11-20-2008 TO 12-02-2008

Well the Thanksgiving holiday and work interests have pulled me away from working on the B as much as I would have wanted to. Plus, I’m trying to get some more remodeling work done on the (formerly) finished basement in my house that flooded this spring. Wifey wants me to get the gym I’m building finished for her Christmas present so I get to mix in drywall dusting with the paint fumes from MG restoration. What fun!


















I have gotten some stuff done, however, just not as much as I would have wanted to. The radiator is all finished and pretty. After it was all cleaned inside and out I buffed the brass with steel wool, soldered the metal support brace back on where it broke loose from the top and then clear coated the brass to keep it all nice and shiny. I also put a thin coat of gloss black on the tops of the radiator fins since those are what you see when you look down on the radiator when the car’s hood is open. I also painted the steel supports on the radiator with several coats of gloss black paint and glued two cork buffer strips on the parts where it attaches to the radiator support in the engine bay. I’m not big on metal to metal contact with painted parts since it tends to rub off the paint over time and allow a path for rust to start.



















I’ve decided to take the heater core to a radiator shop to get the crack soldered. I did it myself but the core is just too hard to get out of the car if it fails. So I’ll have the shop solder it up and pressure test it so I can be sure about it. The same goes for the gas tank. Now I just have to find a local radiator shop.

NOTE:
When you use material s such as Perma-Tex or other gasket sealing products, use it very sparingly. In fact, when you are installing your heater valve, you shouldn’t use any at all. When I flushed the radiator and (especially) the heater core out, gobs of old Perma-Tex came out. This was old gasket sealing material that squished out when a part was tightened down and broke loose, making it into the stream of coolant. There is no telling how much of the radiator and heater core was clogged by this loose material. This is especially important with the heater core since it is so small and inefficient already. Any blockage at all in the core make an already weak unit even weaker as far as heat output is concerned.

Printed up some of the homemade stickers that I made with my Canvas-11 illustration program. They look really good but I’m not sure how they’ll hold up in the engine compartment. I put about 6 coats of clear coat on them and I’ll be cutting them out. After I apply them I’ll also put some more clear coat over the area where they are placed to, hopefully, seal them up. It is an experiment but if it works then I don’t have to spend a butt-load of cash on some little stickers.
Since the weather has turned decidedly colder I’ve been doing as much work as possible down in the basement on cleaning parts. Nuts, bolts and various other parts, it at least lets me do work on the B when it is to cold to be out in the garage. I have one more parts order to make and I’ll start making an earnest effort to get the car running.