Road trip to Kansas City

Nov 5, 2010

It's been a couple weeks ago now, but I did a road trip to Kansas City, MO. The purpose of the trip was to pick up a transmission I purchases on ebay. If you have read some of my more recent posts you would have read about the MGB that I bought. The car had been restored about 3 years ago, but apparently that restoration did not include the drive train. I have since found a crack in the cylinder head, and have gotten it repaired, and in reinstalling in broke a stud off in the head, which is where it is at this moment, waiting for me to take to a machine shop to have the broken stud removed.

How did I manage to break a stud off you might be wondering. Simple, I purchased a new torque wrench, set it for the appropriate torque amount and proceeded to tighten a nut onto the stud. All the way until it snapped the stud off and the torque wrench never clicked at the appropriate torque setting.

Another issue, though small still an issue, is the synchros on 3rd gear were going out. It is still driveable but requires careful shifting into 3rd gear. So I started a search for an overdrive transmission, which is much more desirable than the standard 4 speed. I found one, a fully rebuilt tranny with overdrive on 3rd and 4th gears, on ebay. I won the auction for it, at about half what it would have cost otherwise. I could have had the tranny shipped to my house but would have requred dealing with a crate, which I really didn't want to do. So I decided a road trip was in order. I have never been to Kansas City, MO or any of the central US before.

I took off in the Cherokee and drove for 2 long days to get to KC, having spent the night in Amarillo, TX. I was amazed, and a bit disoriented by the flat land. There is not a mountain in sight through those states, hardly even a noticable hill.How do you know where north, south, east, west are when there are no landmarks? Anyway, I got the transmission and headed back home on a slightly different route, including some of Route 66. It was a nice drive in a new part of the country for me. Oh, and the wind blew like mad everyday, enough to push the Cherokee sideways in the lane, and semi's were being pushed out of there lanes. It was like that every day.

So I have the new tranny sitting on a tarp waiting for the engine to be put back together. Oh well, so it goes in the world of old classic cars. I expect this sort of thing, I've two other MG's in the past. They're great cars if you don't go messing around with them too muich.