speedometer cable

20 March 2022 Oil in the wrong places

Oil is vital stuff, finding its way between all those rapidly moving metal bits that make the engine go vroom and preventing them from welding themselves together. However, sometimes it escapes from where its supposed to be and then it makes a big mess. Well this evening I was able to look under the bonnet of the MGB to check on some oil misting that has been present since recent start ups. It’s nothing severe, but clearly not right and I wanted to see how bad it was since my first drive a couple of weeks ago. On opening the bonnet there was a tell-tale mark, running transversely across the underside of the bonnet originating from the front of the engine. It wasn’t as severe as the other day, but there is enough to make a mark and not something to ignore. However, I quickly realised that this particular evening I wasn’t going to be able to get under the car to see where the oil was coming from, having checked all possible locations accessible from above where it might be coming from. The pattern of the misting point towards it being linked to the main pulley which as it goes round and round is I think throwing up the leaked oil. Everything points towards the sump, pulley seal or timing chain cover. So a fairly big weekend job there to work through these areas and resolve.

While I was looking, I did a general look around for any other leaks. In the near side chassis rail was some petrol. Not a lot, but a recognisable quantity. Oh dear. I felt around the fuel pipes which were nice and dry and then under the carbs. Aha. Under the front carb (the float chamber) it was damp, so this points towards a seeping seal. Darn. I have had these carbs apart when I was troubleshooting them, so its going to be my fault, but I suspect the float chamber cover seals are not, well, sealing. They were a pig to refit, so I’ll have the carbs off and look/replace the seals as they may well be mangled. Seals are £1.46 from SU (plus £5 for postage!). I am pleased to have spotted this at least before the leak got too bad!

Petrol leaking onto this chassis rail

While looking at the carbs I took a good look at the throttle mechanism as at present the car does not idle nicely all the time. The cable is a little slack but the the spindle returns to the stops so that is not sticking. It could be the mixture as I have fiddled with this in trying to set the carbs up. When I can grab an expert for the day (Hi Dad!) I’ll set these up from scratch, but in the meantime, I took the spark plugs out to see if they would give me any clues as to the mixture. The photos are below in front to back order. I’m going to leave this to the experts to comment, however I think its fair to say the carbs are not set up right!

Plug 1 front carb
Plug 2 front carb
Plug 3 rear carb
Plug 4 rear carb

The off-side chassis rail was also not pristine, having oil spotting around it. I wiped this up and looked for a possible culprit. Feeling under the oil filter, my fingers felt oil around the bottom of the union with the oil cooler pipe. This union is a beast of a with a 15/16th fitting. It a double nut thingy where you have to hold one nut while doing up the other so I had my 15/16th spanner on the oil pipe fitting and an adjustable on the filter end and was able to tighten it by a good quarter turn. I am hopeful that this will stop that leak, but it will need to be checked next time I run the engine.

I tightened up this joint

Finally, one of the grill stays had a loose fitting. No idea why, the grille hasn’t been off for ages, but I might as well fix it while I am here. The threaded screw was a bit second hand looking, so I looked for a replacement. I found a bolt the same thread which was a bit long so I shortened it with the hacksaw and along with a couple of washers it fitted nice and snug and that was one less rattly thing on the car!

Tightened up this grille stay

A busy half hour on the car, but some steps forward which is always good!

25 Feb 21 A whole day of stuff

I took back a day that work owed me today and had a whole day on the MG outside in the warm February sunshine (yes, really!). Here is a quick synopsis of the jobs I completed.

  1. Fitted new bolts to the n/s brake caliper replacing the ones that got mangled when removing the old calipers. Fitted the tab washer while I was there
  2. Fitted interior light to the centre console ready for wiring up.
  3. Scavenged the heated rear window warning light from the old loom and old centre console
  4. Connected up the speedometer cable to the back of the gauge. To do this I dropped the dash off its single bolt to get access to the back of the gauges
  5. Fixed the ignition switch to the steering column. No more fishing around in the footwell for the ignition switch.
  6. Fixed the o/s corner of the dash which enabled me to hoist the dash up to its correct alignment and therefore to be able to slip a temporary bolt across to mount the steering column to the dash for the first time is a couple of years! To do this I lay on my back with my head in the footwell and my feet sticking up into the boot. The things we do!
  7. Fixed the o/s door light switch and discovered that the n/s looks a bit mangled (hence why Phil had not wired this before)
  8. Removed the rear wheels, rubbed them down, sprayed them with primer then a top coat of satin black. They turned our better than the brushed hammerite on the front wheels! This now completes the set of wheels, which are now a lot tidier than they were, understanding that this is temporary cosmetic fix-up pending a more permanent selection of wheels for the project. And because Dad kept pestering about their shabby appearance
  9. Cleared out the interior of rubbish, tools, nuts, washers and grit!
  10. Fitted grommits to the footwell aperatures
  11. Found the rear bumper brackets, but sadly discovered they are very rusty and one had a seized and sheared off bolt. I had considered fitting the rear bumper and had given it a once over and reckoned it would do as a temporary solution. I think now I have discovered this, I will keep it bumper free at the back as originally planned. Need to figure out how to light up the rear number plate without having the over-riders on the bumper to mount them on (I might just not bother…)
  12. Tidied up the garage and sorted through the spares.

Being a lovely sunny day I had quite a lot of interaction with passers by with most people saying something encouraging. One older lady remarked that an old boyfriend of hers had one in the 1970s – cute! Another family walked past when I had the engine running to put the car away. As we know the engine is not in a good state of tune at the moment and I had cranked up the slow running to be too fast and was on choke, so it was revving at about 2750 rpm and popping and banging. As I glanced behind, the lady had her hands over her ears. Sorry about the sports exhaust

  • Centre console coming together
  • Fitting the speedo cable
  • The ignition switch back on the steering column
  • Spraying the rear wheels
  • Swept the footwell and fitted grommets
  • Looking good rear quarter
  • It’s all about the angles
  • t’other side
  • Front view
  • Lying in the footwell…
  • …so I can fit this fiddly bolt!

21 Nov 20 Wiper Motor and other bits and bobs

In early December I have a classic car auto electrician coming to look at the loom on the MGB and to help with its installation. He’ll carry out an assessment first, and then recommend what he is able to do. In readiness for this, I rolled the MG out onto the drive on this sunny November afternoon. Before I got on with the neccessary work, I couldn’t resist firing up the MG. She started on the second go, so the battery had held out, which is encouraging in terms of the alternator actually working. I had a bit of a fiddle with the idle speed and mixture and managed to get it idling relatively smoothly with the choke fully in engine warmed up. I am not kidding myself that the carbs are set up, but at least its running better than when initially started a few weeks ago. I am a bit addicted to the noise and couldn’t resist a couple of revs. My neighbour’s grown up son came to see what the noise was and he liked what he heard!

The preparation on the loom today consisted of me undoing the jerry-rigged set up I had created to get the car started. The loom was basically resting in the foot well which is clearly not right. I disconnected the ignition switch (having taken numerous photos) and various other connections including several temporary earths. I then took a good look at the loom and carefully unravelled it to lay behind the dashboard in roughly the right configuration. I then looked at where the loom enters the interior and identified the correct location of the first earth connection. Having learned that stainless steel does not have as good connectivity as mild steel, I didn’t use a fresh shiny bolt but dug out an old one from the bolt box. That led me to contemplate the wiper motor which is just under the dash on the off side (UK). The wiper motor was dangling awkwardly from the drive cable so needed to be fitted properly in its mount. First I tightened up the drive cable connection to the motor as this was only half on. I then offered the motor up to its mount, noting that the angles didn’t really work, but it was possible to persuade it in. The motor is mounted by a steel hoop, but to keep it in snug there are two rubber elements – a pad which goes against the bulkhead and a lining to the hoop. Getting these to align and stay in place as I tightened up the two bolts was tricky to say the least, but I managed it after a couple of attempts. So with the wiper motor in place I was able to fit the earth connection I had spotted earlier. Due to the exact positioning of this, effectively under the scuttle, and the bar runs below the dash, this wasn’t that easy – I had to sit on the floor with my back to the car and feed my hand through the various obstacles and then get the right angle. Hopefully, that can stay there now for the duration!

I also greased the speedo cable in anticipation of connecting this up in the near future. All the while I was listening to a radio adaption of Ian Flemming’s James Bond in Moonraker. A great afternoon.

  • Not a bad working environment today
  • The wiper motor in-situ
  • This earth wire was tricky to fit

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.

  • Not my favourite place, but neccessary
  • The speedo cable is fitted

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.

  • The loop of fuel line to lose length
  • Fuel pump trial fit

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.

  • Dramatic angled shot!
  • All put away nicely
  • Fresh oil
  • MG looks good from this (any?) angle

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

Better than a jiffy bag? I think so