Airportable

So the picture in your thumbnail is of someone different. Don’t you think that’s a bit misleading to have an image of a slim chap in racing overalls sporting a stick-on Father Christmas beard & to pass it off as you. My image of you is now shattered if you claim, as you appear to do, that the beer bellied grubby bloke I described is you personified.
M

Fair enough, my history equates flogging spanners with heavy equipment & that deep seated image didn’t transfer readily into the delicacy’s of our cars.
I commented that I’d happily give a ring spanner a crack with a copper & hide but when flogging spanner’s are mentioned an entirely different picture forms in my mind, part of that image includes a beer bellied bloke in oily overalls with a lump hammer in dirt engrained hands.
M

When I say “it’s gizzards”, I mean take the inspection hatch off & have a rummage in there. I can inspect the hardtops gizzards without removing it, as in effect my wife & I, when we are out & about, are the hardtops gizzards.
M

I couldn’t cope with a fifteen mile trip to the garage, as it is I walk fifteen miles to & from the workshop each day, to fetch stuff I had forgotten about on the last trip. Today I’ve been refitting my heavily modified heater controls & I’ve been back & forth taking inappropriate tools picked up in error, dropping a specially made nut down a nick between the floor & pit boards, which took longer to recover than it would to have made a fresh one & generally buggering about.
I could do with it being ten degrees warmer & being ten years younger.
Tomorrow I’ll be taking off the recently fitted hardtop, so, I can root around in its gizzards.
M

If you can’t go up, you have to go below ground or scrabble about like a reptile (figure of speech), I’m not implying those who are not up or down endowed are reptilian in anyway.
It would be fantastic to have a lift but with inadequate headroom it’ll no more than a dream.
M

Dream garage, I bet you can keep yourself toasty warm in there. My garage/“cold store” is a stone built ex carriage shed, the pit was dug & hoist fitted prior to us coming here 30 odd years ago & as with you the garage was a significant draw.
M

Have you looked in the workshop manual, it’s available to download from the community pages, the EPC can be useful also.
All the underpinnings of my tf, apart from one front control arm, we’re in great condition & so my first hand knowledge is slim, however all the service info + the “how to’s” should be sufficiently informative & with input from Satur you’ll have no more problems than the next bod.
MGB281 addition if a worthy contribution, especially the big socket if you’re into the car for the long run. Car specific service tools are always a knife edge purchase; how often will it be used & how the hell can they ask so much for it?
The big socket & a lambda sensor socket/offset adapter are cross car tools & are worthy additions to a tool kit.
Keep us up to date with how you are going on.
M

On the point of steel corroding more quickly in a warm garage than outside. My garage has some form of supercooling effect unknown to modern science, even when the mercury has withdrawn to spend the winter months hibernating in its bulb, I have to come outside into the frosty landscape to warm up.
I tried putting a heater in but science was mystified again as even though it blew hot in the workshop, no more than ten yards away , it had no impact in the garage.
Cryogenics for the inquisitive & an ideal spot for superconductivity research.
M

The second garage alluded to earlier is on a council designated garage plot with a number of garages in various stages of dilapidation, they provide the concrete base & the rest is up to you providing you don’t stray off your plot.
Normally a garage would require two sided & back with the doors being the front. We only need to replace one side as the second side is provided by the next garage along which extends way outside of its designated plot in all directions.
The erector of this monster was related to the planning officer, as was the bloke who dropped a Luton van body on one plot. A bylaw says that this illegal.
M

That’s good, going to a man with a track record & Jelly you must keep us up to date with the car as you return it to its former bodywork condition.
Well done both.
M