He is still active.

I think I've worked out who he is...

He is still going but is now up in the Stoke area.

sounds like youve had a nightmare with that place james,i wouldent have been happy either.

Shame it put you off the car, was one of the fastest on the road in their day.

Lucky the tin rots not eaten it away.

The 8v maestro turbo was fast, the T16 faster.......just look at what Dans done to his T16 to see what's possible....not that I'll be following that route, mate of mine built mental maestro (as seen on Top Gear), he got it up to 308 bhp IIRC but it was undrivable in normal use so he got it knocked back to 287.

I was very lucky with the body on this one, the day one MG1600 I had even had rust inside the filler cap.

Would be good to see it back up and running but with a bit of a modern take

Interesting reading, but who is this guy in question? Should I know him as he sounds a bit of a cowboy?

A bit about the car - I'll start with the biggest change - the engine - as I already mentioned it has been fitted with a T16 2.0 turbo out of a Rover 820 Vitesse, obviously a more powerful engine than the original 8v injection engine with both twice as many valves and cams and a turbo (but most of you will know that) - this was mated with the original gearbox which is far easier than fitting the box that comes with the engine as there are no issuies with mating drive shafts or speedo drives.

The big problem with keeping the EFi gearbox is that it is the lowest geared of all the PG1 boxes so a bit low, first is pointless if trying to accelerate hard and wheel spin in third in the dry!

I was planning to make a bespoke box using the 1st, 2nd and 3rd from a maestro turbo and 4th and 5th from a diesel box and torsen diff from a 220 but some nice soul stole the tubby and 220 boxes.

Back to the engine - to make it run properly I had to rewire it repairing the engine loom and removing wiring no longer required, I also extended the loom (can you see the ECU in the engine bay picture on page 1?) - finally I removed the remains of the EFi wiring where not required.

Soon after I got the car back I had to replace the water pump, it shares a drive with the power steering pump with the PAS fluid lubricating the moving parts, of course I was lucky with my Maestro in that it came without PAS...

This is when I discovered how rusty the coolant ways are from the car being run without antifreeze, how it came from the installer. This has led to much work on the cooling system but that will be the subject of the next installment.

keep at it james i know it must be so time consuming and costly,will be well worth it in the end mate,look forward to seeing this in the end,good luck bud.