is slightly shorter than its predecessor the W920/21.  So while we’re investigating Hastings oil filters as an alternative, we’re still suggesting you use the FRAM PH43 for the time being, instead.

Hidden Damage: A crashed Subaru next to our driveway

We had a couple of young people parked in our driveway this morning shortly after 8:00.  They told us that a friend had gone off the road on a corner near the shop.  It wasn’t until around 1:30, after numerous trips past it both on foot and by car that John noticed a reflection off the tailgate window, and we discovered this Subaru ensconced in the underbrush between out driveway and the Westminster West road.  It was well and truly hidden.  No injuries were reported.

The Good & The Bad of MGB Oil Filters

Last fall my doctor called the shop on an urgent matter, he had just serviced his MGB and when he started the car it dumped four quarts of oil on his garage floor.  The NAPA oil filter had stripped the threads in the filter head.  Around the same time we began to notice difficulty starting the Unipart GFE 422 oil filters we regularly use.  Similar reports came in to us about CARQUEST MGB oil filters.

Monday I sold a GFE 422 to a local customer who showed back up an hour later with the threads damaged on his filter head, which fortunately I was able to repair.  There is an emerging pattern:  We strongly suspect that all of these filters have a common Asian source. I could not start another GFE 422 on the repaired filter head, but an N.O.S. GFE 121, the same pre-supersession oil filter worked just fine.

Last Friday Butch & John Wrestled the engine back in the Mk2

We would like to suggest that for the time being you use the Mann W 917 or FRAM PH 43 oil filters pictured here.

Work continues apace on several fronts.  Butch has been fitting the glass in the Mini Panel Van this week, while John is still up to his elbows in the recently refinished Jaguar Mk2 Sedan.  Steve once again has been swing-man, grinding thru the 2nd MG “Y” tourer, a TR6 and a couple of MGB’s. Tomorrow he is prepping my MGC for “Brits by The Sea” to be guest driven by our friend and customer Bob Mitchell of British Motorcars of New Hampshire, and I spent the long weekend hoeing out the shop.  I had planned to do this anyway, but for reasons we’ll get to in a moment, probably not to this degree.

Can you identify the component in front of the coil ?

British Trivia Time again.  Here’s an underhood picture of an unusual component installed just in front of the Lucas Sports Coil on the LHD MG “Y” tourer which was here last week (and not to be confused with the RHD “Y” tourer Steve serviced this week).  It has a copper line which runs to the black reservoir can on the battery box.   The first three correct responses will be rewarded with the british car oil filter of your choice if we stock it.  (Sorry MGB Unipart oil filters aren’t on offer this week).

Sports Car Services is often times the low hanging fruit for Hemmings Sports & Exotics just over the mountain in Bennington when they need a story on deadline, or something interesting, not necessarily for attribution.  We read every word they print, but last week they approached us with a slightly different request.  Hemmings is about to start streaming video, and on Wednesday we spent nearly four hours working with their Tampa-based videographer.  Stay tuned, as the saying goes, for the result.

HMN video crew preps a Healey for rolliing video work as Steve, Butch & John look on