Well, there’s lots to catch up on in the last few weeks. The holidays are still cutting into the time I’d be spending on the MG but I got a lot done the last few days.

Some good news, some bad news; I’m going to try to start the engine up on the weekend between Christmas and New Years. On the bad side, when I pulled the clutch and brake pedals of to replace them I found that the push rod on the clutch master cylinder is badly egged out and the clevis pin is also shot. Luckily, my MG buddy Kevin who is going to be helping me try to get the B restarted, has an extra pushrod.

I got the heater core back from the shop, it only cost $25 to get it flushed, pressure tested and have the crack soldered. I reinstalled it back in the heater box and got the whole thing back into the car. The heater box is supposed to be a bitch to reinstall and I recall them being exactly that when I last did one nearly 20 years ago. But this time, I pre-compressed the big puffy seal on the back of the box by stacking a bunch of slate tiles on top of it for a few days. I pulled it out from under the slate tiles, quickly glued it to the back of the box, sprayed a little WD-40 on the seal, lined it up in the opening and it slid right into the opening on the firewall with just a light pop of the heel of my palm.

I got the radiator back into the car as well as the oil cooler and lines (I need new lines for the oil cooler, they are both way too long and look stupid) I have at least 60% of the wiring cleaned up and re-taped in the engine bay. I installed the new stainless braided fuel line hoses in the engine bay (they look sweet) and in the rear at the fuel tank.

The tank should be done in the next day or two. I’ll still have to reseal the top of it because it was in really poor shape but the rest of it was in good condition and since it is an original tank with baffles, I decided to keep it.

I reinstalled the blank plate on the top of the firewall on the passenger side. I used double seals and drilled out and added four extra securing screws since I got tired of it always leaking no matter what I did when it rained.

I got the exhaust downpipe reconnected to the exhaust manifold with lock washers and the brass nuts. It is a lot harder to get some of those nuts installed with the manifold bolted to the block but not too much harder.

My buddy Paul is looking at my alternator and hopefully will get it fixed before this weekend. If not, I’ll just have him put it back together and I’ll stick it on the car as is for the restart since the car will run with or without it in place.

I put the front of the B up on jack stands and a heater under the engine for a few hours to heat it up and then drained out all of the old oil. I got at least 10 quarts out of it! I then sprayed a bunch of brake cleaner up the drain hold and down the dipstick hole to clean out any gunk in there. When I was done I blew compressed air down the dipstick hole to dry it out. I’m sure that it didn’t get the sump completely clean but it knocked out a lot of any old gunk that may have been up in there.

I’m waiting on an order from Moss for the little doo-dads I need to get the engine running again. Hopefully they will be here by this weekend, but with the slowdown because of Christmas shipping I’m not sure they’ll get here on time.

As I said above, I’m going to try to start the thing on the weekend between Christmas and New Years so I’ll have the fire extinguisher and camcorder standing by. IF it works and I get it started I’ll put the video up…it will probably show me jumping up and down like an excited nine year old. I have no idea if it will start or not. The valves need adjusted and the carbs and the rest of the electronics are around 15 years old…keeping the fingers crossed!

Merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, the winter equinox or whatever you celebrate this time of year.