Hello Friends,
Made a little more progress on the '70 MGB
restoration this past weekend. The emphasis should be
on the word 'little'.
The driver's seat is repaired and reinstalled in
the car. It looks great (looks new) and is very
comfortable now that the diaphram is repaired. The
slide mechanism was also rebuilt, repainted and
lubricated so the seat slides smoothly. I also
cleaned and lubricated the headrest bar and the squab
recline mechanism. In short, the seat operates and
feels new. Mounted back over the newly cleaned and
repositioned carpet, the whole package feels pretty
nice.
I installed the tonneaux cover only to discover
that not only had the main zipper failed, the fabric
has shrunk beyond usability. Yes, I can get it on but
it is too tight and that probably caused the main
zipper failure. I think I will scrap it.
I checked the timing and verified that the car
idles at 10 degrees BTDC. That's at a fast idle of
1000rpm. The idle at 800rpm is still a little 'lumpy'
and all indications are that the mixture is a little
lean. Still, it starts okay and idles nicely, if at a
fast idle. I'll wait until I have a few road miles on
the car before fine tuning the final mixture. I also
installed the nicely restored pancake air cleaners
using new filter foam.
Next came the brakes. The brake and clutch pedal
arms were surface rusted and the pivot points were
loose so I removed the whole package. I cleaned away
the rust with the wire wheel on the grinder and
repainted the pedal arms gloss black. I also cleaned
the pivot bushings and inserts. They were pretty
nasty but not really damaged. The wobbly pedals were
caused by missing shims on the pivot bolt. The PO had
tried to address this problem by installing a hose
clamp! Upon reassembly I simply trial fitted washers
of varying thickness until I found a combination that
allowed the pedals to move freely but without
wobbling. I then greased up all the moving joints and
assembled the whole package. Everything now operates
smoothly. The pedal pads were undamaged and only
slightly worn so I cleaned them with brake cleaner to
strip away the oxidized and discolored top layer of
rubber and they now look new. Once reinstalled, the
whole package looks as good as it operates.
Next step is to bleed the clutch, which works okay
but I want to flush out the old fluid, and brakes
which are now dead due to a damaged bleed screw on one
slave cylinder. That circuit will also get flushed
and bled after I service the brakes all around.
Okay, it wasn't such a 'little' weekend. Until I
wrote all this down I didn't realize how much progress
I really made! I now need to shoot some 'after'
picture to add to the archive.
Best regards and Happy Monday,
rick
'70 MGB - work in progress
'79 308GTB
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