30 Nov 19 hard jobs

There are glory jobs – like fitting the refurbished carbs – minimal effort, maximum impact, and there are hard jobs, maximum effort, minimum impact. Today was all about hard jobs. First job today was to have a tidy up in the garage – I have accumulated lots of boxes and packaging so I recycled what I could and bagged the rest for the landfill bin. I also paid a visit to Halfords to collect a Gunson Eazibleed kit. They had previously given me the wrong kit, so I sorted that out and they were okay about it. I then tackled two awkward jobs, fitting the speedo cable to the gearbox and fitting the fuel pump and its related fuel lines.

Fitting the speedo cable would have been so much easier when the gearbox was out the car. I could have done it so easily, but I wasn’t thinking far enough ahead at the time, so instead I had to crawl under the car and fit it that way. I jacked the MG up on one side to give me a bit more room, but it was fairly cramped under there and without going into all the boring detail, it was an awkward job to say the least.

Next on the list was to tackle the fuel pump. I wasn’t looking forward to this because its all a bit cramped up under the rear arch and I remember it being difficult to remove, let alone fit. Anyway, using parts from the Aeroquip kit, I fitted the pump onto its bracket and laid out the fuel line from the tank to the pump. This pipe turned out to be too long (I checked the part number twice and its correct) so in creating the bends I had to invent a horizontal loop into the void above the rear axle just to ‘lose’ some length. I also had to for bends to make it line up to the pump and to be honest, I’m not really satisfied as to how its turned out. I am going to enquire with Aeroquip to get a pipe made up to a shorter (correct) length and fit this as a replacement. Also, despite having tightened the pump bracket, it managed to wriggle free as I fitted the pipes so that fit wasn’t good either! As time was pressing on, I decided to leave the job as was. I will return to this another day with a fresh mind and figure it all out. This will include fitting the rubber pipe which connects the pump to the copper pipe running to the engine bay. So I’m not disappointed, because I moved a long way forward today with my understanding of how this part of the car is going to go together.

Following draining of the oil on a previous evening and a fight to get the old fuel filter off, I today finished topping up the engine with fresh lovely oil from Classic Oils in Bicester. While working on the car, a familiar face appeared through the winter gloom. John (of engine fitting fame) was out for a walk with his lovely wife Jackie and another couple. They stopped by for a chat and its always nice when other people show an interest in the project, although I am never sure how to answer the inevitable when will it be finished question! While in the garage I fitted the dual temp / Oil pressure gauge. Doing this made me realise that I am missing a graied hose to fit the oil pressure pipe to the engine, so I will need to order that. I am going to re0use the original gauge pipe which seems to be in fine condition. I cleaned up the fittings with a bit of fine grade sandpaper and fittted it to the back of the gauge. Finally, I took a couple of photos of the MG before I pushed it away – such a great looking car and its a pleasure to see it slowly coming together.