[Spridgets] Weekend progress

David Ambrose stargazer1 at cox.net
Sun Aug 23 16:35:08 MDT 2009


Just got finished with some work on my son's Midget. Some routine, some 
not so routine.

Oil change was routine. The PCV valve installation was not. All went 
well until we discovered the distributor had come loose. Retimed the 
engine, then started syncing the carbs. All of a sudden, we had oil 
going everywhere. Seems that we didn't have the requisite vented filler 
cap. The PCV valve happily sucked up a bunch of engine oil and dumped it 
into the intake manifold. What a mess. Replaced the filler cap with the 
correct one. and restarted. We're now getting oil leaking on the left 
side of the engine. We called it quits for the night.

We were originally thinking that we had a leak at the side plate covers. 
It was a nice theory except that this engine doesn't have them. Are all 
1275s like that? This morning, we pulled the carburetters, and the 
manifolds. We cleaned up all the oil.

Found the leak -- at the valve cover gasket, replaced the gasket with 
in-house spare. The seals around the valve cover nuts are toast. One is 
completely unusable. I jerry rig a temporary from a couple of rubber 
washers. Car started right up. No more leaking oil.

After a bit of tweaking, it's running like a little champ. He is SO 
happy. We had a nice ride down to the gas station. He's gonna be stylin' 
all the way to school now. :-)

I scare myself sometimes. We had almost all the requisite parts in our 
spares.

It feels like we need to top up the shock absorbers. Any suggestions as 
to which oil to use? I usually put 30 wt motorcycle fork oil in my MGB 
shocks.

Cheers,
Dave Ambrose


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