Started on Fords. 105E with massive amounts of rot. I blew that up by changing the oil for GTX. It was held together with gum, and the GTX cleaned it all away so no compression, wouldn't start and burned oil like a diesel. I used to keep it across the road on the pub car park so I could bump it down the adjacent hill. Not much fun running alongside on a frosty morning then jumping in.........I was 17 by the way with no father for assistance.
So I bought another 105E for £22. The owner had been done for no insurance tax or MOT. I broke that on the front garden and did an engine swop with not much more than half a dozen spanners and a rope. I hacksawed the old shell into bits and the binmen took it away for ten bob. That Anglia was scrapped at the next MOT, and I had my first Mini. That taught me about corroding rubber cones (yes really), and knuckle joints. Lovely button starter on the floor though. Six months later I was back in a 105E, but this time a nice one. Before long I had my first MG Midget (at 19) and that's where a long association with the A series began. What a fantastic engine. Despite my best efforts in three Midgets, I couldn't blow one up. I remember a trip back up the M1 from Stanmore - revcounter in the orange all the way - 80 plus mph. Blimey it got hot, but didn't break. Midgets taught me how to replace flattened exhausts, and tune twin carbs, and bodge gearboxes and lever arm shockers by using diff oil. Oh and I used to eat leaf springs by doing santa pod type starts everywhere.
My first MG Metro needed engine work, but that was due to a manufacturing defect. It had one piston which had not gone through the full manufacturing process - no cut outs around the gudgeon pin and no oil drain holes in the bottom ring. It drank oil until I took it down for a rebore and found the piston. I got plenty wrong in the early years, but that's how you learn, and I wouldn't change things for the world, although a bit more cash, and a garage would have helped. Quite probably a busibody interfering father would have been in the way, so maybe it was for the best.
