When Dad left Jersey he was kind enough to leave me his white 1975 MGB Roadster. He'd restored and refurbished it during the first half of the 90s but due to a few issues with the brakes (and consequently the clutch) it hasn't been driven since 1999. Apparently the engine was completely overhauled in 1993 and has only since driven 2,500 miles - this is good news to hear as it means that apart from a bit of tidying up the engine will probably require very little work.

The problem with the brakes was that the driver's side rear brake wasn't releasing properly after use. This then burnt out the clutch. The brakes will hopefully not be too difficult to fix (but might require some serious investigation as to exactly where the problem lies; or perhaps some wholesale replacements), but the clutch is somewhat harder. The clutch lies inbetween the engine and the gearbox, but unfortunately it's difficult to remove the engine (and therefore get to the clutch) without damaging the clutch. This sounds okay until you consider putting the engine back in having replaced the clutch. If damaged (which is easy to do due to alignment difficulties) then the clutch has a tendency to disintegrate at high revolution speeds - just when you don't want it to happen!

The safe thing to do is therefore to remove the engine, clutch and gearbox in one piece! This is a bit tricky, however. The combined section is massive! To get it out of the engine cavity you need to tilt the whole lot and there's not enough ground clearance to achieve this unless you lift the back of the car up or remove it over an open inspection pit. Luckily Mum's garage has an inspection pit so that's what I did.

The whole operation of detaching everything from the engine and gearbox; detaching the engine and gearbox from the car before finally negotiating the whole thing out of the car took two full afternoons! It was a brilliant feeling using the new engine hoist to lift it clear out of the car and then push the car away from the engine. It was quite a sight seeing this huge (probably quarter of a ton) lump suspended in mid-air. I'll definitely get some photos of this before it goes back in!

Next I've got to clean up the engine, replace various bits (some degraded pipework; the oil cooler which put up one one hell of a fight and the clutch amongst others) it should be a matter of putting it all back together. Hopefully, anyway...

I'm intending on following some notes I was directed to on the internet which are for awakening a sleeping MGB - so hopefully I'll get on top of anything that might have gone wrong over the last nine years since the car was driven. I've also been pointed at some good places to buy bits:

• www.moss-europe.co.uk
• www.angloparts.com
• www.ukmgparts.com
• www.mgocspares.co.uk