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.