SPARES NEWS// By John Durry
Hi All, the big news of the month was the successful swap meet we have just had, we learnt a lot from this first one, think the last one we did was at Hastings Racecourse 1992 or 1993. And we look forward to another one next year, 1st May 2022. We had a lot of comments from the stall holders saying they want to come back and it can only get bigger. The spares department which was also open had a successful morning, at times there was a real squeeze, but everyone commented how well it was set out and so tidy. We have a lot of people coming back to look for “treasures”. A couple of years ago we had a gentleman come to the spares looking for MG bits, and as time went on Paul Boylan was coming just about every week, he gave us some details of his restoration, his MG53TD, he then became a member and now drives and enjoys his restoration. This is the story in Paul’s own words of his restoration.
2016 after 6 years of working in the mines in Australia, I was contemplating retirement.... my wife & I sat in Auckland airport waiting for a flight to the UK. Unknown to her I was thumbing through the Classic car magazine I spotted a black, RHD 1953 MGTD, I thought it looked rather nice, pictures can be deceiving, so I bought it unseen and had it shipped from New York to Auckland. After a few months of nail biting as delivery was longer that I thought, 6 months later when it cleared customs, I hired a trailer & drove June 2021
to Auckland to collect it. To my surprise the car was green (pictures can be deceiving). After towing the car home I could see it was a runner but would never pass a WOF due to rotten frame timber & floor timber. Fortunately we had a large garage, this helped with the restoration. I removed the body from the chassis and all the steel panels to inspect the wooden frame and the main side rail timbers were rotten. I sourced the timber, English Ash, from Hutsons in the UK and still produce complete body tubs for the T
