MG Car Club of South Australia
MGC NEWS
from Ian Hobbs, MGC Register Co-ordinator, December 2019
The 2019 Torsion Bar Run
T
his year’s Torsion Bar run was full
of apologies”, unfortunately these
were the words that I used last year.
Maybe it’s the wrong time of year to
have a spring run when many people
have sprung overseas! The first person
to apologise was Jim McCrickard all the
way from the UK. Then there was Rod
Taverner who hadn’t sprung anywhere,
he was just home working on his ‘C’.
Dennis Killeen just said he was away,
Lynton Fuller was in Norway and David
Fairbrother sent his greetings from the
top floor of the Marina Bay Hotel in Sing-
ers while sipping one those infamous
‘Singapore Slings’. Ron Telford said he
would definitely be there, as he always
is, but then rang in the morning of the
Run saying there were bugs in his ‘C’
and bugs in his body; no clutch and the
dreaded man flu, although he said it was
just a bit of a cold, as he coughed down
the phone.
So, who was left? Just two of us, Peter
McCarthy in his green GT and me in my
red GT.
I had planned a run into the Adelaide
Hills again travelling on some the roads
that enthralled us during the Kimber
Run, but after chatting we decided to
head south, again through the Hills, but
Peter’s ‘C’ had other ideas. Travelling
up Glen Osmond Road we approached
the Toll Gate intersection and Peter
pulled alongside and said his ‘C’ was
overheating. We pulled off the road to
investigate.
Once the bonnet was up, we could see
the engine was definitely overheating
but the radiator was only warm. Peter
being the clever man that he is said “I
think the thermostat is not opening”. It
took about a second for me to agree
with him. So out came the spanners
and off came a very hot thermostat
cover to reveal the culprit. It was re-
moved and Peter asked me whether I
had any silicon. I looked in the back of
my GT, ‘cos you never know what you
might find there, but the answer was
“No”. He decided to simply replace the
cover using the old and slightly disfig-
ured gasket. The nuts were tightened
and then he asked whether I had any
water in the back of my GT, to which I
answered “Yes”, ‘cos I’d already looked,
remember? So we filled her up.
We decided to head for the Harvest
Café in Mylor which was on the way
home for both of us. We pulled out and
headed up the hill. By the time we
reached the 100kpm sign, Peter was off
like a scared hare and I thought it must
have had something to do with getting
air through the radiator. I eventually
caught up with him as we were pulling
off the freeway and into Stirling. We
arrived in Mylor and the first thing I
asked Peter “did the car keep cool on
the way up here?” A rhetorical question
I know and he answered, “it was fine”.
Coffee and cakes were ordered and we
sat outside discussing trucks and travel-
ling across the north of Australia. It be-
came obvious to me that Peter’s me-
chanical knowledge came from fixing
trucks in the bush, so that you don’t die
up there wondering how you are going
to fix the truck. Clever man is Peter.
I’m starting to see the seasonal red and
green appearing in shops and figures of
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