Back to the garage

Before I even had a classic car – I followed and read blogs about MGB rebuilds for a few years. Both Sven’s MGBGT blog as well as Holger’s little primrose yellow MGB site impressed and inspired me. Over the last 5 years I completely restored Miffi (my Mini Cooper), Moggi (my Morgan 4/4) and did various upgrades, repairs, and mods on Maggie (my 1967 MGB GT). Sven as well as Holger have at some point stopped updating their website and I don’t know if their finished their MGBs. When you follow a blog a few month/years as reader you wonder “What might have happened?”.

Ever since I started my new job last year my available spare time got less and less. Especially the last couple of months have taken their toll on me. The goals I set myself for Mildred (the 1973 GT) and then writing about it cause additional, self-inflicted, unnecessary stress. This could possibly be the reason why Sven and Holger have discontinued their blogs. I thought about stopping the blog as well. But as I have a few days off next week, I finally got to spend a few hours in the garage again today. There is no shortage of things I need to work on and to reflect about it in the evening.

The Morgan will go to a professional car upholstery workshop here in Bonn in four weeks from now. This date has been confirmed and there are a few smaller things on the Morgan I still need to sort out before. One of them is removable “trunk”. This (yet to be finished box) is a replacement for the rear bench to accommodate tools, the roof, side screens and some other parts under our luggage on the long trip we have planned for the summer.

Mildred’s body shell hopefully will be moved to the body shop by Tuesday. It will take a few months until the work is completed and the car painted. And I really need the space in the garage now. Miffi is my daily driver right now and today the oil pressure warning light started indicating a new upcoming problem. On idle it shows in bright red the lack of oil pressure. Maybe it is just the oil pressure relief valve – but really suspect it to be the oil pump. These are both repairs I can do on my own before looking into a complete engine rebuild.

But this is not the only issue with Miffi. Last week somebody hit the rear right corner while she was parked. While it does not look too serious on first sight – the other driver touched the bumper, broke the plastic wheel arch, and hit the rear tire. The bumper is bent into the lower right corner and the subframe and wheel alignment need to be checked. Hitting the smallest (correctly parked) car on a supermarket carpark made me quite angry – but it was an older driver and I tried to control my temper….hopefully the insurance will sort this out without problems.