The Purchase

25^th November 2013 Monday morning, browsing through the Gumtree.com.au ads for MGBs and I notice this one that had come on the night before. I’d been looking for a few years and this one seemed to fit the bill nicely. After some frustrating text messages trying to get a viewing organised, managed to be able to pop round on Wednesday morning, 27^th November 2013 and after a quick test drive, bought it for full price.

It is a bit rough, but for $5,000 it’s licensed, driveable, no rust. It rattles a bit and there are a few alarming noises coming from it; the speedo, tacho and overdrive don’t work and the dash is a little tatty.

Grumm has kindly offered to pick me up from work to go around and pick it up from Applecross. The previous owner has had it since 1995 and did a full bare metal respray back then including welding new plates on the floor panels. The car was originally white and resprayed to BRG on the outside, but the engine bay and the floor panels along with the inside of the boot betrays its original colour.

After picking it up this afternoon (28^th November 2013), I’ll drive it home and start taking photos of it, of which some will form part of this restoration blog. I’m thinking initially that the first things that need to be looked at (of the things identified when I popped around too view it) is:

1.    Speedo fix – probably just renew the cable

2.    Tacho fix – probably a cable renew like the speedo

3.    Universal joints on the rear of the tail shaft , which are currently “clunking” with a slight rattle after disengaging clutch on gear change

4.    Oil change and grease up – need to source and buy a grease gun

5.    Vinyl roof is shagged, so that’s going to need replacement and/or substituted with a tonneau

As this is going to compose a part of Riley’s 2014 year 9 end-of-year project, we will start by creating an outcomes document that will guide us as to what we want to achieve and prioritise those achievables. A project plan can then be developed along with costings per component and timeframes per component. There will be plenty of variance and more than likely, scope creep. We’ll  try to reign in costs by fixing things ourselves and sourcing the cheapest parts where possible

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