getting there...

Now that the holidays are nearly over I have had some time to blog about some of the work I have completed. I have the carbs nearly done. Somewhere in the process I lost the connecting rod that goes between the two carbs. Bruce is buying that for me along with some other bits and do-dads. Yeah! Thanks Dad. I have the gas tank re-installed. Here is a pic of the tank in the living room next to the Christmas tree. Yeah, I have a great wife.

I started some other work as well, draining the oil and finding upon refill that the valve cover gasket leaks like crazy; repairs the cooling system are going to involve a new branch pipe as well as hoses.

In leu of the leaking valve cover gasket, I have decided to change out as many gaskets as I can without tearing down the entire engine. So the tappet cover, water pump and everything around it, valve cover, and head cover plate,  are all getting new gaskets. As you might expect parts are on order. That seems to be a recurring theme.

I also checked compression and found all the cylinders have great compression!

The next step is getting the carbs on and the fuel pump mounted, getting the linkage to the carbs working well, and then tearing into the cooling system. I'm feeling really good about the kind of progress I'm making and unless I have a wicked setback we should be turning this baby over by spring as planned. Fingers crossed.

Wahooooo!

I've been waiting what seems like forever for my latest parts order to come in. So in the meantime I have been looking for stuff to do on the car without getting too far ahead of myself. I decided to see if the vacuum pots for the carbs would polish up. I took some metal polish and some 000 steel wool and went to town. They came out nice and still look original.


I also pulled the spark plugs, shot a little PB Blaster in each cylinder, removed the big steel tow bumper and gently cranked the engine with the manual crank. It turned freely! I am super excited that the engine is not seized, that means that there may not be a need to rebuild the engine. I am still planning to check the compression in each cylinder later.

Some other good news; I found a treasure trove of info on the internet this past week.
This link is to a very thorough restoration with tons of pictures
 http://www.dbraun99.com/mgtd15470/MG%20TD%2015470%20Restoration.html

And this link is to a bunch of videos on youtube dealing with MG stuff
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Universitymotorsltd#p/u/57/7GRAcqDySog

Very cool. Also, my parts will be arriving on Monday so I should be able to get the fuel system back together.

Making a little progress

Today I finally got to work on the MG. Over Thanksgiving break I decided to play outdoors climbing and mountain biking and give the MG a rest. This week I have been missing it; so today I wanted to get some stuff done.

I took a wire wheel to the rusty bits on the back of the gas tank and where the tank meets the body then treated it with some Eastwood rust converter and rust encapsulator. I didn't take pictures because it's an ugly fix and really temporary just to stop any active rust. Remember, this is just a revival of the MG not a restoration. Restoration will come much later.

I also took the carbs off, cleaned up the outside, then took one carb apart completely and it is now soaking in carb cleaner. The book I bought on SU carbs and pumps was a great help. I'm leaving one carb intact just in case I have a really hard time putting the other back together. I must confess that carburetors were one part of an engine that I just didn't "get." I know the principle of how they work but the tuning and rebuilding were beyond me. The SU seems like a carb I can really get into and learn. It's actually pretty simple. We'll see how well I do at putting everything back together and actually getting them to work. Could be famous last words. I also figured out how to put a fuel filter before the fuel pump. It will look quite out of place under the bonnet but after all this work on the carbs I really want to keep any crap from the tank I missed out of there.

I'm still waiting on my last big parts order to arrive but when it does I'll be able to really hammer this car back together. I still feel like I'm very much on track to having this beast running by spring. I can't wait to hear the engine run.