Original is Good Still

In the real car world original is still best. In fact, at Pebble Beach there is a new Preservation Class for unrestored cars. A while back I posted a photo of the Cobra Pit Kit lid with what I thought was an original Cobra waterslide plastered to the front. Unfortunately it did not adhere to the lid well, so was subsequently removed with much pain as the rascal cost far too much money. My search landed a bonafide original in no time flat, this one being produced by Ed Cholakian Enterprises in North Hollywood, California around 1965 or shortly after as the instructions on the back side of the decal paper have a zip code. This particular one is different in that the background is tan, and hides the car color when applied to a fender or some other part of Shelby wildlife. I suspected that the one I first planted on the Pit Kit lid was a reproduction as it did not contain any instructions or manufacturer information on the reverse, as my decal on Riverside was a Shelby American accessory and was identical, with blue instructions and a CS logo along the bottom of the back side. Well, you may laugh, but a strict adherence to this philosophy has produced a stunning and far more interesting MGB rally car restoration that will stand the test of time.

Since I am currently sans Riverside while my wife and I manage my mom's recovery at her home in Raleigh, I am also building up a break-in board for the tweeked slot car chassis that will hopefully make a successful vintage assault of the mail-in race. This was Serge's idea and the details hammered out by Ray and I with a more period interpretion of Serge's outstanding more modern and higher tech effort. We are living downstairs in my bedroom that I had growing up, and outside the finished basement area is a small shop that was the scene of my MGB restoration efforts before I was married. Thankfully a good portion of the work was carried out in the confines of that shop, as my hawk-nosed wife would not have stood for the fumes wafting up through the vents to the upstairs as they did. The break-in board requires a pine plank base, and rooting around produced a shelving board that is squarely from 1966 or thereabouts. When the basement was finished out in 1966, my father made shelving along a wall for all of the samples he needed for his pharmaceutical sales work. These were nicely varnished, and of far superior quality and grain than that which is currently out there in the home improvement stores today. Big enough for an Aurora DC-2 transformer for power; a steering wheel controller to set the break-in speed; a Start-Finish track section on which to spin the rear wheels on rollers; and a clip-on terminal and short straight track section. Forward of the track is enough real estate to work on the car chassis. I sanded the board, and it is baby-skin smooth with a nice old look and patina. I will finish it in Fornby's Tung Oil and and it will look the business. Hopefully a Start-Finish lock-and-joiner section will show up soon to complete the project. God Bless! Tonymgbbrown