MGB Repair in progress with Butch

An Austin Healey king pin replacement delayed progress on the squirrley green MGB.  Front end work on Healeys is usually a straight ahead repair for us.  Being in posession of a set of genuine Churchill reamers allow us to keep reconditioned stub axle & king pin sets on the shelf for immediate installation, although sometimes we have to wade thru the after-effects of previous repairs before the job is done.  The afore-mentioned Austin Healey created a good deal of consternation when upon

last week

this week

completion the car wouldn’t even turn over, let alone start.  We traced this back to its recent restoration.  Having lost a hold down screw from the starter button, the restorer simply balled up the end of the other wire and stuffed it in the back of the switch with a small screw driver.  We’re always thankful to discover problems like this on our watch instead of the owner’s.  But I digress…

Lunch break shock installation ? (missing bolt)

So far this week I have retrieved a TR6 from Branford, Connecticut, delivered an E-type Jaguar to Greenfield, Massachusetts just down the road, performed a hostage exchange in Dorset & East Dorset, Vermont (that Austin Healey for a TR3), and last night returned an MGB to Burlington and retrieved another MGB from Washington, Vermont.  It’s how I while away the idle hours after work.  Anyway, a Wednesday morning road test of the TR6 revealed both a floating rear suspension and an alarming lack of power.  While we haven’t dug down to the running issue yet, we have some insight into the rear suspension deficency.

Access Denied

Access Granted

When changing gear lubes it’s always a good idea to make sure that you can get the fill plug out first.  Gravity being what it is and all, it’s the Devil’s Work to to replenish the unit any other way.  The differential fill plug in the Jaguar E-type is an excellent case in point, and there’s nothing worse than a tight fill plug in a tight place.  I’m embarrassed to tell you that after 40 years of E-type ownership myself the journeyman answer has only occured to me relatively recently:  Drop the tie plate, as seen here.

Here’s that car on test in Walpole, New Hampshire during an Abingdon Spares parts run:

Downtown Walpole, New Hampshire nr. Abingdon Spares

Spax Shocks don't work on MG's

This spring we’ve had  a couple of MG’s come in that  rode like buckboards, and this has been directly attributable to a tube shock rear conversion.  Great for the vendors but not so great for the ride.  Save this 10/10ths equipment for the race track, otherwise it will ruin your dental work.

Butch has just finished up sorting out the Seattle-area MGB seen here, a nice car which the rough carpenters had got at.  It took him a day and a half just to repair the wiring.  For reasons we don’t understand the turn signals on MGB’s fail when the green feed wire goes open between the fuse panel & the flasher.  In this case the repair was accomplished (?) by taking power off the adjacent 4-way flasher.  Problem solved !

Wrong

Wrong Again

So what if the turn signals stay on after the ignition is switched off ?  The 4-way flashers were just a redundancy anyway.

However the main event turned out to be a persistent click, click, click coming from the rear of the car when slowly rolling over a rough surface.  This one was a real challenge only to be solved by taking off the Spax Adjustables and driving the car !   Who Woulda’ thunk it ?   With the car sitting on the ground the shocks were already fully extended.  The clicking was the shock piston hitting the top of the chamber when rear spring rebounded.   We installed a pair of rebuilt lever shocks and problem solved.

Bad

Badder

In other MGB news we’re also working with another MGB which came in with an overdrive problem, uncertain engagement and a lack of desire to back up.  It’s a late car with the switch wiring in the gear shift knob, a common enough problem so that we keep the switch harness in stock, and the reversing problem was a small glob of sludge trapped in the operating valve.  But coming back from his initial road test Butch reported that the handling was kinda’ squirrely.  Indeed it must have been with the left rear spring perch torn away from the floor.  It’s on the fix-list for today.

tap, tap, tap

While still on the subject of MGB’s here’s an intervention with a wider application.  Last Sunday morning, being up early with time on my hands, I hopped in my MGB and noodled down to Hillsdale, New York, near Great Barrington to look in on another MGB that couldn’t be roused from it’s winter hibernation.  I turned on the ignition switch and knew instantly what the problem was; no fuel delivery.

Because it’s a late model car the complete repair was easily effected with just a Phillips Head screw driver.  I opened the trunk, took off the sheet metal guard and with the ignition on gave it a tap with the other end of the screw driver.  Click, click, click and we were off to the races again.

Amazing story of the week: no leaks from this MGA heater valve

Failed Slutch Slave Cylinder

If you haven’t already done so, this would be a good year to change your brake fluid.  What you’re looking at here on the left is a very good example of the consequences for failing to do so.  It’s an E-type clutch slave cylinder (yes that’s right, hydraulic clutches use the same fluid) which finally cried out ‘No Mas’.  Unfortunately for the owner it failed while he was on the way here.   We’re trying to move all of our customers onto an ‘even’ year rotation, makes scheduling the service easier to remember.

Stopping Power: Dual circuit master cylinder

Last week we told you about adding brake redundency to a drum-braked Morgan +4 which had suffered an unusual brake failure when a wheel cylinder split in two.  Appended hereto is a photo of that master cylinder after Butch was done with the conversion last week.

Everything is nice and tidy, except possibly for a piece of 1/2″ heater hose, apparently plugged off, and hanging just above the fuel pump.

fender damage

repairs complete

Last week we also owned up to a small oopsie’ which apparently occurred here last winter.  Well we own our mistakes, even the ones we don’t know about, so Monday morning I hustled the green Plus 4 down to Jay at Windham Coach & Carriage in Brattleboro (802-254-1114) for a little bump job and Thursday he called up to say “come & get it”.  We’ll reinstall the car in the owner’s garage this weekend.

Butch heads out

With repairs complete and a brand new inspection sticker on the windshield, we’re about to hand off the Mk6 Bentley to one of our favorite automotive journalists for an extended road test report.  Interestingly, this Behemouth of The Highway is actually a narrower car than the contemporary Jaguar sedans.

near miss with new Trailex

Keep your eye out for it in a future edition of Hemmings Sports & Exotics.  In other automotive collision news, our new Trailex aluminum trailer is quite a bit bigger than the old one.  This has occasioned the adoption of a new backing protocol because its Home 20 (see CB radio: home 20) is in the barn.

Where's Butch ?

George Borg was the son of a skilled fitter working for John Deere.  Marshall Beck was a lawyer practicing in and around Moline, Illinois.  Together they invented and perfected the penultimate automotive clutch, a design still in use today and licensed for production for many years by Automotive Products (aka AP) in England.

When people ask us why we use Castrol Lubricants my answer is “Because we’ve never had a problem”.  Much the same can be said of a Borg & Beck design clutch, and this  car  here is a case in point.

LUK the Nasty

Borg & Beck the Sublime

The TR6 seen above arrived  with one of the worst clutches we’ve ever encountered.  It was terribly notchy and required extreme care because it was fully engaged  with the clutch pedal barely off the floor.  Even more alarming, it was a replacement for a recently failed clutch job.  Click on the left hand picture and you can see how the release mechanism was cutting its way thru the diaphram fingers, the result of too much spring pressure in the wrong place.  We replaced it with a 2006 vintage AP Borg & Beck, and now the clutch action is sublime.

Many TR6’s have similar clutch problems of a less severe nature, and other contributing factors in this case were a broken clutch fork lock pin which allowed the fork to wobble on the clutch shaft.  We replaced the shaft & pin, but this wasn’t the only lousy clutch assembly in current circulation so pay up and fit Borg & Beck.

Here's Butch

This mid-fifties drum-braked Morgan ironically came into us about 15 years ago with a severe clutch judder.  When we re-surfaced the flywheel and changed the clutch, we didn’t use an LUK.

Our Bad

Recently it suffered a unique brake failure when a rear wheel cylinder broke in two, sending the driver thru a rural stop sign.  Fortunately, no one was coming the other way.  So he asked us for a little redundency, which we supplied in the form of an early +8 dual circuit master cylinder.  Butch is seen here last Friday backing out on his way for a rainy day road test.

Everything went well, of course, even if it appears that we also managed to install a significant scrape on the left rear fender while the car was in storage last winter.  Responsibility, what’s your policy ?