Yeah, but that was back in the 60s when I-95 ended at Rocky Mount, and
US301 & US70 were both two lane roads.
I remember trips from Durham, NC to Morehead City (Atlantic Beach) in
the 60s when US70 between Kinston & New Bern might as well have been on
the back side of the moon as far as finding any kind of car repairs
after dark.
Now it's a 4 lane most of the way with a convenience store gas station
every half mile east of New Bern. You won't find anyone who could fix a
throttle cable in the middle of the night, but you can get towed back to
base.
MG parts are a lot easier to find now-a-days. Victoria British, The
Roadster Factory and Moss Motors all do mail order via the internet. You
can get pretty much everything up to & including a complete new body shell.
FWIW, the "self kicking machine" is still there in "Croatan - 10 Miles
East of NEW BERN, N.C." as you're driving into Havelock on US70.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgAx__g-4d8
On 8/31/2015 9:10 AM, Daniel J. Matyola wrote:
On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 12:48 AM, Bob W-PDML <p...@web-options.com> wrote:
I like driving. The last car I owned was an MG B Roadster, but the
times I got to actually enjoy it were so few and far between that
the hassles massively outweighed the pleasures.
I love to drive my MG B, back in my younger days. It was always a
pleasure to drive, despite the "hot foot" it gave the driver. As you
said, however, it was a nightmare when it came to maintenance and
repair. Almost no one in the US knew how to take care of them in the
US back in the 1960s, except for the sports cars specialties shops,
which were far apart and extraordinarily expensive. Parts were almost
impossible to find, and took forever to deliver. The "resonators" or
"silencers" were so close to the ground they were constantly in need
of replacement.
On Sunday evening I was driving from New Jersey to North Carolina,
when my throttle cable snapped, in the middle of tobacco fields. I
managed to jam a stick in the throttle to keep it open enough that I
could drive about 12 mph on the road, pulling over quickly whenever
lights appeared in my rear view mirror. I finally located a service
station, but it was closed. I blew the horn a few times, and the
owner came out from the little house behind the station. I asked him
if he knew of any place that might be open on Sunday evening, and he
said there was nothing for 50 miles or more. When I explained my
problem, he offered to try to fix it. He replaced the cable with
baling wire, and it worked, although it was quite still and jumpy. It
got me back to the Marine air station, and the next morning I
telephoned a local mechanic who specialized in foreign cars. He
ordered the cable, but it took two months to arrive. For more than
eight weeks I drove all around with the baling wire throttle cable.
It was a bit tricky when shifting gears, as my control over the engine
rpm was a bit marginal, but it worked.
A few year later a had a neighbor who liked Jaguars. He had two, plus
his wife's station wagon. During the four years he lived there, I
never saw both Jags in service at the same time, but they were at
times together in the repair shop Style over reliability seems to
have bee the keynote of both brands.
Dan Matyola
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/danieljmatyola
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