In Memoriam - for an MGB Fanatic

 My wife taught me to love country music.  And some songs like "I wish Grandpa's Never Died" and "Think You Have Time" really spoke to me to me.  But, I now realize they are actually true.  Grab every minute of that time.  

My Dad, Jerry passed away last Wednesday.  He was an MGB lunatic and passed it down to his son.  When I say lunatic, I'm being very serious.  This man loved MGB's so much that he bought his second one to be his commuter car to his job at Lincoln Electric in Euclid, OH.  He lived his whole life in Painesville, which is about 40 minutes from Euclid.  If you know Ohio, you know it has four seasons: winter, construction, construction, and construction.  And sometimes winter is a beast!  For example in 1978.

My Dad actually left for work that morning.  There is no slacking because of a little weather!  We got to get the jobs out!  Eventually, he was forced to stop on a bridge, nearly blown down the street, re-entered Be-a-Be-a, as she was affectionately known, and somehow managed to get home.  This is in a ragtop roadster with the miniscule heating output from the tiny fan.  

His first MG experience was more fun.  He had a red '66 that he and my Mom called Puff after the song "Puff the Magic Dragon".  It was his first new car purchase.  He paid cash from his first bonus at Lincoln.  If you look up Lincoln Electric, you'll see they had the most successful incentive system ever developed.  These systems don't seem to work as well these days but they paid big benefits for our family!

If we time shift again to his second MG, we can see me and my brother learning to drive.  Not just drive but drive a stick shift!  Hard to find one these days even if you're one of the last crazies.  Below, you can see him trying to sell our Aunt Margaret on an MGB!  She was a character and very fun loving but didn't dive in.

That second MG likely determined my career.  As we all know, a British roadster requires maintenance and repair!  My Dad took me along, starting with packing wheel bearings (yucky at the time!), moving on to suspension repair (thought the front coil spring was going to fly out and kill us but, instead, it gently tipped over!), and finally a complete engine rebuild.  I just loved it and decided that, as a mechanical engineer, I could do better for home mechanics, and so have a BSME.  I now see there are more comprises necessary than I realized but I think I have offered some improvements.

Speaking of repair, I would like to remind you that, while driving about, you may hear a noise, or smell a smell, or see a leak.  And you may try to convince your self that is coming from someone else's car.  Well, it's not!  You are driving a British roadster.  You have the problem!  For example, my Dad and I were driving on a short trip through Painesville and saw some drops of oil on the windscreen.  There were several Harley's in front of us and we promptly began making fun of them.  "Look at those guys!  They don't realize they're leaking oil!".  

We drove on a bit farther and suddenly the oil pressure gauge went to zero.  Well, that can't be good!  We stopped and raised the hood and found a loose oil line.  It was spraying up against the hood and slowly migrating out of the seam and onto the windscreen.  Easy fix but quite a mess!

That reminds me another funny story.  As we were getting close to firing up the rebuilt engine, my friend Sean and I decided to do a few items and crank her over.  I was under hood and he was in the driver's seat.  I asked him to crank it over and was promptly sprayed in the face with a gout of oil!  I hadn't realized that an MGB has a physical oil line running to the oil pressure gauge!  This is sealed with a leather washer just above your feet!  But, if one connects it, it holds up very well.  In my case, even after 56 years!

There was a junkyard near us in those early days and it had 3 MGB's lined up, rotting in the sun (or snow or whatever Ohio had on offer at the time).  It feels like we stripped about 1/3 of the parts from each of them over the years!  The toughest one was replacing the rear axle which we sourced from that yard.  It was so impactfully I wrote a short story about it.

My Dad and brother later drove Be-a-Be-a to Denver and back.  There is rotten sandwich story involved which I won't include to avoid offending the innocent!

So, I couldn't unlearn the tradition and now I have BB.  With a shift knob and knock-off spanner that my Dad and I made together.  

I can't get my Dad back (Fuck you, Leukemia!) but I have been squeezing that shift knob relentlessly!  He will be with me on every drive.  I love you, Dad!  Thanks for teaching me how to be a good father, how to be a home handyman, how to fix cars, inspiring me to be an engineer, and, most of all for, "We ain't never not done it yet!".  Everything is possible!  Keep having #FunWithCars! and Dad's!