Issue 2, 2024

by Jake Volkers Part of being a good dad is finding ways to connect with your kids.When I was a teenager, I started getting interested in cars. In particular, the cars at my dad’s shop. In the mid-1970s, he started and single-handedly ran a business that was strictly about British cars. He found ways to…

by David Stuursma Share your thoughts, stories, and photos of efforts to encourage the next generation at mossmotors.com/in-10-years. There’s a question I’m hearing often from British car owners: How do we get the next generation ready and interested in taking on our classic cars? I know this is a concern for quite a few owners….

By Jerry Reisinger There it sat, covered in pigeon poop. A pregnant sow rubbed her back against the left front fender, rocking the whole car as I walked through the barn door. The engine was partially disassembled and the timing chain, chain cover, a wooden handled screwdriver, and a couple dirty wrenches lay on the…

By Ned Serleth Fit and finish. Fit and finish. Over the past winter months those two words kept rattling around in my head like marbles in a fruit jar since the MGA had gotten itself a fresh coat of Tuxedo Black paint. “Pshaw, to concours standards,” I thought as I stood in the cold garage…

by Howard Stacy If you are reading this, you will almost certainly see the Pesky Gremlins on the adjoining page. I must confess that I am just as surprised as you might be to see that cartoon over there. Let me explain. When I contacted David Stuursma, the editor of Moss Motoring, I was interested…

By Pat Garity I wanted to share a few basic safety practices for working on our vintage sports cars. First of all, be kind to your body. Lift with your legs not your back. Gloves will protect your hands. Treat yourself to a good pair of mechanics gloves and a box of rubber gloves. No…

from the Graham Robson Archives Donald Healey was an amazingly industrious character. Famous for so many things in a long career, he always seemed to be quite ageless, for when the Austin-Healey marque was prominent, Donald was already in his sixties, but gifted with the energy of a 30-year-old. Until his reluctant retirement to his…

by Nick Haycocks My experience with this goes back more years ago than I care to calculate. I was training maintenance staff in a UK snack manufacturing company on the first industrial bagmakers that were Programmable Logic Controlled (PLC). My role was to provide general instruction to staff with different engineering backgrounds to help “multiskill”…

by Robert Goldman Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Having been recently forced to subject myself to public scrutiny, at least among Moss Motoring readers, I feel it’s my civic duty to tell you all about the real puller of levers. You see, I was just the apparitional talking head, with fire…

By Cal Sikstrom I was in an experimental mood coming out of Biosciences near midnight. I had been in my zoology lab observing the gonopodial thrusting of male green swordtails. I locked the lab door and left the building holding the thumbnail sized key to my newly painted ’61 MGA. I was really tired but…

By Paul Austin When an exhaust valve got stuck open, I pulled the cylinder head and was stunned by how heavy it was. Of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised: it’s made out of cast iron. But still, hefting it up and away from the engine without dropping it and dinging my front fender, it…