The week between Christmas and New Years (company was closed down) produced a
lot of headway on projects and a setback or two.
Land Rover - The correct master brake cylinder showed up right after christmas,
and the Land Rover was back on the road the next day. Its amazing the
difference that power brakes make on a Land Rover.
MGB - Got it running, sorta...
Tuesday I took the BGT down to Greg Solow's Engine Room to get it tweeked to
pass SMOG. It has been down for several months while I mostly worked on other
projects. But while it was down it got new brake shoes/pads and rebuilt
calipers/ wheel cylinders (one of the cylinders was a smaller one for a
roadster), a new petrol tank (old one had a lead), valve job with hardened
seats, rebuilt & rebushed carbs, and converted to a single 12V battery.
Greg set the mixture, and the timing. While he was doing the timing, he noticed
that the mechanical advance wasn't. So the distributer came out and got
rebuilt. The car still idled poorly and he said it didn't have enough power.
After tweeking a little more with the the scope and listening to the engine he
concluded that a previous owner had put a cam into the car "Sounds like a lope
to me". So, he decided that the rockers should be set looser than the stock
.015" for the ramp of a hot cam. He pulled the valve cover & discovered that
the rocker arms them selves had been lightened considerably. Not having seen
other B's, I just assumed that all B rockers were that way. So he adjusted them
out, drove it a little, adjusted them out again drove it some more & came back
saying it feels like he picked up 40 HP. The idle smoothed out considerably,
and the HydroCarbon level went down about 50%.
With valves set loose, and with the distributer timing retarded and carbs
optimized, we were still about 50 over the limit for Hydro carbon so no new
tags... sigh.. It runs better than it had at anytime I had the car though, and
for the first time it idles smoothly. If they just tested it above idle, the HC
level goes down to 43 when not idling.
I put the knock-off MiniLite type wheels on my BGT last week. I took the
suggestion in the Moss flyer and got the 15 inch wheels and 60 series tyres.
The 195 60 15s I got fit nicely on the front and fit in the back as long as I
didn't take corners. I needed to cut away the inner flange of the rear to keep
the wheels from rubbing when the car is loaded with two people. It was rubbing
on the slightest bump. Now with two people, I get rubbing on hard corners only
and no rubbing with a single person in the car. Perhaps Moss should have
suggested a maximum tyre size or said that some cutting might be needed when
recommending the 15 inch mini-lite look alikes for the B.
TR3A - Most of my time was spent with the other two cars, but I did manage to
get all the tie rods mounted. Now the front wheels are finally connected. I
got a few misc parts added and finished recovering the instrument panel and the
cubby box lid. I have the instrument panel partially reassembled but need to
repaint the center instrument plate. I now need to figgure out where the cubby
box actually attaches to the panel. Bit by bit..
Take care,
TeriAnn
TeriAnn Wakeman One of these days, I'll be old enough that
twakeman@apple.com people will stop calling me crazy and start
LINK: TWAKEMAN calling me eccentric.
408-974-2344 TR3A - TS75519L, MGBGT - GHD4U149572G, 109 - 164000561
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