Getting back to the B

I haven't done much in the last few weeks. I've had to concentrate on remodling the basement in my house which has flooded twice in the last 4 years.

It has become a health issue since a lot of mold and mildew has formed on the walls so it's been tear out the walls, rebuild repaint and live with the smell of bleach permanently burned into my nose...yummy.

But I'm getting close on the final stages of the first phase of the basement so I should be able to get back to work by the weekend.

Plus, the weather has sucked here but it will warm back up by the weekend. We're supposed to get 4-8 inches of snow here tonight which, for North Carolna is a big deal. But it is going to be back near 70 degrees by next friday so I'll be getting back to work on my LBC. I'm now nearly a month behind on my schedule so I'll have to bust ass to get caught back up again.

1-26-2009

Broke the sandblaster out and got to work on the car again. This time, however, when it came out of the garage, it drove out under its own power! Runs rough as hell but at least she runs :)

I spent about two hours sandblasting on the car and in all that time, all I got done was the front right wheel and suspension and the trunk underside area where the gas tank mounts. talk about slow going. My compressor isn't small but it's not a big industrial unit either so you only have about a minute or two of effective sandblasting time before you have to wait for the air tank to fill back up again.
Plus, it's a Sears sandblaster which loves to clog up every 30 seconds or so...slow going to say the least.
I'm seriously considering just pulling the wheels off and spending $50 bucks to have them done at a sandblasing shop. It would be much easier and I wouldn't have to spend a few days picking sand out of every square inch of my body. Then I can just blast what needs blasted, the rest of the suspension, the underside of the car and the few random remaining parts that are too big to clean up with the wire wheel on the bench grinder.

I got my speed bleeders for the brakes and the clutch slave in today. They are basically bleeder nipples with built in check valves. you loosen them a bit and pump the brake pedal until the air is out of the system and the built in valves prevent air from being drawn back into the lines when you let off the pedal. Supposedly, it allows you to bleed the brakes by yourself.
I'm planning on flushing out the 15 year old silicone brake fluid from all the lines and replacing it (I'm sticking with the DOT-5 silicone fluid) by hooking up my Ezi-bleeder. It is a unit which sends pressurized fluid into the master via a special cap and on through the brake lines, pushing the old fluid out as it goes. I've never used one before but they are supposed to work fairly well based on what I've read on several MG forums.
When my latest parts order comes in early next week I'll be working on rebuilding the brakes so I'll let you know how the Ezi-bleeder and Speed bleeders actually work.

It's going to be cold and rainy here for the next few days so I'll probably alternate between working on small parts inside and working on the house. I still have to finish cleaning up the rust on the outside of the tank and seaing the pin holes on the top of it so that will probably be my next step.

I've also decided that in addition to documenting my restoration efforts photographically and here on this blog, I'm going to start doing them on video as well.
The videos will be a combination of how-to MG restoration and visual documentation. Hopefully, somebody out there will find them helpful. If not, then 20 years from now my kids can at least see what their lame-brained dad looked like when they were young.

Still not done anything on the MG. The weather has now just started to warm back up an I'll be getting some done tommorrow.

But for now...

THE STEELERS ARE GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!!!!

Wifey got tickets to the AFC championship game in the 'Burgh and it was a blast.

I have a great wifey.

1-14-2009 Too damned cold and GO STEELERS!!!

It's too damned cold to be out working on the B right now so I'm back working on the inside of my house for a few days.

Wifey is trying to get tickets to the AFC championship game in Pittsburgh...I love my wifey.

All I want is to see the Steelers beat Baltimore 100-0...is that asking too much?

GO STEELERS!!!

01-01-2009

Let's see if this works.
Here is the video of my restart efforts on the MG.

Some r-rated language so this won't show up on the Disney channel anytime soon.

The funniest part in the video is my wife Laura. I was joking with Kevin (AKA Fieldbuilder here on the MGExperience.net forum) that she was an ex-Army MP and swears like a sailor so, of course, she goes out of her way to swear constantly...not knowing that I am taping the whole thing.
I showed this to her last night and she is so embarrassed.
The first half of the vid shows us trying to get the B restarted. The second half is after I replaced most of the ignition parts on Sunday and she actually runs.
I replaced the rotor, dizzy cap, plugs (NGK) coil wire and plug wires.
I still have to replace the points and condensor. She fired right up and kept running which I didn't expect at all.
Last saturday Kevin and I just managed to get her running for about 10 seconds at a time at the most. But, Sunday I discovered this ingenious device called a...um what is it...oh yeah, a choke.

DUH!

Pulled it out about 1/3 of the way and she fired up and kept running, much to my surprise. she ran for about 15-20 minutes on Sunday and got up to operating temp, the t-stat opened, no oil or coolant leaks and consistantly showed about 55-60 pounds oil pressure at idle. It's all even more surprising that she ran considering that the carbs and the balance of the ignition system haven't been touched in about 15 years...they built these things tough!
I even drove her back and forth in the garage...about 3 feet forward and back. At least I know the clutch isn't frozen up

Me very happy

12-27-2008 FIRST START DAY!!!

Saturday was the day! Kevin came over and we worked on the MG from 10:30 am until around 8:00 pm to get her started, breaking only for lunch around 2pm.




















We spent most of the day safing bare wires, reinstalling things like the carbs, distributor fuel lines and about 100 other little things.

...there were problems, of course...

The fuel tank isn't back from the radiator shop yet so I hooked up a small gas can in the trunk with some extra fuel line. I put gas in the lines where it promptly spilled out all over the garage floor. Fixed that and then found it flowing out at the front carb. both were cases of loose or missing clamps.

The distributor would not go back in with the rotor facing the right direction so Kevin turned it 180-degrees around and it slipped right in (he then swapped the wires around)

When the wires were all safed we hooked up the batter. No fires, no sparks, no smoke and the fuel pump kicked on. After chasing problems for a while longer we tried to start it but no joy.

Ran the battery down cranking it to get oil pressure but still no start. When I hooked up the second battery I noticed that the first one whas hooked up out of phase! No wonder it wouldn't start.

After the second backup battery was hooked up (correctly) and we fiddled with the distributor some more (and sent the wife to the parts store for a new plug wire) we had our first backfire after cranking it for about 10 seconds! Not much but it was a sign of life.

We fiddled some more, determined that we were getting spark at the plugs and fuel at the carbs so we tried again and TA-DA- she fired up!

She only ran for about 10 seconds but she was running. The oil pressure was around 50-60 pounds, which is very good, and she ran surprisingly smoothly considering how old everything was. She started and ran for 10-15 seconds a few more times after that so I felt good calling it a day.

Next up, I'll be replacing the points, condensor, plugs, plug wires, cap and rotor. The carbs come next. They need rebuilt so I'll be sending them off to either Butch in Burlington or one of the other pros from the MGExperience forum.

Other than that, it's back to work on the other 12 buh-zillion things I need to do.

I just wanted to see if the engine would run and hold pressure so the rest is easy since that is the case. At least I can be relatively sure that when the car is ready to rollout, it will be drivable.

When she fired up for the first time in 10 years, I was laughing and smiling like my 7 year old son on Christmas day.

I taped it and will try to get the video posted here this week.

Merry Christmas to me :)

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.