I found one like that in 1961, at a dismantler in Riverside. When I shopped for it, the guy told me it was a hundred dollars. By the time I'd spent a week scraping up the money, he apparently confused what he asked with what he would take, and sold it to me for $60. A bargain, this time, since it really did work.

I just bolted it on, adjusted the Marvel Mystery Oil® drip-feed, and away we went. It worked good for a month or so, until one day at Running Springs, up above San Bernardino, the front rotor bearing siezed. I undid the belts and it ran fine but not well (long, convoluted intake tract) while I came down the mountain. Disassembled it and cleaned up the low-pressure path, replaced the bearings and seals with off-the-shelf parts, put it back together. Displaced the rotor-casing orientation by one bolt-hole. I don't know how they could design one that would go together wrong, and no keys! After a few days of puzzlement, I sussed it out and got it right.

With that blueprinted TD engine and a straight fiberglass muffler it made a blue flame six feet long shoot out the tailpipe at 7000 RPM. I never did get it to idle properly. It always wanted to run 3-400 RPM too fast. Went to the Judson guru's Pasadena shop (Bill . . .  Bill . . .  Corey!) for advice, an oversize throttle shaft, a new jet and a range of needles for the 1½ SU carb. All to no avail. After the car was trashed and I was cleaning out MGTD stuff, I found a long, soft coil spring that had barely been cause for a minor head-scratch in the excitement of getting the supercharger. Everything had been assembled, even the carb, so, no clue. Turns out the spring belonged inside the dome of the carburetter, a little pressure to keep the piston down and the idle under control.

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