The MGA With An Attitude
MGA Guru Is GOING MOBILE - (August 1 - August 15, 2026)
Saturday, August 1, 2026 :
We have a schedule to keep today, so wake up at 6-am and hit the road north 52 miles to a McD's in Spokane, Washington for breakfast. One hour limit, then roll on another 12 miles to Spokane Fairgrounds in Spokane, Washington. Here we check in at 8:30-am to the Spokane Highland Games and Scottish Festival. That sounds like fun, but the real reason we are here today is because this event is partially sponsored by Northwest British Classics, which is one of the clubs we have not made contact with in 12 years. So we pop in here today to meet some of the club members.
There were the various Highland Games, chucking, throwing, shoving heavy things in all directions.
Men's and woman's' events, singer and dancers.
Pipers and drummers of course. In the end most of the British cars were leaving around 3:30 rather than planned 4-pm, mostly due to forest fires not so far west burning and blowing northeast. Some people likely had homes in the path of the fires.
We also departed heading east from Spokane, landing a couple miles into the Idaho pan handle for late lunch and evening WiFi time.
Sunday, August 2, 2026 :
This morning we are sitting in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, 29 miles east of the Spokane County Fairgrounds. Talk about a harsh follow-up. The forest fire that started with 50 acres 10 miles west of the fairgrounds has been burning northeast, driven by 35 to 50-mph wind gusts. It jumped the Spokane River, and is burning through residential areas of northwest Spokane, Washington, 5 miles north of the fairgrounds. Now 3500 acres, heading for north Spokane residential, with zero containment and no sign of slowing down. We are okay for now.
We went shopping this morning, picking up more DOT5 brake fluid, and a trigger pump oil can from O'Reilly. Bound and determined to solve the stubborn failed clutch problem. Stay tuned.
With the sun slacking off some, at 6:30-pm we got the car around to the O'Reilly parking lot, back to work on the clutch problem. The new trigger pump oil can immediately proved to be defective. Lots of sloppy internal clearance between two tubes of the pump mechanism, allowing fluid to leak freely through the pump with no pressure. Trying to reverse bleed the clutch slave, pumping the gun as fast as I could repeatedly squeeze it, result was about two ounces of fluid moved up the pipe into the master cylinder reservoir. That should have removed any air in the circuit, but with no pressure it would not move the piston that would stick half way down the bore. I finally took the master cylinder apart again, removing the pushrods and end plate, and using a big screwdriver to extract the stuck clutch side piston. Then put it back together with the pistons flush at front of the cylinder body, and don't touch the pedals. Remove the top cover, and poke around with a tag wire to assure the tiny fluid holes in bottom of the reservoir were clear. Then reverse bleed it some more until I had cramps in my arms from fast pumping, finally getting the reservoir half full. Finish filling the reservoir from the top,and reinstall the top cover. Still not having touched the clutch pedal, so the piston was still at front of stroke. Poke the pushrod 1/8 to 1/4-inch of stroke many times before pushing the clutch pedal full stroke.
But still it only half way worked. Elliot pumping pedal while I was underneath with fingers on the slave pushrod, and it was only moving 1/4-inch where it should move1/2-inch. Full stroke pedal with only half stroke slave. Screw it, we're done for the night, working with flashlight and fully frustrated. Pack everything away. If it doesn't work now, we will take it up again later. May have to just pump it a million strokes to try to free up the sticking master piston.
Sitting in the car, fire up the engine to be sure it will start easily. Switch off, select 1st gear, pull start to go, one jerk and no-go. Push clutch pedal and swap gears a few times. Select neutral and start engine again. Let's see if it might work enough to force 2nd gear synchronizer to get it into gear. Then guess what? The clutch was finally releasing just enough to engage gear with pedal in the carpet. Sit there and pump it full stroke a dozen more times, and then it was working well enough to select 1st or reverse gears. Really? I wanted to say, "Miracles never cease", but this was no damn miracle, just a lot of persistence to overcome the bad rebuild kit and the faulty oil can. But at least it was finally working well enough to drive it back into the McD parking lot for late food and a rest break.
Latest fire news is three fires around Spokane have now burnt 8400 acres and something like 600 building structures, and it may be another 24 hours before winds may slow down some, We're 30 miles east down wind from the fire, still dealing with notable amounts of smoke.
Monday, August 3, 2026 :
Back at McD's in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho for breakfast, Day to sit down and catch our breath. Walk next door to the O'Reilly to return the faulty pistol grip oiler, get a refund, mostly a matter of moral obligation. Catching up trip log to date. Email and phone calls to clarify future appointment in Salt Lake City next Saturday. Bailing out of daho 11-pm heading east on I-90, passing out of Idaho into Montana, winding roads and hills in the mountains, lots of construction zones with one lane and barriers, slow going. One hour on, Montana Welcome Center and rest stop closed due to the road construction. Following the Saint Regis River, another hour to a fuel stop in Superior, MT. Then following the Clark Fork River another 15 minutes to Quartz Flats Rest Area. 1;30-am with a time zone change, jet lag, get some sleep
Tuesday, August 4, 2026 :
Up by 8-am, hauling it southeast another 45 miles into Missoula, Montana for breakfast and WiFi. There is 80-mph speed limit in Montana, but we tend to hold it under 75, most of the time. Lots more fun by daylight. I suppose Missoula was our programmed stop for the day anyway, about 25% of the way to Salt Lake City. We surely lost count of how many times we crossed back and forth across the Clark Fork River .
Wednesday, August 5, 2026 :
Drove 1/2 hour late last night, plus 1 hour this morning, still following the Clark Fork. Sitting in Deer Lodge, Montana while studying weather and fires in Utah. Still cool enough in the mountains. The coming week end is going to be 100dF daily afternoons near Salt Lake City, UT, but up to 40dF temperature swings, so tolerably cooler over night. Dragging our feet some, not to go south too soon. -- Just called our friend in Murphys, California, where we left a month ago. They have fire there south of the road from Angels Camp to San Andreas, within 15 miles of Murphys, CA. --Drove 140 miles south late night, still in Montana, stopping 15 miles short of the foot of the boot of Idaho.
Thursday, August 6, 2026 :
Up early, heading south again,15 miles, welcome to Idaho. Another 85 miles put us into another fuel stop in Idaho Falls, Idaho, then park it and go for breakfast. With timea vailable, we plan to sit here for the rest of the day. -- Got a few messages from friends in Salt Lake City, UT. One or two cannot make the Saturday tour. Another wanting to make connections at another time. And one fellow sort of asking for a personal visit, offering shop space if our car might need any maintenance. Well, maybe. -- Thinking about car maintenance, watching weather, planning a few days in advance. Ten degrees warmer (hotter) in Brigham City, UT, so we stay here in Idaho Falls one more night.
Friday, August 7, 2026 :
Big temperature swings daily, and the farther south we go the hotter it gets. So we haul out of Idaho Falls by 10-am, getting warmer as we go, crossing into Utah 11:30-am, and arriving Brigham City at noon, already touching 90dF with full sun. Tank it up now so we won't have to do it tomorrow morning. Park it and head indoors for A/C, WiFi, and lunch.
Saturday, August 8, 2026 :
Up before daylight (5:30 am) when the weather is cool enough to be tolerable, we headed south with an hour and a quarter to run 70 miles make our morning appointment. About 20 miles shy of destination, hauling upgrade at 4000 rpm and full throttle, the engine began to sputter and lose torque like it might have fuel starvation (clogged fuel filter, maybe). Off throttle, slow down, pull to the side of the road for a minute, and it was still running at idle speed. Okay, back on the road at slightly lower speed ,limiting it to less than full throttle, it got us to destination okay. -- We stopped at Smith's Market on the east end of Salt Lake City, Utah, joining up for a morning cruise with British Motor Club of Utah. A few minutes early for 7-am meeting, we parked next to a Morris Minor, and lots more cars were soon arriving. Add a Sunbeam Alpine, Pontiac Solstice, Austin America, three TR6, two Mercedes SLK (a 230 and a 350), a TR3, a TR250, several more cats not vintage British, and one nice Land Rover.
We were off and running around 7:30-am with T-shirts to start, but take your sweaters for higher altitudes. We were climbing up Little Cottonwood Canyon to a ski lift and resort at end of the road. At first I was surprised the MGA 1800 with trailer didn't want to take the hill in 3rd gear, but it settled in nicely in 2nd gear at 35-mpg with the rest of the convoy. Not too long to make it to 9000 feet and find parking for a half hour or so up top.
At the top, no matter which way you look, the only real direction is up.
On the way back down we were noticing the 9% incline signs, and then 2nd gear made more sense.
Bit of a parking jam at the end as we pulled into Penny Ann's Cafe in Sandy, UT for brunch. I think 21 people crammed into the dining room for great pancakes and waffles.
Someone gave us a tie tack (hat pin) for British Motor Club of Utah as a memento or gratuity for our visit to the club. -- After lunch we ambled over to Garden Drive in SLC to visit Rich Weyland the Triumph guy. Say hello to Rich and Trukk the bulldog. Take ten minutes to move a few vehicles around. Truth is, we were going to get our MGA on his lift to get serious about the clutch hydraulics issue again. Then we got busy with the clutch and didn't have time to take pictures. Must have been two hours fighting with it for very little improvement. The master cylinder clutch master piston was (and is) still sticking in the bore and not returning all the way to rest against the end plate. Result is too much pre-travel for the pedal, and not enough final travel of for piston. We could not Push fluid into the slave bleeder enough to return the master piston.
I finally did the same thing as I did week earlier, remove end plate, pull the stuck piston out of the bore with a screwdriver, put the piston back in flush with the open end, and reinstall the end plate. Remove top cover, reverse bleed it to get air out of the line, fill the reservoir, and tickle the pedal and piston repeatedly to get a host of tiny bubbles out of the bore and up through the reservoir. Then pump the pedal to move the master piston full stroke and let it return by back pressure of the clutch assembly. Final result is clutch working at about 80% of full stroke of the pedal, and that will have to do for now. What it really needs is a good repacking kit that will not make the piston bind in the bore.
Again totally frustrated with some of the faulty replacement parts still being sold out of old inventory. This story is not over. - We dropped by Walmart to pick up oil for the next engine oil change, then off to a cool WiFi spot to relax and process photos. Make a phone call, leave a voice message, and we may stay over another night for another tentative appointment tomorrow.
Sunday, August 9, 2026 :
Yes we stayed over, 88dF at 10-pm, 75dF early morning when we headed back to A/C and WiFi with breakfast. No reply to the voice message,and temperature rising fast, destined for 100dF later.So scratch the last tentative visit, and we get out of SLC before mid day. Find I-80 east, sail up the big hill past Summit Park and Silver Summit. Hang a right onto State Route 248, to pass through Hideout and into Kamas, UT. Elevation 6600-ft, very nice and definitely cooler up here.
Continue 2 miles south on SR32 to Francis, then east on SR35 (Wolf Creek Hwy) passing through Woodland, Hanna, Tabiona. Finally turning onto SR87 south for 6 miles into Duschene, UT where we stopped for fuel.
Wolf Creek Pass is in the stretch of SR35 between Francis and Tabiona, passing through the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache and Ashley national forests, reaching elevation of 10,857 feet. Beautiful road with lots of twisties and 3rd gear hills (only occasionally 2nd gear near the summit). Do be courteous to motorcycles and some brave bicycles making their way through the hills.
The weather was great, just enough overcast to prevent being cooked or blinded, and a little cooling sprinkle at the end. 113 miles in just over 2 hours from Sandy to a fuel stop at Duschene. This put us on US-40 east. No suitable WiFi spot in Duschene or Roosevelt, so we continued on for an hour to a McD in Vernal, Utah for lunch. Casually hanging out until 10-pm closing time. Then another 15 miles east to a Utah Welcome Center and rest stop. One of our better days in a long time.
Monday, August 10, 2026 :
The sign at the rest top said "Welcome to Utah", but as it turned out, we were still 18 miles from the Colorado state line. Nice 107 mile drive before breakfast stop in Craig, Colorado. US-40 is supposed to be "the loneliest road in America", but I rather like it, at least in the mountains. -- Seems like we have a day to spare before our next appointment, so time to catch up notes for the past few days. And John Twist has a technical Zoom session scheduled for 7-pm EDST, so I need to check the clock. I think part of Mountain Time Zone may be on standard time while some of it may be on DST. Sometimes I get jet lag without flying.
Tuesday, August 11, 2026 :
Good morning with the casual deer in Craig Colorado. Having trouble with FTP (File Transfer Protocol), finally calling customer service at Bluehost (our internet server company. Multiple calls, hours at a time,with no solution. Not enough time for this much frustration, we have places to go. -- Bail out of Craig, CO in mid afternoon, going east on US-40. Steamboat Springs is a quaint town with low speeds and lots of traffic lights, At Kremmling, CO, turn south on CO-6, stopping in Silverthorne, CO on I-70 for late lunch. Connecting with WiFi at McD's, the FTP works, so I could finally upload the trip log updates for the past three days.
Wednesday, August 12, 2026 :
Breakfast in Silverthorne, looking forward to an evening club meeting in Denver, having made no contact with anyone in that club, just going on standard monthly club meeting information from their web site. by evening we were downtown Denver, Colorado at The Blue Bonnet Restaurant to attend a monthly club meeting with MG Car Club Rocky Mountain Centre. We had not connected with this club in 12 years, and their web site communications was not good. We had sent one email message via the website, but had no response for three days. So we took a chance and drove down town Denver with a wish, and got lucky.
Arriving 6:00-pm, we found cramped parking but a few promising cars in the car park. Inside close to 50 club members in the dining room, no one knew we were coming, lots of surprised faces (including mine). We did get introduced after someone asked who might be going to Sandusky, Ohio for MG International 2026, and we put a hand up. That was fun, and soon had several people making comments and wanting to chat with the MGA guru after the meeting.
After the club meeting, we headed 15 miles north to a fuel stop in Thornton, CO. No WiFi here, so continue north another half hour to a Love's Travel Stop in Berthoud, CO. Just 90 minutes for a snack and bit of WiFi tonight.
Thursday, August 13, 2026 :
Time and mileage were telling us the car wants an oil change before much more travel, so before breakfast we went a few miles a Napa store, still in Berthoud, ,to pick up an oil filter (or two). The hanging spin-on oil filter adapter puts the filter very close to the chassis frame, similar to the original steel shell canister filter. Our long standing 3-finger cam-action filter wrench doesn't fit here with a ratchet wrench or extension, so we were looking for something like a narrow band filter wrench. Wide band wrench does not fit between filter and frame. Web fabric strap filter wrench with long drive shaft would not fit well higher up near the engine block. Maybe this would be a good time to try a shorter oil filter. Then comparing this smaller filter to more filter wrenches, we finally settled on a 3-inch diameter strap wrench with fairly short articulated handle. -- By luck, this 3-inch diameter short-handle strap wrench can be slipped past the end of the long filter, if it is twisted around just the right direction, so it can work with either lng or short filter. Picture below right shows the very limited space between the long filter and the frame.
Jacked up, old filter off, oil draining. Picture shows almost nothing on the magnetic drain plug after 4000 miles, so this is promising for long life of the nice 1800 engine. Lower jack for complete drain, then jack up to replace drain plug. Grab the grease gun to have at the propshaft U-joints (religiously), and a shot in the hand brake cable jacket for good measure. Then jack the front to grease the front suspension, drop it down and install the new short oil filter and new oil. Picture below right shows the more generous clearance between the short filter and the frame.
Clean up, pack up, funnel the used oil back into the5-quart bottle to dispose of later. Be nice and leave the pavement clean in the Napa truck parking area, thanks for the permission. Then back to the truck stop for late breakfast and WiFi time.
Looking forward, and eastward toward Ohio, there is the weekly Wednesday Night Car Club in Lagrange Highlands, Illinois. Need to be making tracks in that direction so we hauled out of Berthoud, CO in late afternoon to cruise a few hours ,stopping for fuel at a TA (Travel America) in Ogallala, Nebraska. No WiFi available there, so cruise on to a more traveler friendly Love's in North Platte, NE, with an hour and a half before closing for late night snacks and car cool-down.
Friday, August 14, 2026 :
The Love's in North Platte was remodeling, and public facilities were not great. So we cruised half an hour farther east to Lexington, NE for breakfast and WiFi. Looking across Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois with five days to burn three tanks of fuel, so no rush. Good news today is, the clutch seems to be working properly, so I guess the master cylinder clutch piston seals have finally worked loose to be properly returning to rest against the end plate. Catching up the travel log, and the car clubs links list, it dawns on me that in the past two weeks we have visited three car clubs that we had not been able to connect with in the past twelve years. Good going.
Spending a couple of hours getting together a parts order list, navigator noticed it was already 6-pm in Central Time, so must be after 7-pm in Pacific time zone. Quick grab the phone to call Scarborough Faire, and someone answered it. I was able to order some parts to be hand carried to Ohio where we can pick them up when we arrive there next week. Peachy. -- Lots of daylight in the evening in Central Time zone, so we decided to drive some more. An hour and quarter later we were stopping at a Love's in Aurora, Nebraska to order late lunch before dark, then catching up with past events in the trip log.
Saturday, August 15, 2026 :
Good morning, not out of fuel yet, so we drove a little farther east, stopping in York, Nebraska for fuel and breakfast. -- Someone installing an MGA heater valve had questions about the securing fasteners, be they threaded studs or hex head screws. This is also related to a clip that holds the thermometer (temperature gauge) signal pipe, which is not well documented in factory literature. This led me to revise a tech page HR-103 about heater valve installation. I will also be making new Part Numbers tech pages for the factory production two piece clip and aftermarket re-production one piece clip assembly.
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