I was thrilled to be asked by Alan Pritchett of the Midget and Sprite Club to display Gem on the club stand at this year’s Practical Classics NEC Restoration Show in Birmingham. It’d be boring to detail all the little things that happened, so here is a quick round up and some photos from the weekend
The TL; DR video is above – thanks Taz from PointRadius for getting it together for us!
We got the engine in with a few hours to go. If I hadn’t fitted the track rod ends upside down, getting the car on the trailer would have been a lot smoother! Instead we struggled, I was so tired she travelled on Moggy wheels on spacers because that was all we could get to fit!
Joe Hutchinson kindly helped me tranport her to the NEC and we arrived with a whole ten minutes to spare. Top tip, if you’re going and displaying, arrive after 9pm. I’ve been doing the NEC for years and it’s never that easy if you roll up at 1pm with everyone else!
Friday involved lapping in valves, fitting the pedal box (thrice), getting the valves, springs et al into the head and fitting that with a new Payen gasket.
Saturday saw an epic fight with a radiator surround, which had been bent slightly in the process of powder coating. Eventually with the help of several passers by – Namely Bill Mohan (MASC) James Bacchus (MASC / MMOC), Sarah Jane Smith (MX5OC) and Ollie Hibbert-Gore (TR Register) – I managed to get the bloody thing fitted. What a fuss!
Sunday morning started like this (jet lagged from the clocks going forward):
Beth cracked on with painting…
I got on with fitting the lighting…
And we did even more talking! Before long though, she was starting to look like a car again. A few dashes over to the neighbouring hall to grab some fixings and extra little bits, and a quick polish of the hood with some leather balm saw us looking car-shaped by show close at 5pm!
And finally – to fix those blasted track rod ends so we could steer on to the trailer to get home!
With a little help from some friends!
And finally, tucked back up in her little winter home, with considerably more things attached than when we rolled her out three days previous!
Pics: Jeff Ruggles of MGCC Fame, Taz Maguire of PointRadius fame, Kim Youngman of @MorrisMinorAdventures fame, and me of no fame whatsoever.