My Old MGB -- 1974 Convertible

Quick Update

2008-05-21T08:33:00.002-05:00

This is the "Readers Digest" version of what has happened over the past year:

Former wife filed divorce paperwork May 9th, 2007 . . . after all the BS it was finalized February 20th, 2008. Started going out and God brought someone (Peggy) new into my life, and ironically the first serious date occurred the very day the judge signed the paperwork. I proposed May 5th, 23 years to the day I was confirmed in my religion . . . a great testimony to faith. I've worked hard on being a dad and backing my words up with actions. After going through the year of seperation/divorce/etc... I've got my friends back, my self back, and I'm much deeper in my faith in God. Peggy and I are fantastic together and we have done a lot more projects and things together than my former wife and I ever did. Who knew that painting a room, cleaning a garage, or making dinner together could be so much fun?

On the cars . . . the MGB has been sitting forlorn in the garage . . . another victim of "do I dare do anything lest it come up in the divorce." The Dakota project finally got done and was on the road a number of months before the headgasket really did let go. It never got hot, but I have one steam cleaned #2 spark plug. No water/oil mixed so it's gotta be a minor breech of the gasket . . . and I had just moved it into the garage to fix it when some more funny things happened. I drove the truck in and started working on it, but between my fiance, work, church, etc... it's a little hectic at times.

I noticed one day that I had some fur in the front seat of the truck and figured that the cat must have been bored with the MGB seats and wanted the posh fabric of the Dakota. No problem . . . I'll roll up the window. Well, I also noticed that my cat was leaving "little suprises" around the litter box. I thought maybe he was having issues. I seen the cat at the neighbors house hanging out and it turns out he was sick . . . I ended up putting him down. It was sad because he's been my shop cat for a long time and provided me some comfort when I came home to an empty house. I was leaving to go some place one day and happened to catch a glance of something moving in the truck . . . I went to the driver side and opened the door and the smell of cat whee nearly knocked me out. Apparently the neighbors cat had gotten in the garage and had been hanging out in there. That would explain the rapid food consumption, and the new surprises I found. He was in the truck for 3 weeks, but he was still alive! The neighbors say he was missing for 4 weeks, so I suspect he was hanging out in the garage for a while before I rolled up that window on the truck. It made a lot more sense why the neighbor's other two cats were outside crying at 4 AM in the morning when I had Bucky (shop cat) put to sleep!

So . . . what do you do with a urine soaked truck? Well, you yank the seats and carpet and see what you can do . . . which wasn't easy. I cut the driver side carpet out just to get the worst of smell out. Then my son yanked the bolts for the seat, so we took it out and then the rest of the carpet. I didn't anticipate that little wrinkle in the truck repair project, but with the interior out, I can possibly change to bucket seats and get it looking a little better. My sister did the same thing to her Dakota and Dodge Shadow/Sundance seats bolt right in with one minor bracket bend. It's half off weekend at the junk yard this weekend, so I'll see what they have available and go from there. I think the seat might just have some minor urine issues, and I've read on how to wash the seats at car wash, so I might give that a go also.

Well, that's about it in a nutshell. Former wife is gone, kids are good, cat is at the Rainbow Bridge, and the soon to be new wife is fantastic. Hmm . . .life is good. The MGB project is on back burner, but the best part is looking forward to having someone who is willing to help and be right by my side as we do the project together. That's an awesome feeling.

Fuel Pump Hell

2007-08-01T09:39:00.001-05:00

A picture is sometimes worth a 1000 words . . . unfortunately the only thing missing here is the number of fuel pumps I've went through. So far I've had two Airtek ones from O'Reilly's . . . and then two from Autozone, both in Master boxes, one with a Carter pump and the other was another Airtek just like the O'Reilly's one. ARGH!! I've cleaned the tank out and drained it AGAIN. This is beginning to get old . . . so we'll see how this latest one goes. It completely comes down to fuel pump issues . . . I've been through the wiring and everything and it's not that. I put a jumperbox on the leads, it doesn't whirr. Ugh.

Tonight I'll put new gas back in and see how it works. I'm getting pretty buff bench pressing that truck bed out of the way. :-)

Project Dakota Almost Done

2007-05-09T23:49:00.000-05:00

Wow . . . for a MGB site you've probably seen quite the gambit on things I've worked on . . . from boat air conditioning systems, to wave runners . . . to an old Buick . . . and now a truck??? Yea, this is the truck (1991 Dodge Dakota with 2.5L and 5 speed tranny) that I bought to be the engine donor for my little Morris Minor project. Unfortunately I never had time to get the Morris going and ended up selling it. Now I've gotten myself down to only three vehicles (?!) and I think I can squeeze some time in to get this one up and going. So what do I have to do to it?
Oh, well . . . there is one little issue with it not starting. I poked and probed, and tracked down various things until I eventually narrowed my problem down to the electric fuel pump. (Oh what fun that is to change . . .) I've got new brakes for the front, from rotors to calipers and pads . . . it'll all be fresh and ready to roll, or stop I should say. I've put new headlights in it and once it's roadworthy, I'll start looking at the beauty aspects of the truck. I'd love to get some different wheels or something to set it apart . . . but other things get priority. The main reason I'm working on the truck is so I'm not dependent on others to haul things . . . I've been in that scenario too many times over the past 15++ years . . . so I'd like to get to a point I could just do something whenever I wanted to. We'll soon find out on that.

Ye Gads!

2007-04-30T11:32:00.000-05:00

It's hard to believe it's almost May . . . well, one day to go. The Buick was sold over the weekend going to a new home in St. Joseph, Missouri. That just leaves the 1991 Dodge Dakota and my 1974 MGB Convertible in the project stable . . . I've waffled on fixing the Dakota, but there are some times I realize that I really need a truck when I need it. With the Buick gone, it's time to get the Dakota road-worthy and then onto the MGB. I did finally do something worthwhile on the MGB . . . I dug the old wire-wheel hubcaps out of the trunk and hit them with my favorite Turtlewax Chrome Polish . . . that stuff is fantastic. I was using the paste version many years back on my old 1971 Honda CB450 bike and it worked wonders. I was able to cleanup the first wheel cover and it encouraged me enough to consider working on all four to get them cleaned up. The wire baskets are in horrible shape, so I'll have them sandblasted and powder coated -- then with the chrome polished up, I think they'll look sharp . . .and cheap for now at least. :-) Cheap is good.

Another month rolling by . . .

2007-01-19T09:04:00.000-06:00

Today we close on house #2, but something that I didn't allude to in my posts was the fact that house #2 will be a "time/space" place for the wife to get away from me for a while. I'll continue on at our current house working on fixing it up and getting ready for sale this spring, which means I can't have a car in too much disarray at any point in time, because I don't want to have it scattered when we sell the house. In a perfect world, maybe things will work out and we'll still be together. I don't know the definitive on what will or won't happen, I just take things one day at a time. I have done a few things here and there on the MGB.

I finally got the clutch master cylinder apart . . . nearly blew out a windshield doing that little trick. I used compressed air and it rocketed out and missed the Buick and MGB, and hit (and dented) a metal sawhorse in the garage. Luckily nobody or nothing was harmed in the fiasco. I'll rebuild those components and put them back on the car. The Buick got a new fuel pump and runs really good now -- well up past 90 mph from a little "blow out the cobwebs" pass a couple of weeks ago. Now I just need to get it a little prettier looking and sold. Then the Dakota comes in to get a new head gasket and other things fixed on it. I can really use a truck around the house at times and since we got rid of the minivan, I don't want my car to become a 'truckster'. Since I have so little in the Dakota, anything I put into it right now will still be a pretty good return on investment since a truck is always worth something to somebody.

I guess I am making some progress . . . not as much as I would like, but between weather and marriage issues . . . it's a trainwreck around here sometimes. I'm looking forward to sometime when everything is stabilized and when everything shakes out to where it needs to be.

Slight Change In Plans . . .

2006-12-19T08:50:00.000-06:00

Remember the 1903 house? Scratch that . . . we found one in the country on almost 2 acres of land. No garage, but that's the fun of building your own garage how you want it.

New house?

2006-12-12T14:13:00.000-06:00

Here's a house we're looking at buying -- built in 1903:

Great old house eh?

Love the garage.

Ton's of space here!

Practical MGB?

2006-12-12T13:50:00.000-06:00

Wow -- a practical four door MGB? Honey . . . do you want one of these? LOL -- no, probably not. Yike.

December . . . still no love for the MGB

2006-12-04T11:26:00.000-06:00

I know these posts are getting a little pointless . . . another month has rolled in and I'm still not doing anything on the MGB. I don't expect to either for a while . . . it's the holiday season and there is a lot of other stuff on the front burner to deal with right now. At least I can look forward to putting a few things on the old Christmas list for Santa to drop in my stocking for the big day. I'm still not rid of the Buick yet . . . I think my wife thinks I'll have that car forever. I'm working on getting it gone, but nobody seems to want an old four door Buick -- My Old Buick at least. If it wouldn't take so much time, I'd yank the engine out and sell the car for hardly nothing and keep the engine/tranny for the MGB . . . it would be a pretty good bolt in for it. Unfortunately, time ia precious commodity and if I was going to do that much work, I'd rather stick something like a little V6 in it and have just as much horsepower and a more modern powerplant. In the meantime, I'm still plotting and planning on what I'm going to do to the little booger . . . I just need the time to work on it.

2006-11-22T11:13:00.000-06:00

November now? YIKE!

2006-11-01T13:45:00.000-06:00

The days continue to fly by . . . and here I'm now writing about October slipping through my fingers. Ugh. It's not like I'm not doing anything, it's just not a lot on car stuff. We bought a triple axle trailer for our cabin cruiser and brought it back for winter. We're going to redo some stuff on the thing this winter so it was very handy to take it home to work on it. A trailer for that size boat isn't cheap. I'm hoping to get rid of my old Buick next so I can get money to do the repairs and get things going for the MGB. I have a feeling that November and December will just be a blur also, and I will be writing seriously about things come January. Maybe not . .. who knows. I got the latest version of the "How to Give Your MGB V8 Power" book from the library. I had been on the waiting list for it for quite some time. It has lots of good info . . . I would probably consider doing a V6 of anything, just because of the power to weight ratio and cost factor. I've got the perfect engine sitting in the Buick, but the car is too nice to part out just for the engine. *Sigh* Decisions. I've gotta get the car on the road before I get too worked up over anything else on it.

Project Limbo

2006-10-05T20:50:00.000-05:00

The past month of September was just a rush for me . . . so many things happening. I was installed as Worshipful Master of McDonald Lodge #324 in Independence, Missouri. A lot of time was spent getting ready for that, plus in the middle of that happening, I've had various personal issues that have cropped up. Actually they've been problems over the past few years, but I didn't know how bad things really were. I might have a chance to work on car stuff quite a bit more . . . as a little side affect from this issue. It's not like I want to spend an horrendous length of time on my car projects, but it might be good to take my mind off of other things going on.

My brakes work on the Buick . . . FINALLY! I've even taken the car on a little trip around the block to see how everything works -- so far so good. I'm pretty impressed with myself . . . there was a lot of guess work and fabrication with this system, so after multiple attempts and many issues, to have it work is a great feeling. The current plan is to fix the rust issues in the rear quarter and sand/prime the car. Tonight I bought a stripping disc from 3M to attack the rust a bit more aggressively. The inline sander and orbital sander that I have were taking forever and they're air driven and I'm lacking a bit on a decent air supply. I bout the 3M stripper for heavy rust and paint removal. I think my arms will be about 3 sizes bigger after this . . . and I don't know how many drills I'll end up going through. I might have to find a better solution to my car stripping. The bonus here is I should have plenty of practice when it comes time to roll the MG in it's place. The Buick needs to sell for at least what I have in it to give me money to work on the MG.

So, that sums up the month of September . . . and rolls me right into October. I turned 36 on October 2nd. I had a funny thought when I was watching an old Friends episode -- the one where everyone turns 30 years old. The funny part was Ross with his little red MGB . . . which looks like mine . . . but mine's a chrome bumper one. The bald fat guy that rolls up and says "aren't we cool" is halarious. I don't want to be that guy.

Buick brakes all most done

2006-08-30T13:15:00.000-05:00

Ok, first it was the waverunner and now Buick stuff. I'm fabricating stuff for the Buick since you just can't go call up a place and have new parts delivered to your doorstep. The 1961-63 Buick Specials (and other BOP cars) were the red-headed step children of the GM family. The only good thing that I suppose came from everything was the 215 V8 that went onto become the 3.5L Range Rover motors, that even eventually wound up in the MG's. Talk about coming full circle?

I've got the brake lines up and going. I'm adapting a Ford Granada dual master cylinder to my early brake setup. The hardest part so far has been adapting the pedal rod. I've had three attempts at this before settling on something that I think will work. That's the hard part of working on something -- figuring out what will work. We'll see how all this goes together tonight, hopefully getting brakes back on it. I'm hoping that with brakes and some cosmetic things, this will make the car easier to sell. I don't know if it will or not, but we'll see. At the very least, it's giving me a lot of practice on welding and fabrication work. I can cut in some new pieces on the rear quarter of the Buick to give me some more welding skills on the MGB frame.

Doc report

2006-08-26T23:22:00.000-05:00

Ok . . . so I broke down and went to a doctor for my back. He confirmed the obvious . . . I'm not a teenager anymore. Boy, that was a shocker. He said I probably pulled a muscle and affected a nerve. That would explain the shooting pain that feels like someone has driven a railroad spike from my back to my front . . . and out my ribs. He said he did something similar putting a door up . . . suprise, he's got the mind of a 25 year old, but not the body of one (He's in his late 40's?). I was sitting there thinking . . . 25? That was SOOO ten years ago. Yike! I am old. My first time that I was slapped with reality was when I went to the amusement park. I was moseying along and these two cute girls came up and asked "Sir -- do you know what time it is?" Oh, the horror . . . and that happened about TEN years ago. I've completely bypassed the cool era. I'm just about into the mid-life crisis time frame. Sad but true. (At right . . . my FOUR year old daughter . . . already driving.)

So, there I've blown my HIPPA privacy crap all to heck . . . he put me on two Alleve in the morning and two at night. He said to take it easy for SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS! That's just not possible . . . I mean I have a car to work on. *Sigh*

So this weekend is supposed to be all rainy and crappy. Friday night it was pretty noisy from the thunder and rain. I imagine we got about 2 inches or so of rain. I decided it was time to get the Buick in the dry if I was going to work on it. I did some shuffling and low and behold -- I got both cars in the garage. I just gotta remember, if I'm going to have cars, they can't be much heavier than the MGB . . . the Morris Minor was light enough to slide the rear end by hand. (We literally lifted it up on the ramps when it left to straighten it.) Here's a pic of the "fleet" in the garage. The only left in the driveway is the daily drivers, and the Dakota. Maybe I need to get the Dakota done first . . . so far there's been few takers on the Buick. I just saw a two door Skylark that went for $2300 . . . with some scallops and about 42,000 miles. Figures . . . two extra doors and it's not worth $1600? My car is in a lot better shape than that.

(More pics online via new Google Album)

Yea . . . the license plate says it all. You've gotta have a good woman to put up with all the crap I put her thru. This car is her car, even if she doesn't think so. Where we'll stick the kids . . . I don't know. Of course, in another 4-6 years my son will be beyond "riding with the parents". The daughter will have a few more years before that, but someday she'll get to that age too. By then I'll be . . . . let me think . . . REALLY FREAKIN' OLD. Ugh. Oh well, I'm going to have fun till they slide me in the ground. Like the saying goes, I want to slide sideways into the grave at the end going "Wow -- what a ride", used up and smokin'. I think I've got that "used up" part done on the ol' back already. :)

Slowly but surely

2006-08-23T08:01:00.000-05:00

Ok -- so I'm going to need money to get the MGB on the road and my old Buick (clever -- no?) is going to need to be out the door one of these days. I had started on the brakes on the old girl last year, but got sidetracked along the way . . . 100+ degree days with 1000% humidity will do that to you. When it was all said and done, it was just easier to roll it out of the way rather than spend time working on it. This spring/summer was the waverunner and boat stuff . . . so now I'm finally able to get some time to work on the car. I had one side back together and the other apart, so getting everything together and remembering how it went was a bit of a stretch. Luckily I had bought a 1961 Buick Special Deluxe shop manual and could reference it for the brakes. While working I found an interesting bit . . . the brake shoe snafu of the primary one being the short one, not the long one like you'd think. The primary shoe is the one on the front of the wheel and for some reason, it's the short one. I knew I had the passenger side wrong . . . afterall, I didn't read the manual and didn't take pics of how it came apart.

Let me tell you, my memory hadn't faded on how much of a pain the little springs are on those PITA things. The springs to hold the shoes on can be really fun. Here I'm using the tool for the springs to go chasing after the one retainer spring that has tried to fly the coup by bouncing off my head and then rolling to the middle of the car. (Tip: Always wear safety goggles for anything that could have objects hurtling at high speeds towards your eyeballs . . . there's enough ways to go blind without something silly like a spring sticking out of them.)

So after some extreme cursing fits, some creative tool usage, and my more than my fair share of cuts/bruises . . . I ended up getting the brakes back together on both sides . . . on just the front. I still have to do the rear. Ugh. After this much practice, maybe the back drums will be a lot easier. Yea right . . . I'm having some landing lights installed to guide the flying primates forming a squadron out of my a**.

Oww . . . oww . . . . oh the pain . . .

2006-08-20T22:21:00.000-05:00

Remember the distraction of the waverunner? When I put the seat back on it after blowing the last piston I really wrenched my back. This week I thought maybe it was getting better this week. I had an installation (Blue Springs Masonic Lodge) to go to this weekend, so the wife went down to the lake and I stayed here to work on cars and go to that. I worked Friday and Saturday on my old Buick . . . finishing the brakes from long ago. I realized while doing the brakes that the primary shoe (on drum brakes on this GM car) is not the big shoe, it's actually the smaller shoe. I did the drivers side and then went back and re-did the passenger side, since I knew I had put those on backwards. I also tried to get the shock mount fixed with a cool little fix-it kit. The shock mount took several hours of fits of rage . . . so I gave up and decided to bleed the brakes. The rear passenger side bleeder worked fine, but the driver side rear stripped. DOH! After that fiasco (still not done) I decided to work in the garage.

I was up and down, back and forth while working on the car, and was getting sore. I found I was even more sore while lifting up some new cabinets on the wall. I was really having a bad day as the plastic anchors for the cabinets were not working right. I went to bed and decided I'd hit in the morning. The next day I got the cabinet up, and was doing the second one and had a searing pain in my back. It literally knocked the wind out of me. I gingerly laid in a chair for a while, then I came up and watched "The Worlds Fastest Indian" on the big screen. (I first saw it on my tiny 7 inch one on the boat . . . not the same effect.) My stupid waverunner experience has now led to another week of agony as my back is very sore. I don't know what's wrong exactly with it, but it feels like some spasms and other problems going on. I causes pain all the way around to my chest and ribcage, so it's gonna be something big I suppose. Figures. I've got stuff scattered around the garage, a car in the driveway with no brakes . . .and the yard needs mowed and recycle stuff needs taken out. *Sigh* Freakin' waverunner.

Fruits of my labor

2006-08-18T07:14:00.000-05:00

Ok -- it's not very much to look at it . . . and it's not even shiny (I used Krylon Flat Black), but it's painted and ready to go back on the car. The old gasket that goes on the thing was very krusty and non-existent . . . which probably just provided a nice waterfall effect into the drivers floorboard and lead to it's subsequent demise. The pedals come up into this box (the covered area) and without proper sealing I'm sure things can be ugly.

The next victim . . . err . . . subject, in my remake is going to be the master cylinders that go into this contraption. The brake master cylinder seems to be in good condition, even pumping fluid by hand. I have a rebuild kit already here -- supplied in my box of goodies from the PO. The clutch and it's slave seem to be another story, and I'm afraid it might be kind of ugly whether it can come apart to be worked on. The clutch master cylinder seems to be rusted and stuck in the bore. I've applied a variety of penetrating lubricants and I've polished out surface rust, but as of yet it still hasn't budged. I'm probably going to get some stuff together and see if I can't extract a little more pressure in the form of some hydraulic persuasion to see if that will get it moving. One suggestion has been to rig up some line to a grease gun and use it to push the thing out. Another suggestion was air pressure, but from other comments, it sounds like the air pressure route might make the piston into a mini-torpedo when it does break free. Not my idea of something I'm wanting to dodge. We'll see what happens with the grease gun idea.

Fantasy . . . dreaming about something four wheeled

2006-08-16T16:24:00.000-05:00

I like this photo -- lifted from a 2003 pic from a Texas MGB website . . . GIMP'ed (free Photoshop) by me. I like the lines and flow of the early MGB's. The stick-on stuff to meet U.S. laws became more and more ludicrous, culminating in the rubber bumper version to meet bumper safety laws and such. (Not to knock those cars!!!) I would like to peel back the car a bit and give it some more flair like the earlier coupes had. I don't know that I'll go for wire wheels, but giving the car some of my own touches will make it my own. Yea, the purists might thumb their nose at it and pick apart the flaws, but I'm not driving it to take it to a Barrett-Jackson auction. I'm driving it because it's a cool old car. It's not a numbers matching barn-yard find or a coddled and pampered show queen. Nothing wrong with either . . . but if they're just to become another cog in a balance sheet for someone else, it's not quite my cup of tea. So to speak.

Oooo -- I'm painting stuff . . . don't worry, I'm not inhaling

2006-08-15T22:34:00.000-05:00

I'm off to build the brakes back first. I was going to toss everything together but then I sat back and thought . . . when am I going to have time to take it back apart and make it pretty? So, I'm very carefully taking my time here and making things a bit prettier while proceeding. Last night I sanded the pedals down and primed/painted them. Tonight I did the same to the pedal box and cover. The pedal box and cover were pretty filthy. I took a wire wheel in the drill and sandpaper and attacked things as best I could. I even knocked the 33+ year old welding spatter off the pedal box. The pedals have turned out pretty nice. I'll soon have the rest painted also, I'm using flat black . . . it shows less flaws that way.

I can't wait to start getting things back together for the brakes . . . I'm anxious to see how much work they'll need to make them operational. If I can get the clutch and brakes together, I could even take a little victory drive in and out the garage under it's own power . . . . as long as I keep my feet up out of the floorboard. Maybe I'll wait on that.

The welder is just sitting patiently in the corner . . . I want to weld on something SOOO bad . . . . I bought some new welding clamps the other day also. They were some $3.99 cheapies from Big Lots . . . Made In China stamped all over them. If I was building cars for a living, I'd give the nod to some quality American made versions. Instead, I'll circulate a few dollars in my local economy at least.

My last bit of progress was another concession in the interest of "cheap" . . . . it was a PDF of the factory manual that I printed . . . all 416 pages worth. It barely fits in the 3-ring binder I had on the shelf. This will be a great addition to working on the car . . . . but once I have some more money coming in, I will eventually buy a bound copy also. Laser printers are very handy.

Interruption written off . . . back to cars

2006-08-15T22:24:00.000-05:00

Ok, so like I said before, I've been playing wave runner mechanic all summer and I can say with a fair bit of certainty that I'm not real great at it. It's not for a lack of trying . . . I did everything but stand on my head a whistle Dixie out my a** to try to get this thing to run right. I got about an hour and a half of good running from it on Saturday night . . . and then poof . . . nothing more on Sunday. I checked compression and sure enough, cylinder 1 (magneto side) was as holy as swiss cheese. This lead to the interesting jux position on owners that I'm dealing with. The wave runner was something that someone just flat mislead another on . . . versus the MGB which was, just what I got. It wasn't sugar coated or made to be any more than what it was. You can see in the pic, the time the MGB's previous owner took to bag and label parts . . . very handy to put things back together. The other pic shows what the wave runner's previous owner did to just get the thing patched back together long enough for sale. Sad.

Minor interruption in progress . . .

2006-08-10T08:03:00.000-05:00

ARGH! I've done nothing but play wave runner mechanic all summer it seems like. We bought a 1994 Polaris "Fix or Repair Daily" 750 SLT. I spent about a month stripping the old decals and ugliness from it and redoing it . . . then I went onto mechanical repairs . . . and I'm STILL doing that. My latest misadventure has been figuring out the lack of fuel problem that previously toasted one of the pistons in the beast. Here (at right) I've made a setup to check the pop-off pressure on the carbs. Since a waverunner operates in a variety of positions, having a regular float type carb would be nearly impossible. Instead it uses a diaphram and spring type arrangement to keep fuel in check. The main part of this is a spring that keeps tension on a needle to keep the fuel from flooding the engine. As the vacuum changes on the engine it allows fuel to come in more freely. I was hoping I'd hit a revelation on why one cylinder seems lean, but alas . . . I'm still scratching my head. I dismantled all the carbs last night and cleaned them up and reassembled them. Tonight I'll put them back in the waverunner . . . a 1/4 turn at a time with nuts that you can't hand tighten. Ugh. This weekend it goes back for more testing on the water . . . hopefully to a good prognosis. Otherwise -- anyone have a match?

Tech Tip: Keeping a record

2006-08-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

Ok, this is my first little handy tech tip -- and this might sound painfully obvious. Keep a record and build your own manual of stuff about your car. I've printed stuff from the Internet, copied wiring diagrams from manuals, and had various resources on a variety of cars through the years. Bookmarking a web site is great, until 3 years later you realize that the page is no longer there, a victim of someone changing ISP's or some other cruel web problem. That printed copy will prove even more valuable when your in the middle of BFE with no computer or Internet connection in sight.

My book already contains a color coded wiring diagram and other helpful tidbits that I've gleaned from the vast amount of great MGB web sites out there. A 3-ring binder and hole punch and your ready to roll. If you want to make sure your stuff remains pristine for years to come, some vinyl sheet protectors are a worthwhile investment too.

Go for main engine start . . . Houston we have liftoff!

2006-08-02T20:00:00.000-05:00

Ok, I'm worse than a little kid. I got burned pretty bad this spring on a "running" waverunner. I spent a month+ on making it pretty and then got it to the lake and it wouldn't run. I didn't want to have that fiasco again, so I had to do it . . . I had to start the beast up. Guess what? IT RUNS!!!! It's a little pathetic sounding, but it's not adjusted in right and needs some TLC on the carbs, but it runs! I'm so happy. I've got great oil pressure, all the right sounds and no leaks. I had to get out and do the little "I started you up" jig in the driveway . . . my son (Justin) wanted to crawl under a rock. He was hoping no neighbors saw that little show. Heheh! He's not had the elation of something that looks like it should be shoved over into the crusher and have it breathing and firing under it's own power. That's a fun feeling. Now if only the brakes and clutch were done . . . I could at least putter back and forth in the driveway like I did with the Morris Minor. (It was missing the brakes also . . . funny how that happens!)

UPDATE: Now with SOUND! Enjoy! WAV

Ok -- so there's a little rust . . .

2006-08-01T11:41:00.000-05:00

Driver's side:

Passenger Side:

But some areas aren't bad at all . . . .

Front:

And the trunk looks great -- rust free!

Trunk:

New sticker added 10 horspower!

2006-07-30T22:03:00.000-05:00

Ok . . . maybe not . . . but I've wanted to have a pic with a car worthy of GRM for a while. This one I think will keep me happy. At $600 purchase price, I could also squeak it into the $200x challenge at some point. I wonder how a stock motor with a shot of . . . . or maybe . . . . DOH! KISS

Anyway, just had to have a little fun with pics . . . if your wondering why they're all from the passenger side . . . it's because the driver side would leave me sitting on the floor. Hehehe.

Today I got the steering fixed. It turns out the shaft running to the front steering joint was missing from the column. It was in a 5-gallon bucket-o-parts that I had in the trunk and labeled to boot! (A little English humor . . . trunk/boot . . . never mind!) The only problem came with trying to get the shaft in there with no other able bodied assistants. I ended up taking the u-joint and wrapping a towel under it to support it in the engine compartment. I could then slide the assembly in and fiddle with it enough to get it to go together. I also had one other minor snafu with the infamous plastic rings that go into the collapsing part of the steering shaft. I couldn't get the shaft to go in all the way until I got the plastic out of the way. For future reference, if I need to replace the bottom bearing, there's a guy that has a plastic bushing that should be an excellent replacement. I also found a spot for keys to be made, I'm missing the door and glovebox keys.