2014-03-08 06:03:35 | Jeremy B writes:

This car, OLF 473, was bought by a friend in early 1968 from one Austen Palmer. Apparently this chap used to frequent the Brown Bear pub in Hanworth Middlesex, where his party piece in the car park was what we now call doughnuts. (The Brown Bear was to be swallowed up by the M4.)

It had a blown piston and we replaced this with one from friend's Mark 8 which had run a big end. The rebuild cost the price of a head gasket - £0.625 or 12s 6d!. Said friend defaulted on the repayments for the car and sold it to me for £20.

It was really rather fast - far quicker than my rather tired £55 XK140. One day, a neighbour with an MGB GT said his car would beat the XK120, "because it was so old". This was red rag stuff to the friend who had bought the car before me and he took this chap on the ride of his life down the Chertsey Road, Twickenham. As they rounded the bend past the appropriately-named Winning Post pub at around 110mph, the rear end stepped out with a loud bang. The rear axle was moving about! When they returned, the obviously-shaken owner of the MGB (an Austin Cambridge saloon in drag) readily admitted defeat.

After less than a month, OLF's timing chain snapped with the obvious consequences. It laid in my parent's front garden for a while but when I next dragged home 670503 to join OLF 473 and VKM 333 a drophead XK140, my Father was most peeved and ordered me to get rid of the other two - quite justifiably I realise, now that I am older than he was then.

So I sold OLF back to my chum for £5. He disassembled it completely and then sold it on. It was last seen behind the front gate in the scrapyard belonging to the chap who owned 660363, which was bought from the aforementioned friend's brother. Funny family...

2020-10-08 11:54:10 | Jeremy B writes:

I would be very interested regarding the person who posted this new photos of ‘Olf’ !