HEMMINGS SPORTS & EXOTIC CAR
Permanent Ink – 1953 MG TD
NEARLY SIX DECADES OF ADVENTURES WITH AN MG TD BEGAN WITH A MISPLACED PEN AND AN ONLY SLIGHTLY RIGGED CONTEST
By Mike Bumbeck from the September 2012 issue of Hemmings Sport & Exotic
Most contemporary commuters would be hard pressed to drive a factory-stock MG TD for more than a few hours. Modern motoring might not seem so bad after prying the third angry hornet from between your first and second bicuspids. Not Ed Reynolds. Ed has racked up over 100,000 miles through 48 states and parts of Mexico and Canada as the original owner and driver of this 1953 MG TD. Every experience garnered in his MG can be traced back to an afternoon when he misplaced his ballpoint pen.
Then first-year man Ed Reynolds and the MG in a photo op for the SMU school newspaper with drugstore officials in 1953. The headline read: ”Surprise Telephone Call Stuns Freshman Winner.”
Ed became the sole steward of this 1953 MG TD in the same year, as the eventual, if unlikely, outcome of losing that pen. Before thinking we have lost our pen and our marbles like Commander Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, ballpoint pens were not nearly as ubiquitous in 1953 as they are today. This newfangled writing technology was the mid-Fifties equivalent of a cell phone in the mid-Nineties. Not everyone had one, nor was everyone convinced they needed one.
In 1953, a Paper Mate Capri pen was $2.95, with an ink refill running about 50 cents. Together, that’s roughly $25 in modern money, so it is understandable that Ed was concerned when he left his Paper Mate pen behind at his mom’s house while at home doing laundry. Once back at campus, he called his stepdad to retrieve the pen and bring it out to school at Southern Methodist University on his way to a nearby meeting.
The pen could not be found, so Ed’s stepdad stopped at Skillern Drug in Dallas, Texas, to pick up a replacement. It was there that he noticed a “Why I like my Paper Mate pen” contest, and entered Ed in hopes of winning second prize: a year of college tuition paid in full by the Frawley Pen Company, maker of the Paper Mate. What he wrote on the entry card was this: “I like my Paper Mate pen because I can use it to take notes in class, do my homework, take tests and write letters to home.”
Though Paper Mate touted its pens as approved by bankers and school principals, there were far more students than principals. The potential to sell more pens was incentive to offer some popular prizes. Grand prize is what Ed won, and he has held onto his 1953 MG TD ever since the day he found out he won. Ed later discovered that the contest was skewed to favor college students, in theory to sell more Paper Mate pens.
The original engine was restored to better than new and remarkably leak-free specifications in the mid-Eighties.
The TD was the hot setup in 1953, designed to appeal to the American market. The MG TD was created by combining an MG Y-series chassis and a reworked TC body. The lower profile upset some upright purists, who scoffed at the sleeker, less vertical, so-called modern lines. The TD engine was more or less the same as the TC. The 1,250cc, 54-horsepower engine was simple and, for the most part, durable.
- The toolkit and brightwork are original to the car. Late production brought TF parts onto the TD.
One of the first things Ed did was install an Arnolt heater along with a radio in the glovebox, which was joined by a floor-mounted speaker box with a jack for headphones. A shop-class-built luggage rack added cargo capacity, and a set of stethoscope-style headphones allowed for radio listening. Between-semester trips home to Connecticut and back were run flat out, with no stops for hotels. The hours of driving took their toll on the MG engine, due to a then unknown production line change.
Ed traveled through 48 states, a few valve jobs, at least one blown engine, and over 102,000 miles, sitting right behind the steering wheel.
Early on, Ed swapped out the factory-issue valve cover for a coffin-style aftermarket aluminum unit, which was popular at the time. With the original valve cover went the factory valve clearance specifications plate. As things went with British sporting car manufacture, a change had been made on the assembly line, which at the time was putting together the last of the MG TDs, including Ed’s. The workers put a different cylinder head on the engine, and the valve adjustment specs did not match up to those in the literature.
“The owner’s manual was for the regular-production TD, but this one was made late in the production run. They started throwing whatever was left in the factory onto the last ones, because the TFs were coming down the assembly line. I got chrome headlamps, which were not on the earlier 1953 cars. My car had a TF head on it, and they didn’t mark that in the little booklet,” Ed notes.
- The 100-MPH speedometer leaves room well beyond Ed’s personal 85-plus MPH record.
- Look beyond the exquisitely aged lens to see an MG TF trim King of the Road seal atop the lamp.
The TF head adjusted to TD valve clearance specifications worked, but not for very long. The cylinder head required rebuilding with alarming regularity. “Every summer for four years I had to redo the valves. It would just burn them out. The other thing was I was too cheap to stop at hotels. I drove non-stop for 36 hours.”
Automotive innovations and improvements didn’t stop with the luggage rack or music-listening stethoscope. Texas is well known for its heat and size. Ed built his own air conditioner by installing a picnic cooler behind the front seat with a coil of tubing and an electric fan. The cooler would go through one or two 25-pound bags of party ice, depending on the weather.
Ed resisted the temptation of wider tires or larger-diameter wheels during the restoration. The Dunlop 5.50×50 tires are the same size as the originals.
“I would fill the cooler with ice, and the fan would blow cool air into the cockpit–mostly on my neck,” he recalls. “Years later, I rigged a clothes dryer vent pipe on the side of the car to catch air and cool the lower compartment area.”
Owner Ed Reynolds: ”They started throwing whatever was left in the factory onto the last ones, because the TFs were coming down the assembly line.”
A routine service in 1954 at original importer Talley Motors and subsequent sighting of a then rarely seen AC Bristol with its sleek envelope body resulted in near tragedy for Ed and the driver of the Bristol. Ed caught up to the Bristol to get a good look, and shifted into neutral to wait for the light. A drunk driver plowed into the MG TD, which in turn plowed into the Bristol. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt.
“The doors on that AC Bristol popped up into the rear. The damage to the Bristol was irreparable. The drunk had a gun under his seat when the cops came. Boy. It was a mess,” Ed says.
Carroll Shelby was known in Texas for racing MGs at airports opened up for racing by order of General LeMay of the Strategic Air Command. Ed recalls that Shelby had purchased Talley in Dallas. Ed ended up with a new dual-exhaust manifold and exhaust, even though the previous version was dual only by way of an exhaust cutout. The exhaust manifold was broken by the wreck. The Talley crew saw an opportunity to install a dual-exhaust manifold available from their inventory.
Later, after numerous top-end valvetrain rehabilitation, Ed finished off the bottom end bearings altogether on a run down the mountain on the Pennsylvania Turnpike attempting to breach 85 miles per hour, with a full load of luggage, on one of his home-to-school runs. “It hit 85, and that’s as fast as it went. It blew up. It started up the next day, but with a lot of smoke out the back, and a lot of noise.”
Ed’s original intent was to trade the prize-winning MG TD for a new one, with every new model year. This plan went awry with the arrival of the MG TF, which was more expensive than the TD. Ed initially thought a few hundred bucks plus a trade-in would net the latest sporting car from MG, but the TF listed at around $1,000 over the TD when it came out.
Ed was then stationed in Maine, with the Air Force, and found that trading in an MG going into winter was not a money-making venture. A dealer offered him $100 towards the purchase of a station wagon. Ed kept the MG instead as a second car. Life and the Air Force kept Ed in motion. He drove the MG through 48 states, a few paint jobs, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico.
There was some storage downtime through the years, as well as a few mechanical maladies. The late Seventies were quite literally the end for the original factory wiring. A new harness was backordered through Moss Motors, but labor strikes in the United Kingdom resulted in manufacturing delays, which in turn sidelined Ed’s MG for an entire year. The original copper wiring disintegrated.
“It wasn’t on the road, because it wasn’t safe to drive. You would peel the cloth back, and there really wasn’t a copper wire in there. It was just green dust,” Ed notes.
Ed retired from the Air Force in 1979 and moved the entire car in pieces with him to California. It was there he met the man who would return the MG to its current original-specification state. Mike O’Conner restored the car from 1981-’84. The restoration included an engine rebuild, rotating assembly balance, head porting, and a new first gear in the transmission.
Mike discovered two things in the process of the restoration of the car. One was that Ed had been running the car with the incorrect valve clearance since that coffin valve cover went on the engine. The other was that the oil pump shaft was broken. The pump would still occasionally push through some oil, but was not sending full oil pressure through the engine.
“I could never understand why I didn’t get a lot of oil pressure,” Ed says.
Mike rebuilt the engine to better than new specifications. Even 25 years after the job was completed, the engine does not leak one drop of oil. At the time, Mike was based in Santa Clara, California, but his shop is no longer in operation. The tub and various other bits of the MG were fashioned from hickory or superior woods to meet or exceed the original wood specifications.
All told, Ed has traveled over 100,000 miles in his MG. The car was towed across the country a few times, but the driveshaft was disconnected, so that mileage was not logged. Ed has taken the car through at least half a dozen valve jobs, a few engines, a couple of paint jobs, and a lifetime of experiences. The car has taken home more awards than we have space for, including but not limited to Best in Show at the Gold Coast Classic.
Ed still enjoys driving the MG just as it was when he won it in 1953. He decided to hold onto his car permanently after going to a few shows back in the Sixties. Ed started seeing TDs on display, as he puts it, all hacked up. He believes that keeping the car in the original specification, without adding superchargers or taller rear gear ratios, is staying true to the breed. Ed and Mike adhered to this ethos for the last restoration.
“As I started going to the shows, and there were not many original owners. There was debate over whether this was the right nut, or that was the right screw, or configuration of the engines,” he reasons. “I thought somebody needs the original to copy from, so I’ve just kept it that way.”
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