The MGA With An Attitude
MGA Guru Is GOING MOBILE - (May 16 - May 31, 2023)
Tuesday, May 16, 2023:
Someone asking questions about tire pressure. That can take a long explanation for someone who has never thought about it. More questions about wear in the front suspension trunnions and swivel links. The guy with the IH Metro Mite is now asking if installing a PCV valve could stop high oil consumption (probably not, but it might stop external leaks). Took a bit of time to post a couple pictures of the "PERSPEX" markings on original MGA side curtain window panels. Someone asking about possible value of a very rare GBG DETATOPS aluminum hardtop for MGA. This might be the only one currently known to exist.
Wednesday, May 17, 2023:
Cruised two hours west to Mandeville, Louisiana on the north side of Lake Ponchatoula, for an evening meeting with British Motoring Club New Orleans, North Shore group. About 30 people present as they had a guest speaker from Continental-General Tire Company. He had a new promotional video (possibly the first time it was seen in public) detailing the construction details and manufacturing of tires. Very good presentation, long video, followed by good questions and good answers. And a chance to try out a new (used and gifted) compact digital camera that looks like it will work out okay (pictures immediately below).
As the meeting was breaking up there was time for a short chat with some old friends, and a few test pictures in limited lighting outside (beats the crap out of the dumb phone camera). Then we drove another 20+ miles back east to Slidell, LA for a known good late night WiFi spot.
Thursday, May 18, 2023:
Another broken alternator rear bracket, Moss Motors #5 zero radius sharp corner bend part, guaranteed to break before the next oil change (usually a few days to a few weeks). I am now sure these parts are cracked in the bending process, already failing before installation. Before this spate of faulty Moss parts the previous bracket lasted 13-years 105,000-miles.
 This time I installed a repaired bracket that my brother and I worked on for an hour. We ground bevels both sides for full penetration welds, welded deep and built up above surface, then ground smooth all around. Additionally we welded in a triangular gusset on top to reinforce the top corner near the bolt, again ground smooth all around. I expect this one will be okay. Just bought one more (#6) from Moss for an emergency spare. Going to send the last broken one back to Moss with a bitch note recommending they freeze sales of the known defective parts and toss the rest of inventory parts into the trash bin (but I doubt they will).
Friday, May 19, 2023:
This would be a good day to rebuild/assemble a fresh pair of carburetors to replace the problematic bits under the bonnet. I think the current carburetors were swapped in sometime before I bought the car in 1977, which would mean well over half a million miles on the throttle bodies. Shafts were replaced twice, last time 25 years ago when drilled 0.010" oversize and rebuilt with oversize shafts. But that means something like 375,000 miles of wear on the current shaft and journals.
They have problems beyond sloppy shafts, like where choke return springs are hooked into the bottom of the throttle bodies, the holes wore out the bottom so the springs can no longer connect here. Choke arms have holes worn badly oval or right through the side wall. So two months ago I picked up a pair of carbs at a swap meet, some parts missing, but with the bodies and shafts in serviceable condition. So today we will borrow a table and chairs in the cool garage of Cliff Hughes in Mandeville, Louisiana and get to work building a fresh pair of carbs mostly from a collection of used parts.
Cliff came up with a jug of something called "Aluminum Brightener", so we might give that a try. The results were not so good when the first pot metal parts turned black (or very dark grey). When all else fails, read the instructions. So you're not supposed to dip and soak the parts, just a light mist spray, and rinse it off after a minute or so. With a longer soak, it looks like this stuff does not like the zinc in the pot metal. So we rinsed it down with lacquer thinner, and just washed the rest of the parts in lacquer thinner, and then it was time for assembly.
We removed and saved two #5 needles, don't know what that application was, but will save them for someone else. Installed two new #6 needles (standard issue for a 1600 engine). Installing Teflon O-rings for the jet seals (2 in place of each original cork seal), and new cork seal rings for the bottom packing nuts.
A brand new part for the rear jet lever (choke arm), and the best of the good used parts for the front jet lever. Some new clevis pins, and new springs for jet lever return.
New rubber grommet seals for mounting the float bowls on 1500 type banjo bolts. We spent at least half an hour finding and cleaning up number 4BA screws for torsion spring clips and throttle shaft couplings. Note to self, buy some more 4BA screws. Pick two good looking brass floats from a stack of several that all looked serviceable. There was a shortage of float covers, but we would re-use the parts currently in the car (along with the known good vintage Gross Jets. All together by 3-pm, still enough time to install the new carburetors.
Get the old carbs off the car, and swap over the float covers with new gaskets. Install a new throttle arm to replace the old one with an egged out hole. Nice to have spare parts in the Magic Trailer.
New gaskets for carburetor base mounts and for the air filters. Not long to bolt it all up, adjust the cables and arms, fire it up and tweak the tune-up bits to make it run well. Huge improvement over the old worn out carbs.
Still enough daylight to jack it up and give it a quick chassis lube job (only 2000 miles overdue). Pack away the toys and tools, clean up the shop, and head out to find a good WiFi spot. We will return tomorrow to disassemble the old carbs to salvage any usable spare parts. -- Still a little behind, more soon, stay tuned.
Saturday, May 20, 2023:
Breakfast appointment this morning with British Motoring Club New Orleans, North Shore group at Liz's Where Y'at Diner in Mandeville, LA. More than a dozen British cars on hand, 20 or so people in for breakfast.
The TR6's were strutting their stuff today. Not sure about the fetish for Weber downdraft carbs.
After breakfast they commonly go for a drive somewhere, but today it was particularly hot and humid in full sun. Still early, they opted for a very short drive en masse to a local Cars and Coffee. Having already eaten, and having other things to do, we opted out and headed back to Cliff's place to attend to our retired carburetors.
The MGA was slow to start and ran like crap, must be a carburetor problem. I managed to get it out of the car park onto the street, in spite of the fact that it would not idle below 2500 rpm. We nursed it along (after a fashion)
for a few miles to get back to Cliff's garage. There it took only a minute to determine that it was spewing fuel out of the rear carburetor float cover as fast as the fuel pump could pump it. Not long to R&R the float cover to replace the soggy sunken brass float (so much for good used parts). Navigator make the executive decision this time to install two new floats, and I would agree with him here. A bit later we would re-fill the fuel tank, and knowing what gas mileage it normally had, I calculated that it had dumped 2-1/2 gallons of fuel on the ground in just a few miles.
With the engine running well again, we were soon into the cool garage to attack the old carburetors. Two
throttle bodies and shafts would definitely go to the dump, but first I had to get the picture of the badly worn throttle shaft(s). This was very interesting, because I had only recently learned that SU HS4 carburetors had bushings cast into the pot metal throttle bodies. The bushings are located flush at the outboard ends of the bearing journals, but do not quite reach to the throttle bore (by about 1/8-inch). Here you can see a groove worn in the shaft each side of the throat where the pot metal was abrading the shaft. This because as the journal bore wears a little, the pot metal material is more abrasive than the bushings. Cute, huh?
Around mid day we hopped in Cliff's truck and ambled over to visit Bob Hurst in Covington, LA,who is nearing completion of construction of his new toy shop. This was way too good to pass up, so I was taking lots of pictures. This should maybe make a feature article for some club newsletter. Grab a beverage and find a comfortable chair. We are about to check out the ultimate man cave.
In the first picture is a yellow building at far right. That is his house, facing a service road along a main road, and that property is zoned Commercial. He has a business office on the ground floor, along with a two car garage, and he lives upstairs. The next property lot was originally also zoned Commercial, and is large enough to accommodate this nice large garage. Sometime after permits were let, and construction was started, the zoning for this lot (and most of the rest of the neighborhood) was mysteriously changed to Residential. This then requires the building to have residential accommodations, including at least one bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, etc. You will soon see this requirement is well met.
On the left end of the new building, three vehicle doors. Inside the bays are a very generous two cars deep (more pictures of that later). The high windows are for skylights and ventilation, not an upper floor, maybe open the windows to let hot air out (except the whole place is air conditioned). Center of picture is the front walk-in door, and inside a stairwell going up. Right side of the picture, a large garage door, high ceiling, and a service lift in there as well.
Inside with my back to the large garage door (right side of the building) there is a heavy duty frame lift hoist under the high ceiling, and lots of tool cabinets to the right. In the back what might pass as a kitchen, except all of those cabinets are actually shop grade tool cabinets. On the wall to right of the table and chairs is a large flat screen TV.
Look to the left side of the table and chairs to find his and hers rest rooms (including a shower). A peek down a short hall to the left reveals a sand blasting cabinet, a vacuum system to keep the place clean (air compressor is located and insulated behind the wall in the larger shop space). A step farther on has a Dillon Queen oven for baking powder coat paint parts.
Through the hall to the garage space find three double deep bays with lifts in the back that can serve as service lifts or double stackers for more storage space. Lots of storage cabinets, and I suppose they may roll in some more tool cabinets. Power outlets and air piping all around, the wash basin. I think the large coiled hose is connected to an exhaust scavenging system so they can run the cars inside without opening the doors.
There's a picture of the atrium for skylight, really nice effect. Step back into the hallway, and hey, there's an elevator, big enough for a few people, or a car engine? Gotta see what's upstairs, storage space, maybe?
Run around and check out the front stairway first. Upstairs, oh, I get it, this is the real kitchen, no tool cabinets. It is technically a "residence", yes? But it was only half the depth of the building. What's down the hall?
It has a nice bathroom with full facilities, including a bidet. A step back into the hall, turn left, there is a washer/dryer stack for laundry room.
Turn right there is the bedroom with a nice closet, likely to be used as an office/library when finished.
Back up front there is a nice open air deck, in process, nearly finished laying down teak hardwood deck with wood pegs and stainless steel screws. Look to the side again, and there is a big window looking down on all the nice cars expected to be housed in the garage.
Back downstairs in the "club room"? We were introduced to the large flat screen TV with surround sound stereo and every imaginable electronic gadget, including surveillance cameras inside and outside of the building (which are also accessible remotely from a smart phone).
I finally dug up an earlier picture of Dean Duplantier (from Mandeville, La) who is the architect for the big garage,and owner of all the cars currently in that building. -- Then a short walk through the hedge next door to visit the original two car garage, which holds an Austin Healey 3000 and a 1926 Hudson. Huh? Oddly, these are the only two collector cars owned by Bob Hurst. Bob says the only reason he was building the big garage was to have a place to store and work on his Hudson. Gotta say that car is HUGE, the size of an opera sedan, like seven feet tall and long and heavy. The engine is something like 281 cubic inches displacement and makes all of 28 horsepower. That's Bob hiding behind the door in the center picture below, with Cliff Hughe holding the door.
Finally, the real reason we were invited here today was to look at the Austin Healey 3000, which was suspected to have a head gasket leak. On inspection it appears more to be a small oil leak from the valve cover gasket running down the side of the cylinder head to be collecting on the edge of the head gasket. So try changing the cover gasket first before panic.
Sunday, May 21, 2023:
Early breakfast, email check, BBS review, and work on the backlog of photos and notes for the past few days. Some progress, not a lot, did get pictures from Friday and Saturday processed, but not the notes to match yet. Getting the bum's rush to get moving half past eleven, closing programs on the computer, fat fingered the keyboard at the last minute, and think I accidentally deleted some unrecoverable pictures. No time to fix it now, so I will be cursing myself (and navigator suppose) for the rest of the day.
Off to Fairview State Park in Madisonville, LA for Crawfish Boil (picnic in the park). I suspect I may be allergic to shell fish since a couple of bad experiences more than 50 years ago, so I didn't plan eating crawfish. Must have been at least 20 British cars there, and at least as many more non-Brit people movers. I had to park on the grass, right in front of a prohibition sign, like several other cars.
Mostly sunny, hot and humid today. Wandering up the path in the right direction, we ran across a couple of Brit club folks who found a spot in the shade. More pictures approaching the pavilion.
Fun taking pictures of people taking pictures of me taking pictures. Head count finally came to 80 people present, including club members, family, friends and visitors. I started with a dish of pastries, cookies, various deserts. Then I guess I got bold and ate a little corn on the cob and a couple pieces of sausage and veggies that had been boiled along with the crawfish. Pretty sure that was later going to turn out to be a bad idea. A few more LBC's had arrived after us, more parking in the grass of course.
Had another appointment (request), so after the picnic we were off to visit Rick Gilley in Ponchatoula, LA. Rick has three LBC in his back garage, an AH Bugeye Sprite, an MGA Coupe, and an MG TD. I guess he likes red. We were summoned because the MGA was running badly, or barely running, pretty much not drivable. We would get back to that later. After the introductions there was time for some snacks and drinks and chat under AC. Getting dark before it got cool, no car tinkering today, but I did get a handle on what I thought was missing pictures.
The missing pictures turned out to be an earlier web page copy from before I had deleted some other pictures I wasn't going to use, displaying blank spaces that looked like they should be pictures. Solution was to delete the code lines pointing at the previously deleted pictures, leaving all of the pictures I wanted to keep all lined up like ducks in a row, none lost. But I did lose a lot of text captions that required more than an hour to re-type. Damn lucky and got off easy I guess. Then I could get some sleep (beginning with a queasy stomach).
Monday, May 22, 2023:
Dang. Woke up with the queasy stomach, so this was going to be a slightly uncomfortable day (to put it mildly). But we were determined to check out the MGA Coupe to find out why it was ill (sympathetic harmony?). This is an MGB 1800 engine with SU HS4 carburetors. I don't suppose it mattered that they were two different model numbers, one with a fixed needle and one with a floating biased needle (just the way it came with the car). There was fuel feed to the carbs, and the spark wires were in correct sequence (even though the distributor was disoriented), so let's see if it will fire up.
Crank, cough, sputter, no go. Good spark, so give it a sniff of ether and try again. Then it fired, ran like crap, very rich and smokey, and would die if it slowed down under 3000 rpm. At that speed no telling which carburetor was causing the problem, so disconnect the throttle link between the carbs, close the rear carb, increase idle speed on the front carb, give it another sniff of ether, and fire it up running on the front carb only. Still ran like crap, so the front carb was bad. Couldn't get to the linkages, so had to remove the air cleaners (PITA chore).
Adjusted the front carb full lean, and it still ran like crap. That much fuel had to be getting through the float chamber somehow, so time to remove the float cover. Fuel was a little low in the chamber, but the float was still floating. Some experience from the dark ages told me to check the vent port in the float cover, and sure enough the vent was clogged. The little vent hole in center of the cover has a tiny filter screen stuffed in it, and the screen was covered with debris. No-go trying to scratch the dirt off the cover, so we grabbed a tiny screwdriver to poke the screen, puncture it and just grind it out of there, and reassemble it.
We also had the dashpot apart to check the fuel jet and metering needle number. The needle refused to let loose for removal, so forget that for now, leave the needle in there. The next demonstration was interesting to show what was failing. With the dashpot and needle removed, and the float cover screwed down tight and sealed, put a finger over the vent port to close it same as the clogged vent screen, and switch on ignition (and the fuel pump). The resulting geyser from the main fuel jet nearly hit the bonnet, causing Rick to back up a step. With the vent closed, fuel would rise a bit in the float chamber, but not enough for the float to cut off fuel flow. Resulting air pressure in the float chamber would blow fuel right through the jet past the needle, flooding the carburetor.
Put that back together, and remove the float cover on the rear carb to check that one too while we were at it. The rear vent was clear, so reassemble it and try starting again. It was running, but not great. Then I noticed a bit of fuel running out of the rear vent on top of the float cover, so shut it down and replace both of the float valves (which had age hardened and damaged seal tips). That did it, finally running well enough to go after mixture adjustments, idle speed adjustment, air flow synchronizing, and soon had it purring like a kitten.
Smile and take a short break before going after the misaligned distributor. Standard fare here, remove the dizzy (loosen one clamp bolt and pull), then remove the base clamp (two bolts), and the diamond shape flanged casting (one screw). Use a rocker cover stud for a handle to screw into the distributor drive gear, pull it out, reorient it, and put it back in with the key slot below center and pointing toward the #1 spark plug ,and put it back together. Then we got to curse the person who drilled the distributor shaft wrong with the bottom drive dog disoriented about 30 degrees, not aligned with the top rotor. The dizzy body had to be rotated 30 degrees left, which made the vernier vacuum adjuster nut hit the starter motor. Rats!. Take it apart to turn the drive gear one tooth to the right, and put it back together again. Dizzy now in correct orientation with rotor pointing to #1 plug, and the spark wires now in the original positions, so it fired right up again just needing final spark timing. -- I just had to remind him that if he ever needed to replace the distributor, a different dizzy with correct configuration would not fit, because the drive gear is now one tooth away from correct orientation. That would force a correct distributor 40 degrees to the right (and would need to re-orient the drive gear again.
Take another break, grab new gaskets and reinstall the air cleaners. Discover the hard way why MGA air cleaners do not like to install on MGB carburetors. The MGB choke rocker shaft and cable and arm are in the way of getting fingers and a wrench in there to install the inboard bolts for the air cleaners. Be persistent, loosen the cable arm to rotate it out of the way. drop the bolts six times each, use two fingers like tweezers, drop the wrench several times, skin some knuckles and bleed on it a little. Eventually succeed, reorient the cable arm, and recall why the factory changed to brackets with captive nuts and long through bolts for the later MGB air cleaners.
A picture to show his nice remote brake booster installed, totally blocking access to the control box. Another picture of the bulkhead, with no heater, thinking about where to relocate the control box next time it needs service. And I noticed the cooling fan was installed backward, and told Rick he should correct it (but didn't get the picture).
Tuesday, May 23, 2023:
Day off to catch up with some clerical work. Time out for late lunch at a local bistro, then back to work. Finishing up the photos and notes a little past midnight (yes again), but at least up to date on the trip log, for the first time in about a week. Enjoy. - Zzzzz.
Wednesday, May 24, 2023:
Waiting for parts to arrive, hopefully today. Catching up backlog of email and BBS, updating inventory list and re-order list for the spare parts. --- Rick Gilley took his MGA Coupe for a test drive today, runs well, but slow idle speed (easy to adjust). Considering how much fuel was being pumped through the carburetor with the clogged vent, I suspect there may be fuel in the engine sump by now. So Rick pulled the dip stick, gave it a wipe and a sniff, and sure enough it smells like gasoline. Time for an oil change. He is now ordering parts for a spin-on oil filter adapter. --- Tracking says my parts arrived mid afternoon, but a bit to late to work on my car today, so we intend to have at it early tomorrow. Sleep early tonight so maybe I can catch up with that.
Thursday, May 25, 2023:
Rumble over to Cliff Hughes place in Mandeville, LA to borrow his air conditioned garage space. Pick up the new parts order and verify it is all there, then get after jacking up the car to R&R the oil pan to change the con-rod bearings. Drain the oil first, of course. Lots of fun lying on my back unscrewing oil pan bolts, especially the ones up front hiding above the suspension cross member. When the pump was removed, everything would drip incessantly with oil in my face. Been there before, just grab some rags and keep going. Not long to uncover the low oil pressure problem(s). I suppose all of the rod bearings were scuffed a little. But #2 was scuffed quite a lot. Most all of the white metal was erased on #2, but the underlying copper layer was still there, not through to the base metal, so it hadn't damaged the crankshaft journal. Too close for comfort, but I'll settle for lucky any day.
There it is going back together, pictures of #2 and #3 rod journals, still happy campers. The "optimistic" estimated 2+ hour job ran into a few inconveniences, but 6 hours had it all back together and running with fresh oil and good oil pressure. It's just maintenance.
26 miles west on I-12, and 50 miles north on I-55, and we were sitting in Magnolia, Mississippi for late lunch (half past 6-pm). Everything looks better in the rear view mirror? Sitting here posting these photos and notes, and time to catch up the inventory and ordering lists.
Friday, May 26, 2023:
After rebuilding carburetors, the engine is still misfiring at least one cylinder with cold start, needing several seconds to clear out before it runs well. Pull the spark plugs for inspection, and they were all dry and good color. So do a quick compression test as diagnostics. The seven year old compression tester (with a lot of use on it) decided to start leaking at the quick disconnect joint on the pressure gauge. Thinking there was a thick O-ring in there, I managed to pry it out with a thin screwdriver. It turned out to be a thick rubber flat washer that looks like a packing washer from a water faucet, and it was compressed thinner with raised ridges around the edges where it fits into a retaining groove down the bore. Smashed more on the top side, so I turned it over, and with some effort managed to reinstall it (hope got it properly seated). The tester still leaked some, but then worked well enough to get relative readings between cylinders, and compression didn't look too bad. Note to self, see if I can buy a new packing washer to save the cost of a new compression tester. We installed a new set of spark plugs and drove on.
Just 50 miles up the road,sitting in Hazelhurst, MS for breakfast, no rush for long distance yet, only needing to be in southern Illinois come Monday morning. Catching up a rather large backlog of BBS and email messages, and still needing to update a few tech pages. Had some fun on the BBS chatting about front license plate holders and parking curbs, damage to the tag plate and the backing plate and my fiberglass front valance panel.
Saturday, May 27, 2023:
After overnight sit the car engine fired right up this morning without a stutter. Seems like the new spark plugs may have done the trick, even though the old ones were not very old and looked good. I should measure resistance of the old plugs (before throwing them out) to see if one might have open circuit. Oh yeah, I till need to re-wire a good distributor that we let the smoke out of last September. Boy have we been busy. Now 125 miles up the road sitting in Winona, MS for breakfast. Doing some future planning. Heading farther north late night.
Sunday, May 28, 2023:
The engine fired up easily this morning, but now it's smoking and using oil again. Rats. Something I did to it while changing rod bearings? Can't get a break. For now, buy some more oil and drive it some more.
Ran up to Batesville, MS today. Watching some of the Indy 500 race, it dawned on my this is Memorial Day weekend with Monday holiday, so we likely can't get into government offices until Tuesday anyway. So now we get to kill another day.
Headed north late night, out of Mississippi into Tennessee, bounced off the west side of Memphis across the Mississippi River into Arkansas, then north, and 20 miles into Missouri to Hayti Welcome Center at Hayti, Missouri well after midnight.
Monday, May 29, 2023:
More north on I-55 North, waving at the western tip of Kentucky across the river. Turning from I-55 North to I-57 North, crossing the Big Muddy into farthest southern Illinois near Cairo. Mid morning fuel stop and late breakfast in Ina, Illinois (east of St Louis, MO). We have another 5 hours to run sometime later today.
Mid afternoon restart heading north. Hour and a half later, the engine was losing torque, slowing down on a mild upgrade. Pulled off at Mattoon, IL to check it out, running on three cylinders. Got into a McD parking lot, ignition system seems to be in order. Compression test gives zero compression on #3 cylinder. Bummer, it's a broken piston with the top of the piston stuck in top of the cylinder right under the spark plug, the rest of the piston still going around with the con-rod doing its normal thing. Been there, done that before, keep a level head. We know we need new piston (or a set of pistons), and preferably a better place to work than in the parking lot. Evening dinner time, who do we know in central Illinois (on Memorial Day holiday)?
Close to home stomping grounds, I spent a lot of time in this area all through the 90's doing TSD rally and Solo-II autocross with SCCCA, so we know some people in Champaign County Sports Car Club. Send some email, make some phone calls, and start looking for new pistons for MGA 1600 standard bore size. Got a nibble on a possible place to work on the car in Champaign, IL, waiting for a call back. Not so easy finding new standard size pistons. Many suppliers sell them in oversize for engine rebuilding, maybe not so much demand for standard size. But did find the pistons for offer on eBay from a parts supplier Sports Car Parts LTD we have visited in Knoxville, Tennessee. Want to call them in the morning to check on a few details.
Tuesday, May 30, 2023:
This was destined to be an interesting day. Called the parts vendor, left a voice message, waiting for a call back. Need to drop some cash into an ATM machine for my bank, and the nearest machine is on the college campus in Urbana, IL. Also got a call back and verification of a garage space to use in Champaign. So we will head up that way with fingers crossed, hoping the engine will make it that far running on three cylinders without doing some nasty internal crunch. Anyway, the farther we get the less it would have to be towed. Drive gentle, hold it down to 2500-rpm, 45-mph, heading north on US-45. Easy cruise in the country, a little more challenging with three cylinders in town, but 50 miles on we found the U-of-I college campus, and a broken ATM machine. Sheesh, what else? Made the phone call for the bank. They know about the broken machine, think it maybe fixed sometime later today (ha-ha) or tomorrow (don't hold your breath). Next available ATM machine for my bank is in Joliet, IL, another 108 miles north (no way). So we call the friend with shop space on the west edge of town and head over there.
Say hello to Alex Anastasiadis who lives in Bondville, IL and has a carpet cleaning service with a shop space in Champaign, IL. One more phone call to the parts supplier, left another message, decided not to wait any later in the day. The ordering solution was to give the cash to our friend Alex, and he would punch the eBay button to order the pistons. Ten minutes later we got a phone call from the parts house. Yes they have, or had the pistons I need, but 12 minutes ago someone else punched the eBay ad to buy the parts, and now they don't have any more. Yes, that was my friend Alex on the eBay purchase, so all is well and the parts will be shipped today USPS Priority Mail, hopefully to arrive Thursday. In spite of our troubles, this may be a lucky day, as those might be (are) the only known standard size 1600 pistons in the country.
Okay time to relax and kill a couple of days (getting good at that). Looking for a friendly WiFi spot, first two places had no working power outlet, but 9 miles on we found a friendly McD in a truck stop on north side of Champaign. Check back in a couple of days to see how we're doing.
Wednesday, May 31, 2023:
Tracking information says the new pistons should be delivered tomorrow (before 9-pm?). We'll see. --- Got a message today noting impending expiration (needed renewal) of domain name registration for ChicagolandMGclub.com. That killed a few hours writing memos to club management about possible transfer of domain name and web server account registration from my name to a new club webmaster (whomever that might be). Now needing to wait for that to soak in, and club management to make some decisions. Same as always, hurry up and wait.
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