Girl Trouble

By Chris Seely

As illogical and juvenile as it may be, those of us who love our vehicles are all guilty of personifying them. The morning rituals to get them to start, the persuasive talk while trying to remove frozen bolts, the little pats on the dash when they are running well, and even the names we give cars to make them feel like part of the family. And when things go unexpectedly wrong, we write it off as a personality trait, or we say our cars are trying to show us they are unhappy.

It took four years of ownership and restoration on my own 67 MGB to figure out its special quirk. It doesn’t like girls.

It’s absurd, I know, but it is the only explanation. The signs were all there. It began in high school when my girlfriend at the time and I were going to go for a drive. The starter jammed on the flywheel, and we had to rock the car back and forth in gear until it relented. Then, while driving a friend of mine to her tennis practice a valve stem seal blew. Not even my sister, Erica, gets a break. With her in the car the alternator bracket sheared. And since I obviously wasn’t getting the message, driving back from Erica’s soccer game we had a complete engine blowout.

Emily and I began dating after a couple of months into our freshman year of college. She’s a brain and cognitive science major, I’m in mechanical engineering, and living on the same hall as one another at the University of Rochester, we established the same friends in the first few weeks. A week at school feels like a day anywhere else, and before we knew it, two semesters had passed and it was time for us to part for the summer. She lives in South Carolina, and I live in New Hampshire, so seeing each other over the summer would be rare and difficult. We decided to try to meet in June, and after getting approval from my parents, her flight to NH was booked.

This lit a fire under me. I knew she would want to take the MG out. Having only seen pictures of it, she surely thought it was much nicer than it actually was. Mechanically, the car was sound. I had rebuilt and installed a new engine the summer before, and having rebuilt the HS4 carburetors in my first week back from school, it now started every time without issue.

The suspension, however, was a mess. Clunks and rattles came from everywhere. Slotted A-arms, dried bushings, frozen king pins, and cracked spring pans were just part of the problem, not to mention an aftermarket tube shock kit that just could not handle our frost heaved roads. It had always been my plan to renew the suspension and floor pans over the summer, but with her trip scheduled just a month away, my time frame was cut in half.

I fell into a routine for the next three weeks: go to work, come home at five, grab a quick bite, and then go outside and tinker. I started with the rear thinking it would be the most difficult. I would crawl under the car in the mud for hours spinning sockets, heating bolts with my dad’s acetylene torches, and using my favorite “convincer” to free stuck pins and bolts.

There is no garage at my house, no car lift or anything of that sort. I invent my own ways to get around this, like using strong rope and an engine lift to pull the body off of the rear end. In about a week all new bushings had been installed, the diff was swapped with one that was a little less noisy, brake lines laid wrapped around the rear, the old tube shock kit was swapped for original lever arms, and everything was covered in a nice black shiny coat of paint.

I turned the car around and began working on the front end. This ended up being much easier than the back, and before long, the old tube shock kit found its way into the trashcan along with the dried out bushings. The cracks in the spring pans were welded, A-arms replaced, kingpins freed, and once again, all parts were painted a glossy black. It really looked as if I was going to make it in time for Emily’s arrival.

The next day my sister and I were happily humming down the highway on our way to work. I was on cloud nine. I had finished my project just in time, the suspension was quiet and comfortable, the car was in great working order, and in just two days Emily would be here to see me. Suddenly, I heard a shriek, the car pulled hard to the left bringing me into the other lane just before the wheel broke free again. The driver’s side wheel bearing had fried, and I had no choice but to limp the car to my grandmother’s house half a mile down the road.

48 hours, that’s all I had to work with. All day at work I thought of what to do. Surely it wouldn’t take long at all to fix; I knew how to replace the bearing. As long as you can see well enough to slip the cotter pin on the restraining nut into place, it is an easy task. Later that night, however, it became clear that this would not be a routine changing and packing of the bearing. After trying for a couple minutes to pull the hub off of the spindle, it was obvious that the bearing had seized in place. I worked long into the night after work, using all of my tricks to put force on the bearing to help it break free. Nothing would work. I returned before the crack of dawn the next morning and spent the next few hours before work trying to heat, pull, and even cut the bearing off with my dad’s torches. It was simply no use, the bearing was too far into the hub, and the flame of the torch would just lick the outer housing. Emily would be here tomorrow, and I had no tricks left up my sleeve. I worked, cussed, and cussed some more all the way up until I had to leave to pick her up. I would simply have to accept defeat.

The next three days were spent joyously. We swam in lakes and rivers, hiked the White Mountains, and were beyond happy to be reunited. During a trip to my Grandmother’s house however, I found her examining the MG and all the tools surrounding it. “There is really no way we could take it out?” she said longingly. “I’m afraid not,” I replied sadly, “the only thing I can do at this point is replace the whole swivel assembly, and I don’t have an extra.” Then it hit me: I didn’t have a swivel assembly, but my friend Michael just across the river in Vermont surely would. I called him that night and explained the situation. With haste, he boxed up an old used driver’s side assembly and shipped it out with a bill.

My package arrived the next day, on day three of Emily’s four-day visit. After hiking in Franconia Notch all morning, Emily and I drove into town to get the part. The next few hours were spent at my grandmother’s house. I worked into the dark, removing all of the bolts I had installed just a week earlier, and happily so as the assembly dropped to the ground. Emily sat in the grass besides me telling me stories. Despite the situation, I was calm and happy as I could be. The A-arm bolts slipped in easily with their respective bushings, but after much effort, I could not get the forks of the shock to slip over the top. We had come too far. I would not accept defeat. Half an hour later, we were driving down the road.

The roof was off, the stars were out, and although I had no time to align the wheels, everything seemed to work as it should. I drove slowly and we both savored the moment, looking up at the stars with the crisp, clean air whistling over our heads. Just before pulling onto my road, I heard, “Could we drive it a little bit longer?” We held our course with no destination in mind, just enjoying the moment.

I’ve started restoring carburetors to sell for some extra cash while I’m at school. It’s an amusing scene: a tiny dorm room with a big bowl of Evapo-Rust and HIF-4’s in the center. Oh yeah, and an overdrive gearbox propped up in the corner. That will be going to the bench for rebuild one of these weekends. May even be playing around with my own gear ratios as well; one of my professors here is an engineer at a gear factory.

Before I left for school this past year, many weeks after Emily’s visit, the passenger’s side wheel bearing began to rumble. With a fly rod in the passenger’s seat, and fresh fish in the back, I realized that this had happened without the bad luck of any girl. Perhaps the events that had unfolded in the past three years and over the summer had just been a string of bad luck. I replaced the bearing that night and left for Rochester the next morning. A month later I returned as I always do to go to the British Invasion in Stowe, Vermont, with my dad, and over the three-day weekend and hundreds of miles following his little Spitfire, the fresh bearing performed without failure. Then again, for these many miles, there were no girls along for the ride.