Uncle Sam's Misguided Children Grille Badge

Part of getting ready for for the Historical Car Club of Pennsylvania's show on Sunday at the Delaware County Community College campus included mounting a USMC grille badge on Montse's badge bar.

I had contemplated removing the RAC and replacing it with the USMC badge but the original makers had coated the back of the bolts with some white goo that proved next to impossible to remove.  So the bar now holds the badges to real clubs (TD Replica Owners Club, USMC, and RACC)* I belong or belonged to and the grille holds the spurious badge. 

*The RACC is no longer really a club, just an automobile services company much like AAA or the RAC that was separated from the original club.

To see more pics of Montse, checkout my Flickr page Montse album.

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A Boy and His Car

Pep Enric & Montse

The starter on the MGTDr has gone to a better place and left me stranded in the garage.  I could have probably started the car by coasting it down the hill and popping the clutch but what would have happened at the bottom of the hill if it hadn't?  So another ride on the back of a tow truck.  This time I didn't bother with AAA and called Bob & Joe's Towing, in Haverford, first.  What a difference.  I called at 07:00 and by 08:05 the car was in the back of the truck.  Mike, with whom I had spoken on the phone, came out with the truck, loaded it up, and had Montse on the way to Gene's Foreign Car Service, in Broomall, in the blink of an eye.

Gene's has been fixing VWs since the 70s and they only work on VWs, Audis, Hondas, and Acuras.  I got a recommendation for them from a friend and I want to try them out.  Hopefully they can get this thing rolling soon because I want to take advantage of the good weather.

The photo above is of my grandson enjoying Montse.  I did some changes on the badging, removing the Union Jack on the radiator grille and replacing it with a MG badge.  I also removed the Great Britain badge from the badge bar and replaced it with a Real Automóvil Club de Cataluña (RACC) antique badge that I found on eBay.  I would have liked to have found one with the writing in Catalan but those are really rare.  While in Catalunya, I looked in a couple of places and was unable to find one so I guess I will keep on hunting.  To see the rest of the Montse photos with Pep Enric, please, check out the Flickr set.

New Badges

No bike commute to work today.

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Montse the MGTDr

Other than commuting to work, not much riding the Bullet this last week.  However, the MG is running like a top.  Before we go too far, I know it's not an MG, it really is a Fiberfab MiGi II too but, for the sake of brevity, I will refer to it as the MG.  In the TD Replica Forum, other owners call these things TDr, for TD replicas, so I might go with that to avoid the confusion.  Still not registered, the Commonwealth in its infinite wisdom still hasn't processed my title, so it can't go out on the road but we have a very long private drive so we've been running her up and down that like two little fools.

Mechanically it is pretty sound.  Everything is working as it should.  It still has an oil leak that appears to be coming from the main engine seal.  The plan is to keep an eye on the leak and see how much oil it's losing.  I don't want to have the engine out and take the time for repairs while the weather is still good if we can run her safely.  We have decided to call her Montse, short for Montserrat.  That's the Holy Mountain for us Catalans, not the island in the Caribbean, which was named after the Mountain in any case.

I'll have to make some minor cosmetic alterations in the near future.  I'm referring to all the Union Jacks all over this thing.  No problems with having one somewhere to mark the provenance of the original car but one on the driver's side, one on the radiator shell, and one on the badge bar is just a little too much.

For more photos of Montse, please, check out this Flickr set.

On the exotic car tally, while commuting last week there was one white Bentley, one white Ferrari, and a DeLorean.  The tally now stands at 3 Ferraris, 1 Lambo, 1 Maserati, 1 unknown, 1 Cobra, 1 Bentley, and 1 DeLorean.  Still not counting the exotics I see while driving but once I get the MG on the road I will begin to add those I see while on the MG.

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