Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Great Ocean Road MG Trip

I did a trip with the local MG club to the Great Ocean Road. The other MG people were very nice and all are looking forward to seeing my car when it is finally finished. One guy planned to take his 1968MGB and his wife’s 1954 MGTF as they both wanted to drive, but her head gasket blew and his clutch went just days before the trip, both had agreed to give me a passenger ride on one of the free bits of the trip. They were lucky that a guy with a pink beige MGA coupe had just finished restoring a White MGA with hard top and let them take it. Another guy with a 1971MGB blew his head gasket on the Tuesday before the trip, he is 79 but managed to take the head off, get it machined and replaced by Thursday and the car going well but he knew he needed to torque the head down after a few hundred km’s and didn’t want to be doing that on the trip so he took his Rover. He had also offered me a passenger ride in his MGB when I met him a week before at the MG club monthly meeting but unfortunately he was not in his MGB.

The cars on the trip was White MGA, Beige MGA, Grey MGB GT, White MG Midget, 2000 MGTF, 1990 Mercedes, 2000 Rover 75 and the Octavia.

The only issue on the whole trip was the generator on the white MGA came loose. There was a white MG Midget that went very well but was a bit slower than the other cars, most of the time I was having hassles keeping up on the twisting roads with my SatNag telling me to slow down, pretty sad that an Octavia VRS had difficulty keeping up with 1950’s/1960’s MG’s, I would probably do better on my own but nice to have a trip away together

Part of me feels that these people maintain their cars very well but still have issues, but part of me feels that a well-kept MGB does go very well indeed. Overall we did nearly 3000km in the week. I took 12 litres of coolant with me but none of them needed it. On the hot days I was certainly happy to be in the Octavia with air-conditioning as they did look pretty sweaty getting out of the cars. While I think if I bought a well restored MGB for a lot less than my car it would have done the trip OK I feel my car with modern engine, comfortable seats and air-conditioning will be a great car for a road trip, not sure what SatNag will think of my MGB for touring as she enjoyed filling the back of the Octavia with shopping, plus the MG will feel faster at the same speed .

We helped the local tourism industry staying in hotels and eating out most meals and SatNag tried to re-float the Australian economy by going to every quilting shop on the way buying material, plus presents for our granddaughters from the many tourist traps, but I did have one extravagant purchase I found a model shop with a 1:18 scale MGB in its box in Green for $350, I have seen them before for higher prices than that, the shop also had a nice MG TC for $149, I did the maths in my head and thought $499 on models I crazy but I will not see them again so took them to the counter. The lady was probably the owners great grand mother and couldn’t add up at all, she first got $284 and then $800, finally after about 15 minutes she got $499.99 by rounding up the $149 to $150 to make the maths easier and then taking off a cent. Shen then realised it should be $499 so put that in the credit card reader, but before I got my card in she cancelled the transaction and said she wanted to check the maths again just to make sure, otherwise her boss will be grumpy if she makes a mistake, whoever hired her made a mistake.

I showed the others the model and they were impressed but one guy who owned Monaro Models years ago said he used to sell the exact same model back in the 1980’s for $79. I agree $350 is a rip off but somethings just seem to go up. They all said I need to by a MX5 model and do an engine transplant.

I read an article on the internet, I don’t think it is right but it basically said that the Australian Reserve Bank keeps raising Interest rates to slow the economy, but retirees are getting better returns on investments so spending more and ruining the Reserve Banks plans. I find it hard to believe that retirees are spending that much but we certainly guilty of spending a lot over the last week. Not that the small businesses complained at all.

I also managed to get a nice photo of odometer with a cool number, I had planned it before hand and reset the trip meter at 122667 to get 123456 789.0 I just wish I had cleaned the dash as I didn't realise it was so dusty until I saw the photo.

Looks like a great road trip. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Looks a great trip Chris.
I drove it many years ago (but in a rental Nissan). You seem to have hooked up with a great bunch of people, offering rides and helping out fellow owners when their cars have had a problem.

Thanks for taking the time to provide the tale of your trip in such detail and the great pics too. I suspect the numerous MG`s issues might well be related to lack of use as seems to be the case for so many Classics. I doubt if I managed more than 500 miles in my Morgan last year..sigh !

As for touring in high temps, I have done some of that but once you suggest to your good lady that it might be a good idea to put the heater on to help reduce engine temps a tad... things can perhaps risk becoming a tad tetchy..?

Where did you start from? Melbourne side or from the west?
I drove the Great Ocean Road in November 2017. Your post brings back a lot of nice memories.

I did a stack of km's this year, about 6 trips to see the MGB adding about 700km each time. Normally I get a message on the Octavia screen saying I have 30 says to needing a service, this time I got a message than a service is due in 1000km that has no counted down to nothing and now says over due every time I start the car. The car is 8 years old with 125,000km and a 12month 15,000 service interval so I must have gone close to getting that message most years.

Not sure how many km's my MGB will do once finished but I am hoping to be between 5,000km and 10,000km as I want to enjoy it.

We went from East to West. Saturday I drove from Canberra to Yass leaving my wife at a hotel while I did a band job at a function in a nearby country town, town of maybe 100 residents and we had about 300 at the function. I then drove 740km from Yass to Lorne on Sunday to meet up with the others who had left on Friday morning. We stayed 5 nights at Lorne, Apollo Bay and Warrnambool driving around the local area doing about 200km a day. Then on the way back we took 3 days going from Warrnambool to Echuca, Echuca to Wagga Wagga and then back to Canberra. In theory you could do it in 2000km but I did almost 3,000 as we travelled a bit to see other attractions on the way back as well as a fair bit or touring along the Great Ocean Road.