Steve roadtests an MG TD
Steve took Monday & Tuesday off to travel to Philadelphia, so Wednesday morning we wasted no time getting right back to work, and around 8:45 he was out running this MG TD over the road in order to start tuning the carburetors he extensively overhauled last week.
Let me come right out and say it; we truly pity our urban & suburban breathern. Not only are they genuinely hard pressed to find an open road to properly dial in a car, nothing on their test routes comes anywhere close to the aesthetics of ours. Those are round bales in Billy Acquaviva’s hayfield. Our “B” route features sheep. This is springtime in Vermont.
Severely worn throttle shafts
Vapor leak around jet
Steve’s first roadtest was plagued by an over-rich fuel mixture from an unusual source: Fuel was pulling up around the outside of the jet, you can actually see it if you enlarge the picture on the right. Butch spotted the condition, and I took a picture. This is truly an unusual situation caused by some unknown hammer-handed mechanic some time in the past. The jet assembly aperture in the bottom of the carb body is sealed by a copper washer, however the seating was so badly mutilated that the copper washer never stood a chance. Steve cut a new washer from fuel proof gasket paper. Now it’s on to sorting out the distributor.
John cleans down a Borg Warner D.G. 250
Detroit Gear 250 I.D. plate
John is about to stuff the engine & automatic transmission back in the repainted & reupholstered Jaguar Mk2 sedan seen here a couple of months back. While he spent some time cleaning up and repainting the engine ( we lateralled off the bright work to Joe at E.C.C&R. for polishing), he simply cleaned down the marvelous Studebaker Detroit Gear 250 automatic, which is the same model as the one I hauled out of the Mark IX Jaguar last week. When Studebaker moved on to “Flight-O-Matic”, Borg Warner packed up the tooling, shipped it to England and built the D.G. 250 for Jaguar and Mercedes & some others.
Also on test: A Jaguar on the “B” route
Capital View: Bedding-in XK 120 brake linings Sunday morning
