New Year's Resolution

I've been making a list of everything that will need to be checked, overhauled or serviced to get this 59-year old automobile ready for a cross country journey. The plan was to start in January and spend each weekend in the garage. I've been told Ernest Hemingway began each day's work of writing by sharpening every pencil in the house.

I began my automotive preparations by deciding the week before Christmas to add 12 inches of insulation to my attic, which required that I first build 24-inch high barriers to control the clouds of recycled cellulose "wool," add baffles between each rafter to maintain a flow of ventilation from the soffit vents, add some flooring for storage, construct an airlock "coffin" over the attic folding stairway and do the same to enclose the whole-house fan between the upstairs ceiling and the attic floor. How long could it take? I wouldn't want to miss out on the federal energy tax credit expiring on December 31st, right? Then I stepped through the hallway ceiling. And then the ceiling in Carol's closet. Just a little drywall work. Might as well paint the closet. Might as well add some insulation to the garage too. And fix that torpedo heater that hasn't worked in two years. And sharpen all the pencils.

Okay. New Year's was a week ago. I helped the Christmas elf put away the decorations, threw the tree off of the deck for later disposal in the woods, and invited our friends, Elliott and Jill over for dinner so I would have to vacuum and clean while Carol cooked. I'm getting close--really close--to starting work on the MG. I moved the 1968 MG vintage race car out of the other side of the garage and all the bits and pieces of the disassembled motor that I grenaded last summer racing in Joliet, Illinois. I set up a long table to organize important things I will come across during my preparations and cleaned off the work bench. I swept up the leaves and pine needles from the garage floor.


Now it's Saturday. Carol has left for a week of work in Virginia. Perfect opportunity for getting into that nicely cleaned out garage and getting to work. I just need to put new latches on the barn doors so they won't freeze shut and fix the windshield washer on my truck. I did the dishes. And then I went out in the garage and started disassembling what I thought was a perfectly good 1953 MG TD roadster.                                                    
  Illustration: John Goebel                         
    
A compression test is always a good place to start when sizing up a motor. This is a routine procedure that uses a simple instrument to measure pressure that is built up in each cylinder as the engine is turned over by the starter. Rule of thumb-- in addition to having adequate compression at all-- is no more than 15% variance between cylinders and minimal leakdown at rest. Three of my cylinders pumped up 110 psi, not race motor stuff but enough to move the car. Alas, #1 cylinder only gave me 90 psi, a rather poor showing even for an old English car. A few ounces of oil into each cylinder brought me up to 130-140 psi across the board. When I compared these figures to the numbers written into my notebook 25 years ago, I realized I had a tired engine on my hands and a rebuild was probably in order. Where's that engine hoist?!