Season Round-up

Work ground to a halt rather back in September, when it became too dark and cold of an evening to go outside for fun.

However, I'm pleased with the summer's progress, even if most of the work was done on items that weren't originally on the list to be attended to!!

There are a good few loose ends to be tidied up as a result of the work so far and to some extent, these can be attended to during the winter. These include:

1. Fix / Replace steering column bracket after stud sheared off it
2. Refill oil system
3. Finish rebuilding Heater box
4. Decide what to do about small rust hole in the scuttle area
5. Tune carbs to basic settings so that engine will start
6. Work out how to re-fit the distributor so that the timing's close to being right
7. Refit the pedal box
8. Refit the hydraulic systems for clutch and brakes

The will mean that when the good weather and longer evenings start again I'll be in a position to tackle the wiring and rebuild the brake systems at the wheels.

Engine Back In And Some More Progress.

It's been a great weekend! I got home on Friday afternoon and set about getting the car ready to accept the engine. The first job was to fit the new clutch fork rubber gaiter, a job which is a lot more tricky than it appeared. In the end, the only way to do it was to take the fork out of the bell housing, remove the release bearing then swear the boot into place before fitting it all back together. The engine mounting parts also got a couple of coats of Hammerite satin.

With that done, I wheeled the engine out to the car and eventually got it to slide back onto the gearbox shaft. It took about an hour of jiggling but eventually it went back as it should and I could do some of the nuts and bolts up to hold it in place.

Next I fitted the engine mountings which had dried in the sun, using new nuts, bolts and washers all round.

On Saturday, I nipped over to the MGOC to buy a few miscellaneous parts, including a bonnet seal, more fixings, air and oil filters etc.

Today, I got on with fitting the carbs, manifolds, oil cooler, radiator, etc. You can see what's what in the pictures. I also partially assembled the pedal box with the rebuilt mastercylinders.

Finally, I stripped, prepped and painted the various brake / clutch lines that I'd taken off the car, along with the starter motor. The latter required a really good clean and repaint - it's a bit of an over-kill really because it will have a black plastic cover over it once I've re-fittted it to the car but at least I'll know it's as tidy as the rest of the bits I've refitted!

Here are the pictures:

Engine, Gearbox and Engine Bay Ready!

This is quite an exciting post to make tonight - Finally, the engine has its clutch and back plate in place, the gearbox bell housing is clean, with a new pivot arm bush and bolt, and the engine bay paint has had a week or so to harden.

I had put the engine back plate back on last week, with a new crank seal and new locking tabs all round. When it was dismantled I recovered the spigot bush but didn't realise its significance. Obviously this meant that when it came to reassembly I'd not bought a replacement and the old one was worn sufficiently to spin in the crankshaft.

After a quick chat with Steve, followed by a search on the MG Experience Forum I bought a replacement from the MGBHive and stuck it in a plastic bag, covered in engine oil, and put it in the freezer. It's odd, but I can't find any reference to fitting it in the Haynes Manual. It exists in a diagram, but no mention seems to be made to refitting it before putting the clutch assembly back together.

This evening I recovered it from the freezer and gently tapped it into place with a bit of wood, as recommended by the forum. It was actually just about small enough when frozen to rock into place but the wooden block got it in place in seconds. The whole area was then wiped clean with a alcohol-soaked cloth. The clutch plate also recieved the same treatment.

The clutch was soon in place after that and the clutch alignment tool that I bought about a year ago did its job. I Hope!

So that's the engine ready for refitting.

Last week, I also finished washing out the bell-housing and replaced the clutch arm pivot bolt and bush, as well as the graphite release bearing. Just as well actually because the old one was worn right down to the casing.

Alongside the spigot bush, I also bought two oil cooler straps, a rubber boot for where the clutch arm passes through the bellhousing, and the correct bolts for the water pump.

Here are some pictures - next step is to put the engine back into the car.

More Parts and Preparation

I nipped over to the MGOC in Swavesey today to pick up a few misc parts that I needed - mainly just fittings for the engine bay but also the two long bolts for the water pump and the clips to hold the heater box together.

The majority of today was spent working on another car (the Maestro) but I did get time to do the following:

• Spray the front cross-member and brake pipes with Hammerite Satin
• Degrease the bell-housing
• Replace the clutch slave cylinder hose
• Fit the water pump to the engine
• Degrease engine mounts and other misc items
• Remove the clutch arm and drift out the bush

Think that's it for now, but with the remaining bits now painted, attention can turn to rebuilding the clutch parts in the bell-housing (the new bush is in the freezer so that it'll hopefully drop right in) and also putting the flywheel / gearbox adaptor plate back on the engine along with the clutch.

Hopefully not long now until the engine goes back in!

I've also updated the balance sheet (see one of the first posts in 2010) - so far the project has cost £1868.

Engine Bay Painting Complete... And a few other bits.

I rubbed the engine bay down with 1200-grit wet and dry and got the final coats of paint on it today. The only bit of Teal Blue that's left to paint is a small patch on the bonnet landing panel where I'd filled a small dent but the finish wasn't perfect so I took it all off and did it again!

I also had time to put the final coats of paint on the engine (using a slightly less garish colour, actually I think it's gone too far the other way now but it goes with the blue so that's fine) and paint a few bits with black hammerite.

Finally, I turned my attention to the second-hand water pump which was perfectly servicable but not pretty enough to grace this car's engine bay now ;-)

Here are the pics:

First Two Coats of Teal Blue

Had quite a productive session on the MG yesterday. I flatted-back the primer and then got two coats of Teal Blue on the engine bay:







I also had some time to have a look at the heater box and prepare it for repainting. It was in pretty awful condition but after a bit of paint-stripping and attention to grind back the rust I think it's salvagable. The bottom part which contains the flap is slightly broken (the bracket that holds the cable to the flap is broken off) so this will need some attention before re-fitting.




So - I'll give the blue paint a few days to dry before flatting it back with 1200 wet and dry and applying the final coats. Meantime, the heater-box can be primed and painted.

More Priming and Preparing

I got some more work done on the engine bay this weekend.

I'd left it with only one coat of primer on it so I spent some time rubbing this down and sanding back a couple of small areas of filler that I'd used to perfect a couple of minor dents (the biggest of which was on the bonnet landing panel where it had obviously had something dropped on it).

Eventually I was pleased with the finish so washed down all surfaces and gave them a couple of hours to dry in the sun while I put up the Gazebo, which would hopefully afford the wet paint some protection from things falling on it.

It's now had three coats of primer on it, with a rub-down between each coat with gradually-increasing grades of Wet & Dry. Here's how it looks now, just one more rub-down with 800 Wet and Dry and one more coat of primer before it's ready for the top coat of Teal Blue.

First Priming Done

No photos I'm afraid but I wanted to report that the first layer of red-oxide primer has been applied to the engine bay. I bought a large bottle of Jenolite rust treatment and one of the application directions was that the surface had to be primed within 12 hours of Jenolite application.

I'd spent the majority of Friday morning grinding out the rust with my electric drill wire brush but a few areas remained, especially where the metal was covered in surface rust, such as the driver's side where the master cylinders had leaked and removed all the paint. I got the worst off, washed the entire engine bay down and treated the remaining rust with several coats of Jenolite, worked into the metal as directed.

While that was drying, I masked up the areas that disn't need to be painted, and checked that every surface was free from dust, water and oil contamination.

The primer went on without any problems and it's been left to dry out properly before I tackle it with the wet and dry.

More preparation work.

I spent this afternoon continuing the engine bay stripping - it's taking a long time to get it right but it's time well spent. More paint stripper took care of most of the rest of the paint (the original Teal Blue paint on the bonnet landing panel was actually pretty stubborn) and a drill-mounted wirebrush removed a lot of the remaining underseal and rust.

Hopefully by the end of tomorrow all the stripping will be finished and all the rust treated, ready for priming. There are a few little imperfections in the engine bay - dents and rivet holes mainly so I'll fill these before priming to give a perfect finish.

One other bit of good news is that I managed to remove one of the heater box retaining screws that sheared-off when I disassembled the engine bay back last summer. It was a tight as a badger's arse then but oddly, easy to unscrew with pliars today. Anyway, that'll make reassembly a lot easier.

Here's the engine bay as it looks now:

At last - Some More Progress!

I've taken this week off work to concentrate on the MG and so far it's going pretty well. Here's what I've done so far - I'll stick it in reverse order so that it is in the correct order if you're reading the block bottom-up:

Today:
My father visited today and there were two tasks to undertake: Painting the engine and stripping the horrid wrong-colour-blue from the engine bay.

First-off the engine got three coats of Gold-flake paint, 10 minutes apart as per the instructions. Easy enough although I think it'll need another one as it's still a bit patchy.

That didn't take too long which was just as well because it gave us time to nip over to the MGOC Shop in Swavesey to buy some cans of Teal Blue paint and a few other odds and ends, including some P-clips and a seal kit for the heater box.

This afternoon was spent stripping the paint from the engine bay. This sounds straight forward, and actually it pretty much was, the only complication was that the front bumper and valence needed to be removed to get the paint out from between then and also rust-proof the seam

Now that the valence is off, it'll also get re-sprayed and re-rusted as it doesn't make sense to put it back in its current state.

I also part-resolved a couple of problems that had come up in the strip-down: One of the retaining bolts for the heater box sheared off during dismantling and it appears that this is actually fairly loose and will hopefully wind all the way back through. Also, I managed to shear off a nut that was holding the main clutch line in place, actually a strong breeze would have sheared this off so there was no hope for it! This turned out to be attached to a captive bolt on part of the steering column and will need more investigation but it's not a lost cause.














Tuesday:

Having masked the relevant parts of the engine itself I then applied three coats of primer and allowed it to dry. Whist it was drying I nipped out to Ernest Doe and Sons to procure some paintstripper, gloves and red oxide primer.

The rest of the day was spent taking the remaining objects out of the engine bay and de-greasing. The heater box finally yielded without too much bother - the secret, it seems, is to stand in the engine bay, facing the heater box and simply yank it upwards and towards you. Once the control wire was undone this was removed from the engine bay.

Next to be unravelled was all the wiring. This was mostly uneventful, except a few wires pulled out of their bullet connectors on disassembly. I labelled all the relevant parts that weren't obvious but there are two or three wires that weren't connected or have become disconnected without me noticing! It should hopefully be fairly straight forward to sort it all out later on. Another conumdrum that I'll need to solve is what a particular relay does - it's obviously been added sometime and is attached with non-standard wiring but it appears that all the wires actually lead behind the dash so I'll work that one out another day.

The final job was to de-grease the entire engine bay, including the bell-housing which will need some more attention as it was caked with gunk.

Monday:

Spent the morning sorting out my tools and also preparing my Maestro Vanden Plas for its first MoT in 18 months. Also cleaned the MG's inlet manifold and dismantled the jets on my rebuilt carburettors - I didn't understand how they worked when I rebuilt them and hadn't completely dismantled them. It didn't take too long and was a job well done.

Finally, I spent some time preparing the engine for painting. The first thing to do was to take off the timing gear cover and let the tensioner off so that it can ratchet under oil pressure. Once that was done, I bent the lock tabs on the tensioner retaining bolts, installed the oil thrower and then bolted the cover into place. Finally I installed the pulley, lock ring and bolt. The rest of the time was spent killing the rust on the sump and timing gear cover, then degreasing and pressure-washing the whole engine.

More Engine Rebuilding.. It's nearly ready for painting!

After yesterday's progress I kept the momentum going today by pretty much finishing off the build. I cleaned all the fittings (nuts, bolts, studs etc.) in degreaser and then got on with fitting the new cylinderhead, the rocker assemblies, tappets and pushrods, thermosat housing engine front cover....

Everything was torqued and adjusted correctly and went together without any problems at all.

The only thing that gave any resistance at all was the old oil seal in the front engine cover but it was soon persuaded out and the new one tapped in without any trouble.

Here are the photos:

Engine Progress at Last!

Finally more progress has been made. I've been rather busy doing other things lately and the engine block has been sitting rather forlornly in the corner of the garage, waiting for me to pay it some attention!

The slight pause in proceedings did allow me to purchase a few outstanding parts, namely a complete set of duplex timing gear parts which are probably the only non-replaced parts on the engine by now (!). Oh, and a clutch pivot bolt and bush.

Anyway, today Steve came round and we set about re-assembling the engine. First off we cleaned the crank shaft: smoothed out the surfaces that sit in the bearingshells and blew air through all the oilways. This was fitted to the block with new shells and plenty of oil.

Next up were the new pistons with new rings - Steve showed me how to inspect the pistons for burrs and imperfections and also how to fit the rings: 5 per piston. Once the new shell was fitted into the end of the con-rod, with use of my new ring compressor, one by one the pistons were slid home into the cylinder block.

After a brief head-scratching session where we couldn't work out why the new timing gear wouldn't fit, we took it all back off again and fitted the front engine plate (ahem!) before lining the spots back up in the timing wheels and fitting them in place.

Finally, Cat and I re-fitted the oil pump and and sump so that the very bottom of the engine is now sealed and attention can be turned to the top. Hopefully we can spend the next few evenings refitting the studs, head, rocker assembly and all the other small parts that are currently occupying a cardboard box on te garage floor.

It's nice to be making progress again. Photos will follow soon, perhaps once we've cleaned the sump and re-sprayed it in GoldSeal Gold.

Got the block back today

I got a call from HRD today and nipped over there to pick up the stripped and machined block. It was mainly good news - the second hand pistons had been cleaned and a few little areas had been dressed so that they'll be good as new. That saved about £255 over the cost of new ones - Yay!

The Camshaft was given a clean bill of health - 'good as new' was the verdict.

The block itself had been re-faced and re-bored to +.040" and it's been through the parts washer, too.

The bad news was that the crank bearings were shot so I left the crank with them for polishing and they're also going to supply replacement bearings. Apparently the crank has been re-ground in the past and it's just a polish required and it'll be good as new.

Here are a few pictures of my engine, minus a few parts.

Rockers ready to go

After spending £432 on the car yesterday, today has thankfully been a bit less eventful. When Steve came round last weekend, I showed him the rocker assembly (the bit on top of the cylinderhead, for my American readers) and it was deemed to be reusable but required some re-finishing to the bottoms of the rockers themselves so that you can get an accurate setting with a feeler guage because it's actually resting on the surface between the rocker and valve, not on the ridges either side.

I set up shop on the dining room table again (the venue for rebuilding the carbs last Saturday) and sorted the problem out. Here are the before and after pics:



I forgot to take a proper 'before' photo but you can see the four on the right-hand side have visible wear marks on them.





The job nearly finished - each rocker is now smooth to the touch and they have very little in the way of visible wear. A couple may have a very slight mark on the surface but I think they're good enough.

Pictures of cracked head

Nipped over to HRD today to drop the block off with them, thankfully my replacement pistons were given a clean bill of health, and then from there onto Ivor Searle.

I picked up the new cylinderhead and starter ring, as well as a set of bolts to hold my engine on the engine stand.

Here are a couple of pictures of my cracked head - apparently a crack in this place is fairly rare. Lucky me!

The block should be ready within a week and although I've left the crank and camshaft in the engine, they're going to be removed and I'll get just the block back with the rest of the kit in a box, ready for reassembly.

While it's there, the block and associated parts are all going through the parts washer, which is something I don't have the ability to do.

Engine news: a bit of a set back.

I got a call from Ivor Searle yesterday - not good news. My polished and ported cylinderhead is unfortunately cracked and therefore now a polished and ported door-stop. This is a bit of a shame. Apparently the crack is not in the usual place for these heads but somewhere between the valves. To tell you the truth I was so annoyed when I was being told that I didn't catch exactly where it was.

Anyway, the net result of this is that I've decided to go for a brand new (not remachined) cylinderhead from Ivor Searle which I'll pick up along with the flywheel with new starter ring fitted.

The story continues a bit with the engine block - it's off to HRD in Witchford tomorrow for a rebore. I was quoted £250 for a set of replacement pistons which I thought a little steep so I've found a second-hand set from a low mileage engine which will hopefully foot the bill.

Speaking of bills, hopefully this won't set me back too much but it'll be at least as much as the cost of the car in the first place. Oh well, it'll be worth it when it's done!

Dismantling the Block

My partner's father came round today to have a look at the MGB's block and assess the general conditon of things.

There's both good news and bad news: the bottom end if the engine is in pretty good condition but the bores are more worn than I originally appreciated.

We decided to leave the crank shaft installed as the bearings were in good conditon with no movement and very little end-float. The camshaft was also in serviceable condition and remained in situ, but we removed the pistons to get a good look at the bores. You can see in the photograph below, taken upwards through the engine, the silver edge of the ridge that the pistons have made in the bore. Steve thought that this might result in the engine being smokey so it was decided that we'd get something done.

I'm going to get the block cleaned and re-bored and also then get hold of a set of over-size pistons and rings. This is probably another trip to Ivor Searle, although there's also a place in Witchford that I'm going to check out.

In a way it's a shame to have to spend more cash, but at the end of it the engine will be about three quaters reconditioned so with any luck I won't need to do anything to it for a good long time.

Carburettor Overhaul

I spent a few happy hours today overhauling the two SU HS4 carbs today. It was a cold rainy day so rather than spend the day in the garage, I took them indoors and sat at the diningroom table.

It wasn't a difficult job, the only tricky bit was getting one of the linkage springs back in to position but I have a pair of spare carbs that came with the car so I could use them to see how everything went back together.

I had previously bought a pair of overhaul kits from SU which contained all the seals and gaskets that I'd need and also instructions on what goes where.

Here are the pics of today's work...




The carbs as they came off the car





A handy shot of how the linkages fit, and an idea of the filth!





The first one dismantled and cleaned prior to rebuilding





One done, one to go!





A nice pair.





Looking a lot cleaner.