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Ah, finally into April. Moss screw ups and shipping delays aside, we finally picked up the new parts, along with a little lecture from the UPS guys about not shipping USPS parcels to the UPS depot (nearly lost that one). We installed a 4-inch heater air duct on the car (so we didn't have to carry it), then spent the rest of the day finishing the new inventory spread sheet. Next evening, we had a dinner appointment with All British Car Club of Lawrence at Conroy’s Pub in Lawrence with 20 friends.

vintage Crosley race car at Alamo SC

On the 3rd we headed west and stopped to visit Dana Britton at SUcarbs.Com in Wichita, KS. Next day we were hitting Interwest Restorations in Tulsa, OK, and Ben McCarty at Automotive Interior Designs & Restorations (also in Tulsa). Then we hit Glass Auto Works and Restoration in Oklahoma City (not a glass shop). The next afternoon on the 5th we were in Boerne, Texas (north side of San Antonio) to visit Kermit O'Neal at Alamo Powersports (a 500-mile side trip for one shop). A couple days later we were visiting Aguirre Auto Service in Las Cruces, NM, followed by another tank of gas and a stop in Tucson, Arizona for lunch with a friend, and another fill up before arriving in Queen Creek, AZ to visit a friend Randy Brown. I think we drove 1700 miles in 5 days, KS, OK, TX, NM, AZ.

This was followed by two days hopping around to visit 15 shops in the Phoenix area. Here we kept running into "George Bean sent you, didn't he"? Apparently, the local club drover has been putting the arm on lots of shops to service our beloved British cars. We did finally get to meet him in his new digs in Peoria, AZ. He has the MGA with Chevy V6 engine we were tinkering with earlier during development.

Some MGs in one corner of the new hanger workshop Armando's Auto Upholstery in Santee, CA

On Friday the 12th we were helping Randy Brown in Queen Creek, AZ hang a bunch of LED lights in his new airplane hangar, which is to be used as a car workshop for a while before it will see any airplanes. Got to try out the new lights after dark, then took advantage of the light to repack the master cylinder in Randy's MGA. Next day we had a tech session scheduled there, but only a couple of visitors, so we spent much of the day reviving the MGA with Mazda rotary engine that hadn't run for five years. Bleed the hydraulics, flush through fresh fuel, rewire the ignition coils. Good to see that one hot rodding around again.

After a day of catch-up work, we bailed out of Arizona heading for southern California (where we would spend the next two weeks paying $4 per gallon for gasoline). We ran the length of California south to north, mostly along the west coast, but also a few days in the deserts of the central valley. We were visiting a dozen shops and 14 friends, which was odd since we thought we had done up the place during 14 weeks of prior time in California, but it is a big place. We were also tinkering with 9 or 10 cars with our friends here.

On the 20th we did another oil change, feeling good about the car being pretty much trouble free for a long time. On the 22nd we stopped at Moss Motors in Goleta, CA to pick up a few more parts. Then two hours later we were pulling a long hill up CA-101 hard on it in 3rd gear when there was a significant loss of power, and I noticed zero oil pressure and

Roadside oil line repair on CA-101

shut it off immediately. The car had blown a hole in an oil cooler hose and lost all the engine oil. We used the hose that wasn't leaking to shunt from the engine block to oil filter, bypassing the oil cooler, topped it up with oil, and we were on the road again. Lucky, we caught the problem quick enough that there wasn't too much damage. Oil pressure at hot idle was down to 15 psi, but there was no knocking noise on cold start, so I recon the bearings were still in white metal with no damage to the crankshaft. We called Moss to order new crank bearings to be shipped forward to a friend and continued with the mission a few more days.

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