In one week, Rosie and I will be leaving Denver on our first leg for Seattle. My dad gets in the day before and will join me. Preparations are coming along well, and the car is looking good mechanically. On a drive up to the Front Range Airport for a car show (that, unfortunately, we never made it to due to … Read More
The thing about driving a 46-year-old British car is this: you know that eventually something will go wrong. The question is, are you prepared to deal with it? For the trip, I’ve been building a cache of tools and spare parts to get me through the more likely problems I might encounter. Here’s a (likely incomplete) list: The most likely … Read More
In Part 1 I talked about the mechanical work I did to get Rosie up and running again. But that wasn’t the only preparation that was necessary. The carpets were coming up and the interior panels were water damaged. I also knew of a few rust spots that I wanted to take care of before they became problematic. The process … Read More
As I mentioned in the first post, Rosie needed a new head gasket over the winter to stop a coolant leak that caused both overheating and a short in the distributor cap. Pulling the head was pretty straight forward. Undo a bunch of nuts and bolts, carefully label everything, and pull it all apart. Putting it back together after having … Read More
In three weeks, I will be leaving Denver with Rosie, my 1970 MG Midget, for a 4,800 mile, three week road trip, circling the western United States, passing through 11 of those states and maybe 1 Canadian province. It feels like nice symmetry. Today, I am as many days away from the start date as I will be when I … Read More