Message from Joe:
Some photos taken during the retrieval of the car from Bryan Walker. Thanks for the help from Kelvin, Bob, Dwight, and Ernst at his place. The plan is to restore. Not sure what that involves yet, but it appears to be a good basis.
I have to add that this is a unique car. Only 850 odd made, this car is one of four that were ordered by the dealer in Toronto with a TD dash. That is all the instruments in front of the driver. The normal configuration is like the TC with the speedo over in front of the passenger, and no glove box. This car was given to me, with thanks from Bryan Walker, in exchange for my effort to get one of his two TC running. I will be doing some of that work in the near future. The body is surprisingly solid, but the car will obviously require work. My son Dan that some of you have met is interested in helping so some of the car will be at his place in St. Stephen. Pat is shaking her head.
****************************
Bob E's report on the moving:
It was late morning, but the bone-numbing cold from the night before had been augmented by dampness that stung bare skin. Thankfully there was no wind as the small group from FABACTRS&PC assembled in residential Freddy to do battle with yet another garage find.
The subject car had been unbandaged from it's vinyl cocoon and amazingly, the ancient tires held enough air to allow it to roll—somewhat—with lots of grunting. Joe's new-to-him 1948 MG-YT (I had to look it up too) didn't look horrible and was gingerly pushed to the street and lined up behind the waiting trailer. (Skipping the part where we discover that we had no traction on the icy street and had to resort to using the truck to pull the car, narrowly avoiding ripping the chassis in half), come-alongs were ganged together and several of us got a good workout ratcheting the car up the ramps onto the trailer.
We'd been seriously concerned that the MG's hydraulic self-raising system (can't wait to see that in operation), now limply hanging from each corner, would catch on anything and everything as it went up the ramps, but all four of them cleared (barely).
Around this point we were interrupted by hysterical laughter as a car stopped beside us. It turned out to be Tony Short returning home. We quickly learned that Tony lived only a few houses further up the road. Now that we have him located, we'll be badgering him to have us over to rescue his car from the garage.
We then proceeded to somewhere near Mazerolle Settlement where the MG would wait for spring and willing hands to start the restoration. With the tarp flapping madly in the slipstream, and chunks of ice flinging off of said tarp, I kept my distance from Kelvin's truck-n-trailer of icy death. They obviously were oblivious of the windscreen smashing shards they left in their wake.
Finally at Ernst's garage/mushroom farm/storage facility, we quickly slid the MG off the trailer and gently pushed it into a dark corner of his garage. Bare floors let us rediscover one of the basic tractive forces—friction, which made the pushing so much easier. Ernst then led us to his other (he has many) garage where we toured the E-Type now under restoration.
- Bob E.
 |
| (Click on any photo to see larger size.) |
