Restoring a Forgotten Piece of Family History

by Nick Ginsberg

Dedicated to my grandmother, Susan Babbitz (1944–2020) and my grandfather, Stephen Babbitz (1943–2024)

September 14, 1976, two days after my grandma’s birthday, an ivory 1952 MGTD became part of our family. We still have the bill of sale—my grandpa paid $1,000 for it. Growing up, I’d heard stories from my mom and my uncle about my grandma driving them to school in the TD. With only one available seat, one of them would have to sit in the “trunk,” if you can call it that. That was the Safety Fast ’70s for you.

By the mid-80s, the family had outgrown the car, and at some point it was put in the corner of my grandparent’s garage. The last registration sticker on the license plate was 1987, though my uncle remembers it being in storage for a few years before that. I was born in 1991, so all my life, that’s how I knew the family’s MG: A cool old car that sat, tires deflated, boxes stacked on top, in the corner of my grandparent’s garage.

My grandmother passed away in August of 2020, while the world was in COVID isolation. A few months later, in November, with my brother Adam having been sent home from college on a pandemic driven extended Thanksgiving break, he and I masked up and helped my grandfather clean out his garage. After clearing a path to the MG, a thought occurred to me, “Could we get this thing running again?” My office was still closed for in-person work, my brother was home, if we were going to do it, this seemed like the perfect window of opportunity.

That afternoon, we hired a towing company to bring the MG to my dad’s garage, where we had tools and space for such a project. But since none of us had ever attempted anything near this scale, we reached out to our friend Jim—an absolute expert in all things mechanical—who very graciously became our savior for the whole project.

Once situated in dad’s garage, we got to work. Two things quickly became apparent. First, there were dead mice everywhere—in the glove box, in the exhaust, under the carpet, between the seats. Second, the engine was completely frozen, and no matter how hard we tried, those cylinders weren’t budging. Even after a few days soaking in Marvel Mystery Oil, no dice. We were going to have to pull the engine.
With Jim’s guidance, we rigged a pulley to a steel beam in the ceiling to get the engine and transmission out.

We then hauled it to a machine shop where they were able to free the pistons and bore out the cylinders +0.120 over. Pandemic supply lines as they were, sourcing pistons proved to be a test of patience.
With the engine out, we focused on the other systems. Jim showed us how to replace and then bleed the brake lines and cylinders, we resealed and coated the gas tank, rebuilt the carbs, and started working on the cosmetics— shining the metal, touching up paint, and replacing the carpet.

We got the engine back after a few weeks. Though I broadly knew how an internal combustion engine worked, I’d never in my life fully taken one apart and put it back together again. After some painting and a lot of studying of workshop and restoration manuals to get the details right, we carefully reassembled the whole system with fresh seals, new bolts, and dabs of Loctite. Now, six months into the project, we hooked our refreshed engine onto our jerry-rigged lift and slid it back home.

Around this time, the project started to slow—my office resumed in-person operation, Adam went back to school, and with the world opening up, there were finally other activities competing for time. But even as we returned to “normal” in the summer of 2021, I couldn’t help but grow more excited that I would one day soon be cruising around in the TD on a bright sunny day.

As months progressed, I would head over to dad’s garage whenever I could escape from New York City, spending days at a time on the project. Jim would come give his infinite wisdom, and we’d get to work on whatever was needed next. We replaced the front suspension with rebuilt absorbers, flushed insane amounts of rust from the radiator, replaced the fuel pump and starter motor, fixed up the seats, shined the bumpers, and as my dad Ken often said, “put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

That November, almost exactly a year after we began, we finally got the motor to turn over and run. Seeing and hearing the motor come alive that first time is among the proudest moments of my life. All those months of work, and all the help we’d received—it was finally coming together.

We were far from done, however. Even though it ran, the TD would stall at idle and wasn’t delivering power like it should. The carburetor was the apparent weak spot. We ended up shipping it out to get professionally rebuilt, and in the meantime, Jim suggested we get a Weber to bridge the gap so we could get it on the road. It turns out the Weber was far easier than the SUs to get running properly—even with my amateur knowledge. Last but not least, before we journeyed out of the driveway, we bolted in new seatbelts.

After countless hours working in the garage, dozens of YouTube videos watched, Google searches after Google searches, and, of course, generous help from others, by the summer of 2022 the TD was ready to be registered, insured and driven. I called the DMV and they asked, “Has the car ever been registered?” “Yes, it was previously registered,” I said. “Well, then you need to go online to the link in the form that was mailed to you to re-register,” then they hung up on me. Somehow, we must have missed the online re-registration notice from Ronald Reagan’s presidency. After sorting out the DMV, we took our first legal trip, and since the rear shocks hadn’t been attended to yet, it was a very bumpy ride up the block to the Mobil gas station for a fill up.

With the car now drivable, we’ve enjoyed two summers so far with it—but there’s always something more to be done. Overall, it took about two and a half years, and 23 separate Moss Motors orders to get our project to where it is now. There will always be a section of paint that isn’t quite right, some bolt that’s in a little crooked. She may never be a prize-winning concours car, she may have a loose tachometer that comes unplugged if you pull your leg off the clutch and accidentally knee it, and she may start to rattle a lot at 40mph. But the TD will forever be a labor of love and a part of our family. I plan to keep it that way for another 50 years.