Gas gauge and battery - my first stranding

We decided to go out for a little night time drive around the neighborhood.  You know, to "inspect" the lighting system.  This car is even more fun to drive at night.  The lights are not as bright as modern halogens, but are a beautiful warm yellow color that just feels right.  The high beams work fine too, and definitely make it easier to see.  The high beams are the old style with a foot switch. Luckily my first car was a 1976 Dodge (before that was "vintage") and had the same type of foot switch or I would have had to google to figure out the high beams.  I wore flip flops and quickly regretted it as hot air from the engine bay streamed in and made it uncomfortable to keep my foot on the accelerator.  That's a cheap and easy fix: wear shoes from now on.

I say the lights worked fine, but that was after I figured them out.  The lights turn on by pulling the lever on the dashboard marked "L", which I think stands for "Lamps" not "Lights" to be proper about it.  However, the first pull just turns on the running lights, and then you need kind of a twist and pull to get the real lights on.  I figured that out quickly as the sun sank a few minutes into our tour and I realized I'd only turned the running lights on.  I looked it up - that's not broken but working as designed.

We had a grand time circling around the neighborhood getting up to speed a little on a new wide road that is underused, the gas gauge bouncing up and down with every bump in the road and shake of the engine.  As we wound our way through the streets, venturing a little longer and farther than before I started noticing a ticking sound getting more frequent and louder.  I know from my new YouTube Crush on MGA master mechanic John Twist that starting the MGA involves listening to the ticking sound coming from the fuel pump in the gas tank.  As you can hear him say in this video, that ticking is supposed to stop, presumably when the gas line is primed with enough fuel. So after a few seconds of panic that something worse was wrong, I realized that I might just be out of gas and turned sharply for home.  The car died slightly up hill from home and I managed to coast down to the stop sign directly across from the driveway.  I let Patient Wife take the wheel and I pushed to at least the foot of the driveway.  Light as the car is, it's still too heavy to push up the slight incline into our garage so it sat there half in the road.

Here began a brief period of wondering what in the world I'd gotten myself into. I was not positive this was just a fuel problem. At some point during the trip home the door began to not close fully on the driver's side, which I feared was caused by a sudden sag in the frame.  That felt expensive. We turned the lights off to save battery, but apparently didn't get the running lights off (remember the "twist" to get them fully on?  Apparently it's necessary to get them back off).  So after running out to fill up the gas can, the battery was drained and even with the fresh gas the car still wouldn't start.

Time for a jump start. Easy, right? Maybe not.  These cars originally came with two 6-volt batteries instead of the standard 12-volt car batteries we use today.  I'd noticed at the petting zoo that this one had been converted to a single 12-volt.  However, these cars were also wired with what is called "positive earth".  While that sounds very eco-friendly, it means that the batteries were wired backwards with positive wired to electrical ground ("earth" in England) rather than negative.  So where do I hook up the leads from my modern "negative ground" car to this relic?  Google tells me I can just hook it up positive to positive and negative to negative as per normal as long as the cars aren't otherwise electrically connected to each other or the rest of the world.  As it turns out, I realized when I got back to the car that it's been converted to "negative ground" already as the negative battery terminal is connected to the metal chassis.  Good to know.  With the jumper cables in place and gas in the tank the car started right up and pulled into the garage like nothing had been wrong.

Battery compartment opened behind the seats to show the battery. 
Yes, that's the road showing through underneath.

What about the sag in the frame?  On closer inspection, it turned out the felt and rubber weather seal around the door on that side had slipped out of place and was blocking the door from closing fully.  Pushed back in place on the flange that holds it, everything was back to normal.  No sag after all.  With the car back in place in the garage, all mysteries solved and no repairs necessary (except recharging the battery and getting the fuel gauge working) the dread lifted.  As I walked back into the house I smiled and told Patient Wife with all seriousness, "that was so fun!".  Maybe this car will work out after all.