MGAguru is on the Prowl

MGA Guru is Gone Mobile

As of last month's report we had just done a run from northern California to Frankenmuth, Michigan for NAMGAR GT-40, and were returning through Illinois. We then finished the return trip back to California to take up where we left off. If you follow our trip log on MGAguru.com you might know how a 5000 mile trip turns into 8000 miles. On the way back we did a little detour through Tulsa, Oklahoma to visit Anatoly “Toly” Arutunoff (founder of Hallett Motor Racing Circuit) who happens to be current owner of the 1960 MG Savoy (bizarro), a one-off car "created" by Michael Pistol in 1997 in art deco style. Find more pictures of this car at www.MGAguru.com/mgtech/variants/vt107b.htm. Toly has several other cars (and motorcycles) in his rather eclectic collection including a 1925 Dodge roadster. A nearby friend of his has another collection including an MGA, a Mercedes Benz 190SL, and a Ford GT-40 becoming the recipient of a modern Quad Cam engine.

On Monday June 29 we ran the MGA up Pikes Peak (for the third time) just because it was there, on the day after the annual hill climb races. A couple days later we were visiting Sports Car Craftsmen Ltd in Arvada, Colorado. This place is the new home of a large assortment of jigs and fixtures previously owned by Eclectic Motorworks in Holland Michigan, which they put to good use for restoring many MGA.

On the eve of the 4th of July my MGA had a slight "hiccup" when it locked itself out of 3rd and 4th gears just as we were parking it for the evening in Delta, Utah. This was about as far away from "friends" as we get in the continental USA, and it was not going to be convenient to find parts or a place to work on the car. So the following evening we decided to continue driving west without benefit of 3rd or 4th gears. That was a little dicey, rev it up to five grand (42 -mph) and coast for half a minute, then repeat again. Up hills it was a steady four grand at 30-mph in 2nd gear. Down hills it was a hoot seeing how fast it would coast. We drove it like these 150 miles to Ely, UT with no problem. The next morning we decided to drive on as is, but before we got out of town the gearbox seemed to have jiggled itself back into place, so all gears were working again, and the problem has not reoccurred. Go figure. So we carried on at normal road speed, and made it back into Murphy’s, California by late evening July 5th. We killed a day for MGA maintenance, and working an MG TF.

From there we ran SW to Watsonville on the west coast, then north up the coast highway to the San Francisco area to visit a few more friends (and their MGs of course). By the 10th of July we were in Fairview, CA with more MG friends

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