At the behest of my wife, who has some concern about me bombing
around in an LBC, mixing it up with SUVs on the freeway, I decided to
put a little money into safety stuff on my '64 B.
The most obvious one was to install a fuel pump rollover switch. I
bought the one that Moss sells, and thought a lot about where to
mount it on the car to prevent it from shutting off unnecessarily,
and to be easy to reset. I finally decided on the firewall,
passenger side, under the dash, toward the centerline. It is a
fairly rigid panel, within reach of the driver if it trips off on a
pothole or speed bump. Since the rear suspension is stiffer /
jouncier than the front; putting it in the trunk seemed like an
invitation to false tripping.
The wiring path was pretty straight-forward. I ran a couple of wires
from the switch along the harness through the firewall to the fuse
block. I pulled off the white fuel pump wire (the one that shuts off
the pump that isn't the ignition-fed power wire) and put in some
insulated spade connectors so as not to cut off the existing harness
connectors. If the thing fails or I am driving the Baja 1000, I can
bypass the switch / go back to the old wiring. Did some extensive
test driving over neighborhood speed bumps to confirm it wouldn't
trip in normal driving. This could be a problem on a carburated car,
as it doesn't really stop until the fuel bowl is empty, sometime
after the switch trips.
This switch can also serve as an anti-theft device--whack it sharply,
and it shuts off 'til you reset it...
The second thing I did was change the headlights. They had been
sealed beam halogens, but were pretty weak/bad pattern. At night
they were pretty anemic--even in a B, it was possible to drive
"faster than you can see." I'm still running a generator, and don't
plan to upgrade to an alternator soon, and didn't want to upgrade to
something that would burn up wiring, like jumbo driving lights.
(yeh, I could install a relay some day...) I rarely drive where there
is no on-coming traffic, so that doesn't help, anyway. The nice
thing with H4s is that you can select the wattage of the lamp
(commonly available at auto part stores for bikes)--not having a
relay, I went for a lower wattage. I could put in driving lights,
but if they are legally installed, they need to be on a relay with
the high beams.
I got a couple of used H4 type halogen lamps (Carrello?). I had gone
this route on my Alfa GTV-6, and it made a great difference, not just
in brightness, but in pattern. I know they are probably not legal in
Calif., but they are safe. The only downside I've seen is that if
you need to have them aimed by a state repair station, you need to
put back the sealed beams, since they have the three DOT bosses that
the alignment tool needs for location.
Chris Attias
'64 MGB
'84 Alfa Romeo GTV-6
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