There was simply no time to write an update this week. Therefore this is going to be a bit of a collections and recap of a few things. Last Sunday I had another Driver Savefy Training scheduled. Orgininally, one of my daugthers wanted to join. My plan was that she would take the MGB (especially as she made her first “lift-off oversteer” experience earlier this year) and I would participate in Miffi – my Mini Cooper. But just before this weekend the alternator failed. This is one of the times were I am happy to practically have an entire second MGB in parts sitting on garage shelves. The swap only took a few minutes. At the same time my daugther got cold feet about the driver training.
The result was that I found myself alone with Maggie heading to the ADAC training facility in Grevenbroich early on Sunday morning. Even though I stated it a couple times before – I can not get tired to recommend such a training to ANY driver of a “pre-ABS” vehicle. Doing an emergency brake plus evasive manuovers on wet surface needs pratices. And this year I felt the extreme difference betweeen the Dunlop Classics Sport tires and the Toyo Proxes Cf2. Later ones are quite good in cornering in dry conditions – but they are horrible as soon as it starts raining.
Part of the perfection 2 / level 3 training were two short circuits. This was mainly on dry surface and the bolt-on D-style wheels and Toyo were certainly better here. It was pity that we did not have many classic cars in the field this year. The Porsche 911, Aston Martin and a quite new BMW had much better lap times. But I was in the group with a hot Opel Kadett B Coupe (upgraded with a 2l engine) and that was a lot of fun. A few remarks on the radio from the instructor that I was driving close to the limit were certainly right – as I found out a few days later.
Over the week a new polishing maschine arrived. This was a bargin on Amazon Prime Days and much needed to shine up the quarterlights, chrome bumpers and some other parts. I quickly threw together an attachment for my workbench to have enough clearance when using the machine. As I do not have any practise polishing chrome and stainless steel, I decided to try this out in some quite rusted overriders from Mildred. It tasks time, steady hands and the right amount of polish to get rid of some scratches. But I also found out that you can over-do-it with Chrome and end up with a spot that has a golden shine. Stainless steel not prone to this. I had time to finish one quarter light and I am quite pleased with the result.
Just before I left for a longer business trip to Bavaria the new color sample card for Mildred was finished. My wife judges the Jaguar gunmetal grey as too dark. Frontline was to kind to give me the color code for one of their cars. Aston Martin Tungston silver. This is close to an original tone – MGB Pewter Metallic – used for the 1980 LE edition. Hopefully the first parts will get painted in the next couple days.
For a few reasons I planned my business trip with Maggie. First up was that I picked up a friend on the way in Ulm and thought a road trip in a classic car is more fun. And it would have been – if not a few new issues surfaced on the way. First up is that the Ford T9 gearbox is making an interesting new noise in 2nd and 4th gear. I started to notice this after the few dozen kilometres. A light sequaling sound which indicates that an overhaul will be necessary in the not too soon future. Next – most likely a result of the quite harsh actions during the driver training – the exhaust leaks a bit. As I am still travelling I did not bother to find the exact spot – you cannot hear it, but smell it when the front quarter lights are opened.
But the worst part was a flat tire about 10min after I stopped in Ulm. As we had an appointment in Munich and no externally visible reason like a nail, stone etc was recognisable – I decided to give the Holts Tire Pilot spray a go. It took quite a while to empty the entire can into the tires. The pressure rose to 1.35bar and the instructions say that your immediately need to drive for 10 to 20min – not faster than 80km/h. After doing this for about 12min I checked the pressure again, saw that it did not get worse and increased it to about 2bar.
This got us to Munich. What I did not know is that with the Holts spray nobody will do a standard tire repair. Only option is to replace the tire. But getting a new set was impossible on short notice. After trying a few places the best option would be new summer tires on Nov 20th….
As my daughter and I had a hiking trip planned for the weekend south of Munich – I opted just to get another can of Holts. And this got us to Spitzingsee today. Fingers crossed the trip back to Bonn next week will work out.
Fixing C6622 
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