28 Dec 2019 Ho Ho Hoses

While we are here, I’d like to wish you all a Happy Christmas and New Year. Thanks for joining me on this journey. Nothing about hoses in this post, I was just looking for a Christmas related pun. First a word about Christmas – amongst a host of generous gifts, Helen (my wife) gave me a Land Rover Defender. Okay, so its a Lego kit, but still, I was very excited to receive it. I will devote a future post (or two) to this build.

The Lego LandRover Defender has about as many parts as the MG

In the meantime, here’s what I have been up to on the MG.

A grey afternoon today presented the first opportunity of the season to get out properly and progress the rebuild. First task was to fit the distributor and here I have a complaint about the design of the engine bay in this respect. Why is it neccessary to remove the oil cooler pipes to fit the distributor? okay, so its not a frequent task, but with the much space in the engine bay, why is the area around the distributor so congested? Complaint over, I coped, although tightening up the right hand bracket bolt involves removing the dip stick and even then you barely get quarter of a turn out of a spanner and a socket won’t go anywhere near. I will set the timing another day, although I have been researching this and getting familiar with how to tackle it. Its a new electronic unit and seems relatively straightforward to set up.

The fiendishly fiddly distributor – note loosened oil cooler pipe in background

Following up on the recent engine oil change, I thought it would be a good idea to fill the gearbox with oil today as this will hopefully stop my recurring nightmare of starting the engine with no oil in it. The gearbox was drained on removal by Austin the welder and has remained so ever since. For this job I had already bought gearbox oil from Classic Oils in Bicester along with a hand pump. I removed the grommit from behind the centre console which enables access to the gearbox dip stick and the filler neck. I then hooked the pump pipe onto the filler neck from underneath the car and pumped circa 3 litres of slippery oil into the gearbox ( I checked the capacity from the MG Restoration book). I think it was grateful. I checked the level using the dip stick and all seemed fine. The handpump was a bit of a workout, but I don’t suppose it will be a frequent job to change all the gearbox oil and it was a clean job. I could have probably filled the gearbox from inside using a funnel, but I was a bit worried about having a spill inside the car.

Next thing to investigate, was the fuel pump. This has been vexing me so today I just wanted to move my understanding forward rather than try to solve everything. To recap, the issue is that I need to connect the wires to it (and I didn’t know where they went), I still have to fit a rubber pipe from the pump to the pipe under the car and its not mounted properly. Today I consulted the wiring diagram (which is gradually beginning to make sense), and established that I needed a White and Black wire from the loom. As has been the case, I found these cables ran nicely down to the pump. That is, once I took them away from the C pillar where I had routed them previously. Not sure why I did that, I think I took them for the rear window demister. So small progress, but as I write this it’s becoming clearer now where the terminals go. Next time I work on the MG, I will connect the loom up and the remount the pump. This is to rectify a previous attempt to tighten the mounting clamp which was unsuccessful. This will be tedious because it is difficult to get a spanner in there, but once done, done. This will allow me to then work out how to fit the rubber pipe which connects to the copper pipe under the car. With this, the engine start tasks at the rear of the car will be complete. We are making progress Folks.

The fuel pump, tucked up in the rear arch needs fitting properly

Today’s work on the MG was powered by Mum-in-law’s Christmas Cake – Yum

7 Dec 19 Engine sprint

I have organised myself around something I am going to call a ‘sprint’. I am borrowing from the Agile Project Manager handbook and have set myself a short term goal to get the engine started. I am therefore focussing all attention on this milestone and ignoring everything else. This is probably a mis-use of the term ‘sprint’, but if it works as a way of completing this rebuild as a series of goal-based mini-plans, then I am going to do it like this. We will see. This sprint started earlier in the week when I made a list of all the things I needed to do to get the engine started. I ran this past my friend and historic racer, Rob. I say historic not because he’s old, although he is, but because he campaigns historic racing cars. Perhaps classic would be a better description. Anyway, he practically rebuilds his car each weekend, so I checked the list with him over dinner and got it signed-off so to speak. Thanks Rob!

So this Saturday, finding myself with some time, and although officially off-sick with a cough/cold, I opened up the garage and pushed the MG out into the watery December sunshine. I started by fitting the newly purchased pulley from Moss. I had been struggling to get the first pulley I had bought to fit, but taking a close look at the catalogue, I realised I had ordered the wrong type of pulley. Straightaway it was obvious that this was the correct part, as the pulley lined up with the main one at the front of the crank. I fitted it with new bolts and anti-rattle washers. With the pulley in place, it was logical to fit the alternator as this would then allow me to pop the fan belt on. The alternator went on easily enough – to begin with… I had cleaned this up when I stripped the car, and had kept all the bolts and washers, so it really was a case of reversing the removal process to get it fitted. All good, until I went to fit the fan belt. The fan belt went on easily enough. I put the car in gear and rocked it to turn the pulleys and feed the fan belt onto the alternator pulley. All good so far until I went to undo the bolt which allows the alternator to slide along its stay to tighten the fan belt. To be fair I went straight for my full-sized socket set and with the first turn of the ratchet the bolt sheared off. Damn. To be fair, this part had stayed on the car (it wasn’t stripped) so it was being moved for the first time and I didn’t use any release agent. Not having much time, I just photographed it and will ponder on how to remedy this situation. Some good news in that the electrical connections for the alternator fell easily to hand and it only fitted one way, so easy-peasy.

The next job, fitting the oil pressure gauge pipework was a bit challenging too. I couldn’t quite work out the fittings, and the engine-end fitting looked a bit mangled. As I looked closer, I could see the outline of a larger bolt but as I had painted it over when I sprayed the engine it wasn’t very clear. Learning from the earlier sheared bolt incident, I took a bit more care with this fitting and gave it a liberal spray of freeze unlock product, left it a minute and then gently broke the bond with a well-fitted socket. It came out nicely. I had bought the correct fittings from Moss, including the braided hose which feeds up to an adapter, bolted to the bodywork, from where the pipe to the gauge connects. I will fit this pipe when I install the dash which is on my sprint list. All in all, a good job.

Next on the list was to install the coil. Now I had recently identified a clash of the coil bracket with the 4-way brake junction from which I had carelessly routed a new pipe over one of the coil bracket bolt threaded holes. So I loosened the brake junction and with some gently manipulation, I was able to rotate the whole thing enough to clear the bracket hole without tugging the brake lines much out of their alignment. With that cleared I was able to identify the spade connectors from the loom, referencing the wiring diagram and get them connected up to the correct terminals on the coil. With the alternator in place, the oil pipework coming along and the coil fitted, the engine bay is starting to look busy! While the car was out I got the radiator (a new item) out just to see how it fits, but I won’t fit it until I have sorted out the sheared bolt on the alternator bracket.

Last job today was to fit the centre console. It might sound a bit weird, but I had ordered a new one (the existing one was butchered by a previous owner and did not have the correct switch slots). Rather than have it knocking around the garage, I fitted it which will allow me to place the switches where they need to be as I build up the dash.

So a busy and reasonably productive time on the MG today and a break from lying on the sofa in front of the TV feeling sorry for myself and binging on Netflix. Weather was kind too, a mild December day, although we are still at that time of year where by 3:00pm it is starting to grow dimmer. Such a short day!

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.

Final note – I bought an organiser tray from Wilkinsons for a fiver and sorted all my bolts into it – sometimes its the little things…

24 Nov 19 A visit from the Master!

A good afternoon of tinkering the MG with my Dad (the Master!) Dad was a mechanic earlier in his career and although now retired, he has forgotten more about fixing cars than I will ever know. This makes time spent with Dad on the MG very valuable. Of course, it’s nice just being together for a bit of boys time, even if I have to put up with him frequently asking me why I didn’t bag and tag everything when I stripped the car. Next time, Dad, next time.

The jobs tackled today included:-

Radiator shroud fitted with lovely new shiny bolts (me). Door shuts adjusted (Dad). Old speedo cable removed (Dad and me) and the new one put in place but not connected up to the gearbox yet. A breakthrough moment here was Dad finding the bracket and bolt which holds the gear into the gearbox – what a genius.

Dad also gave me guidance on realigning the bonnet which got pulled out of alignment when fitting the gas struts. He has given me a methodology to follow so I will have a go at this one evening this week. We also worked out where the vacuum pipe for the servo goes onto the manifold which was useful.

Negative progress today in the removal of the front pulley which I cannot work out how to fit. Dad thinks it may be the wrong pulley so I will research on the internet if there are different types. As I am putting an electric fan onto the car, I don’t need the engine fan, so the assembly is not as per factory, but even considering this, the pulley doesn’t sit right . Second bit of negative progress was diagnosing that the four way brake union fitted some time ago is wrongly oriented by 45 degrees. As I’ve got it fitted, there is a pipe which fouls where the coil bracket is mounted. So I have to disconnect the pipes, carefully rebend them and connect it all up again. Better to have found this before I have filled the brake system with fluid that’s for sure.

So that was about it, a pleasant afternoon of diagnosing issues and nudging things along – thanks for your help Dad!

Dad points to the direction I have to move the bonnet to improve the alignment

17 Nov 19 Two years today!

It’s two years today since I took delivery of the MGB and commenced the restoration! Its been an interesting journey…at the time I did not know how long it would take, but probably didn’t expect it to take this long. However, as I look at the car today, I can see my way through to the finish line, not that I think these projects are ever really finished…

I have learned a lot and spent a lot! I have enjoyed the help of lots of friends and I have had great service from lots of suppliers.

Enough celebrating, I still have lots to do. As a treat today, I did what I thought would be a nice easy ‘glory’ job – fitting the exhaust manifold, inlet manifold and carburettors. In the event it turned out to be a knuckle-scraping pain in the ass because of the unique way the MG is designed. The heat shield, which the carbs are mounted to is dual function – first to shield the carbs from heat, secondly to cut and scrape the hands of innocent mechanics with its sharp edges. ‘Wear gloves’ I hear you say, but unfortunately its all a bit intricate so gloves dont really work. Anyway, got it all done and doesn’t it look great!

16 Nov 19 A bleeding success

I’ll get straight to the point. The clutch is proven to work! A friend from Church, Andrew, came over to bleed the clutch. Andrew is an experienced mechanic, but the MG threw up a few challenges! First of all, a problem with Halfords pre-order. I wont go into details, but basically I ended up with a very basic bleeding kit. Secondly, the master cylinder cap was cracked weirdly (its new). Fortunately I have a spare master cylinder from an earlier ordering mistake so I swapped that one on. Thirdly, I had read what turned out to be a crackpot bleeding method an MG forum involving cable ties which didn’t work. Overcoming these challenges, Andrew led the way in bleeding the brakes the old fashioned way. I sat in the car, operating the clutch while Andrew lay underneath the car operating the bleed screw. The method was, put light pressure on the clutch, release the bleed screw, clutch pedal to the floor, tighten the bleed screw, clutch back up the the tops of it’s travel. This method worked, we topped up the fluid in the master-cylinder and before long we had a nice firm pedal. We tested the clutch by putting the car in gear, which (just about) held it on the drive, then disengage the clutch (i.e. press the clutch down) and observed the car racing off down the driveway. Success – thanks Andrew. It was good to have enrolled another person onto the team and Andrew offered to help with other jobs.

Andrew enjoying a cup of tea after sorting the clutch

Before Andrew arrived, I had time to do a few other jobs. The first was to finish off fitting the nearside lock which I had partly fitted last week. As I got to the end of the thread, the nut was failing to make much purchase and I have concluded that the thread must be compromised. The locks are not expensive to buy – there are enhanced versions which have improved security, so I will purchase some. Seems silly to skimp on security. I was able to examine the chip in the paint which is not as bad as I had thought. I will do a repair on this soon to avoid any rust as I have some left over paint and it only needs a dab.

Inside the doors looking at the lock – cannot get this done up tight

A job which is critical to the dash going is fitting of the wiper system. I got the parts out today to inspect. The wiper motor was fine, and I managed to fit this – awkward, but do-able, but the wiper mounts were truly knackered. Unfortunately, the threads (it was a day for awkward threads) were worn, and even with copper grease, the nuts would not do up nicely. Unfortunately this means buying new parts, but maybe it was asking too much for 40 year old wipers to be re-usuable.

Here is the wiper motor installed. The electrical connection on the new loom literally presented itself, asking to be plugged in so that was easy enough!

Earlier in the morning, I had finished fitting all the bolts to the engine mounts, something I hadn’t done since we installed the engine a couple of weeks ago. This was easy enough to begin with, however, there was one nut which had to go on the n/s and the bolt was up tight to the engine, preventing me from getting the nut on. Baffled at to how this could be the case, I then hit on the idea of gently jacking the engine on this side (with the nuts on the other side loosened). This created just enough room, and I popped the nut on. The nuts are all new as I bought a set of imperial nuts and bolts from MGB Hive to improve aesthetics over old nuts and bolts. This is called ‘showroom appeal!’.

This shows the nut when I had managed to get it started by jacking the engine

Another job critical to fitting the dash is fitting the heater ducts and controls. I inspected all the parts today and unfortunately identified that one of them had a broken end (see picture below) so I will need to buy new. As per the wipers, I need to get on with purchasing this so I can proceed with the build sequence.

The broken end of the heater control – Darn!

Final point for today’s blog is to report arrival of the dual gauge (Oil and Temp) which I had ordered from a company which produced instruments. Rapid turnaround and I now have the gauge and capilliary tube to be inserted into the head. The tube can look a bit randomly placed under the bonnet, however I have seen it coiled into a spring-like shape which looks quite neat, so maybe I will do this. Here is a photo of it straight out the box.

9 Nov 19 Stormy weather

Another rainy Saturday? …it must be November. Before the rain became truly relentless I managed to do a couple of jobs on the MG. Today was an inventory day, something I have made up to describe when you spend time going through the boxes of parts trying to figure out an order to everything. Today, I decided to put all parts which are surplus into a single box. Surplus means that I have bought a new replacement, so hence don’t need them anymore. Parts that are decent, I’ll flog at an autojumble one day, parts that were u/s I threw into my garage bin. No point keeping them. While going through the boxes, I found a couple of items that could just be fitted right now, meaning that I wouldn’t have to store them any longer. It also gave me a view as to whether they were actually any good or not. This included the following:-

Gearlever and original gearknob: This highlighted that I did not have the gearlever retaining ring readily to hand. Quick search on the internet suggests these are no longer available, so I will look out for the original one buried in a box somewhere
Door locks: The door locks are in okay condition, however the second one I fitted didn’t want to go through the aperature in the door and when I tapped it, I chipped the paint. Darn! I wasn’t really able to see whether it was a bad chip as this was the last thing I fitted before rain stopped play. Hey ho, this was bound to happen at some point. The thread on this lock needs tightening, but as mentioned the rain was getting heavy so I abandoned this job. The thread is really long and the space in the door is tight. All I can weild is a large 1″ spanner to do the nut up, so that will take ages. Something of a penance for my earlier impetiousness. The lock action isn’t right yet and will need some fettling.
Door Handles: These fitted nicely, but has highlighted that I really need to replace them as the chrome is pitted. What a shame, it would be nice to keep the originals. Still, they can stay on for the time being.
Door Pulls: Have I gone mad? Door pulls on before the door cards or even windows are fitted. Maybe not so crazy, because in fitting them (trial fit really), I discovered that one of the fixings on the n/s was missing. There is a threaded clip that was missing on the door. It would have been annoying to disover this problem having put the doors cards on, so glad I found it. I will need to think of how to rig up something here probably involving giant washers.
Rear view mirror: Again, have I gone mad. Well it was sat in a box so I thought I would fit just to see how it goes on and this confirmed that really it needs replacing. The mirror backing has come away so the edges are all ragged. S
Thermostat and housing: A long time ago I had bought a new thermostat and housing, but couldn’t fit it because the old temperature sensor probe was stuck in the head. As I removed this earlier in the week with some freezer spray and some light prying*, these parts could now go on and the old ones get tossed in the surplus bin

Today’s jobs generated a list of required parts. There is an Autojumble coming up in Malvern so I may take a trip out there to buy the parts.

Not really a memorable day on the MG, but forward progress was made and to get anything out of today is somewhat of a bonus given the weather. I am waiting for better weather to do the jobs that are critical to getting the car moving under own steam, something I couldn’t really contemplate today.

Gearbox surround may clean up or I may replace

* The temperature sensor, which fits on the end of a capillary tube, has been one of the most troublesome components to date. I tried undoing it when I first stripped the car down and have been trying ever since. I’ve tried special gripping sockets, heat from a blowtorch, crowbar, loads of WD40 and all sorts all to no avail. It took my mate Mark to remove the nut (which should have taken the sensor with it) and he usually works on industrial mechanical plant! As I am now in the rebuild, this could have become an issue requiring the head to be removed and machined. Fortunately, a friend from Church suggested the freeze spray and this was to prove the decisive factor in me finally releasing the little blighter. In the end, once it had budged, it just pulled out, the corrosive bond having been broken. Phew! …and a sense of achievement.

2 Nov 19 Sitting it out

A gloomy Saturday in SW England, rain is lashing down and England just lost the Rugby World Cup to South Africa. But there are reasons to be cheerful!

This week I collected the refurbished seats and new carpets from Mirror Trim near Bedford and they look great.

The new carpets will stay in the box until I am ready to fit them

I’m really pleased with how the seats have turned out, they look absolutely fantastic and along with the new carpets, the interior should look really smart. For now, the carpet box is standing upright in the study and the seats are in Lou’s bedroom (sorry Lou…).

Second reason to be cheerful was the successful fitting of the slave cylinder to the side of the gearbox earlier today. With the weather outside miserable, I worked on the car in the garage and it was surprising okay. Not needing access down the side of the car, I just jacked up the front, propped it on axle stands and wriggled underneath from the front. With more space in the garage since I fitted the engine and handed back the crane, this was much more feasible. The slave cylinder and the fittings all went together easily enough. There wasnt much room to swing spanners, but on the whole I was happy with the job. While under the car, I took a moment to improve the routing of the o/s brakepipe and was happier with it as a result.

So the next job will be to charge the clutch hydraulics with fluid, bleed the system and then test the clutch is functioning correctly, before adding any engine ancilliaries and connecting up the exhaust and so on. This is following the advice of Papa Trigg who knows about these things. I have a friend at Church with a bleed kit who has offered to help with bleeding the system, so his availability will drive this next task.

Happy Saturday everyone – God Bless.

7 Oct 19 Rear screen installation

I arranged for Andy from Wiltshire Windscreens to come over to install the rear screen of the MG. I was working from home, but managed to keep an eye on progress between Skype calls. Andy battled with a slightly too long rubber seal, glass that wasn’t quite the right shape and trims that were recalcetrant. However, he had a cunning collection of tools and slippery products to work the screen in. I was pleased with how the job turned out and Andy is booked in for the following Monday to fit the Windscreen.

15 Sep 19 Goodwood Revival

A grand day at the Goodwood Revival. Having dropped our youngest daughter at University on the Satursday, I headed to my friend Paul’s house in the Suzuki Cappuccino in readiness for race day at Goodwood. Paul was the previous keeper of the Suzuki so it was a bit of a Pilgrimage really.

An early start saw us get into the Goodwood circuit for around 8:30. The journey was the usual Goodwood delight with lots of interesting vehicles on the surrounding roads. A friendly honk to a pair of MG convertibles was rewarded with enthusiastic waves.

Here’s Paul and I in our Goodwood gear enjoying the view at Madgewick corner

I can’t really do the event justice with the photo’s below, but I did snap a few beauties in the paddock as the day drew to a close. They are all priceless in their own way, and its fantastic to see them in their element being raced in the glorious Goodwood setting.

AC Cobra
TVR Griffith
Sunbeam Tiger
Adrian Newey’s Ford GT40
Aston Martin DB4 Zagato

A special event for this year was a feature race for pre-war Bentleys. The sight as thirty or so of these beasts came down the hill towards our Grandstand at Lavant Corner was unforgetable, as well as a bit slow, hilariously.

Who knows…
…how much…
…this little lot…
…are worth
wait a minute…RED!

So a stunning day all round. As the sun set in the sky, I removed the roof from the Cappuccino, and Paul and I headed back to his house, arriving to freshly cooked Pizzas prepared by Claire, his dear wife. Replacing the roof, I headed off for a brisk cross-country dash to get home at around 11:15pm. A good day.

Classic car events and fettling

Restoration of my MGB GT with occasional other stuff

classic racing