Just after I bought this B I posted a question about the sad state of the
wiring. I've since asked many questions about one thing or another. I just
thought I'd bring everyone up to date on what I'm actually doing and
planning with the car.
After I initially smoke tested the wiring I took a long hard look at what I
had. I repaired the wiring enough to do a compression test on the engine
and found one cylinder with only 60 psi, another with 80 and 2 with about
100, so I decided rebuild the engine. After getting the engine and
transmission out I mounted the engine on the stand and took the transmission
out to clean about an inch of grease and oil off it. More bad news, the
transmission case has a crack from the hump in the front for the starter to
almost the back of the main case. I have a spare from a 75, and I have
another 74 MGB in the back yard. I have decided to use the spare 74 for a
parts car. I had intended to fix it up, but the sills and floor pans are
shot in it. I crawled under the parts car as best I could, and reached up
to the transmission, and low and behold I'm pretty sure it's an overdrive
transmission, so it will go into the car being fixed.
I am currently striping the car down to almost the bare body shell. After
removing the dash, I'm glad I decided to replace the wiring harness instead
of trying to fix what was left. A number of the wires behind the dash were
fried. Also it looks like the Tach may be toast. The wiring harness in my
parts car looks very good. I'm going to just pull the dash and wiring
harness from the parts car and put it in the one being repaired. I've
almost got everything out that I intend to remove. Soon it'll be time to
start cleaning and repairing.
A major benefit I discovered yesterday is the new auto hobby shop on the
local Navy base has a blast cabinet available for only $10.00 and hour. (I
retired from the Navy in 1991 so I have access to the facilities) It's
large enough to put all four wheels in at a time for bead blasting. I plan
to take all my small rusted parts to the base and blast them. This should
save me a lot of man hours on the clear up. I figure I'll get together what
I can do in an hour and stop off after work to clean them up.
I've been putting all my spare time into the car lately, but my priorities
are going to have to shift some. Red Snapper season opens in the Gulf of
Mexico the 15th of April so I need to get the boat ready. I still hope to
have the car driveable by Rendezvous 2001 in Tallahassee the first weekend
of November. I know it won't be finished, but hopefully driveable.
I'm sure there will be lots more questions as I progress through this
project. I really appreciate all your help.
Ken
74 MGB (in process)
74 MGB (sadly, for parts)
74 Midget (next project)
71 TR6 (driven regularly)
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