Birthdays And Bailey Channel

By the time you read this, the biennial weekend away of the Australian Pre-War MG Register will have been held in October. It is being organised under the auspices of the Gold Coast MG Car Club at a coastal resort and holiday town called Yamba, about 400 miles north of Sydney and about 700 miles from my home base in Canberra. That’s quite a long journey for the old Airy Coupé, so I have spent a few days making sure it is in top shape. My navigator for the journey was Charlie Plain-Jones from the SVW Register of the MG Car Club in England, a VA owner and currently the editor of their annual SVW Review, a fine magazine and essential reading for owners of the SVW MGs.

I’d been putting off doing a couple of jobs on the SA, but Charlie’s impending arrival and the long journey finally got me motivated to do one in particular – replacing the Bailey channel in the doors, that furry black channel in which the windows wind up and down. The material used in 1937 when the car was built had long since passed its best. Not only had it gone rock hard and allowed the glass to rattle, but it was breaking up with bits falling out from time to time to such an extent that the window glass was unable to wind up and down properly.