Beach Bummed

For Spring Break we had planned another family trip to the beach in the North Carolina Outer Banks. As the date approached I began to secretly scheme to take the newest member of our family on vacation with us. With my in-laws joining us for the trip, last year we found it necessary to bring a second car, so of course I thought this year would make sense to bring the MGA instead of the old Honda. I had good reason, too.  The Honda has been misbehaving lately, showing signs of needing transmission work and brake work. I'm sure when the bill comes in for those it will make the steady stream of small parts purchases I've made for the MGA look like child's play.

What goes wrong in your brain
to make you dream of this at night?

Dripping a Flammable Mixture of Oil and Gas

I don't know exactly when it happened, but at some point the "few drips" on the floor of the garage started to grow. Under the hood and under the car I noticed some very wet areas on the frame. Also, Shelly commented when I came in from a drive that I smelled like gasoline. Time to investigate.  When the car was off there was no obvious oil leak, so I started the car up and looked around while it ran.  A braided metal hose coming out of the engine was dripping steadily at the point it connected to a very small rigid metal pipe that headed up through the bulkhead toward the dashboard. A quick check in the manual confirmed what I suspected - this is a feed from the engine to the oil pressure gauge. The leak was from the joint where the flexible hose coupled to the rigid. This looks like the same kind of hose I've used for plumbing water supplies to faucets in the house, but I decided to order from Moss just to make sure. $17 for the part, $10 for shipping, and $3 for an extra part I suspect I'll need later just to get the most out of the shipping since I pay the same up to $20.  Order by 3PM, part comes the next day before I get home from work because I'm lucky enough to live close to one of their two warehouses.

The new shiny metal oil line coming in from the right of the
picture, with the oily mess on the frame just below in the background.