I had a bit of an emergency before Christmas when one of the Scimitar’s wheel studs snapped. Fortunately it happened in the car park at the office and the car wasn’t even moving at the time but it did rather leave me stranded because it was a Friday afternoon and a replacement stud wouldn’t arrive until Monday.
It would all be okay though – I’d have a chat with sister magazines Autocar and What Car? who both occasionally have the odd spare car sitting around waiting for its turn in the hands of the road testers and they might be kind enough to lend me the keys… except neither of them did have anything going spare as it happened, which actually left me stranded.
Of course, we’re not a selfish bunch here on C&SC (normally), and Clements immediately offered me the keys to his MGB GT… providing I could fix it first.
I won’t steal the thunder of his running report in the March issue (out on Thursday), but in short, the MGB had been suffering from a rather severe electrical woe which so far had gone undiagnosed. But with the light fading and willing to do anything but tackle the journey home by public transport (not an easy one given my location), I dived in to see if I could get the car running.
With advice from an electrician friend, I found a work-around to the issue which meant I gladly hopped in and headed West – naturally choosing the option of taking Al’s MGB rather than let him take it and me enjoy the comfort of his Ford Focus instead.