Back at the end of May I took a call from Hemmings asking if they could send their Florida based videographer out to shoot some film (as we used to call it).   I spent all of  Memorial Day weekend hoeing out the shop, so it was with a degree of bemusement on my part that it was our BARN which proved to be the main attraction for about three hours and the shop for roughly 20 minutes.  Anyway, here it is.

Ken Booth draws the supercharger drive

We have been busy upstairs where Butch is wrestling the suspension back in the Jaguar Mk IX and Steve is fettling a late Spitfire which we hauled down from Saranac Lake the weekend before last.  John is on vacation.  Meanwhile, downstairs I’ve been working with an arcane “A” series overdrive installation and we’ve been making some forward progress with the Shorrock supercharger installation in Larry Perry’s MG TC.

Ken measures for the supercharger belt drive

Ken Booth of KNB Manufacturing & Automation came in Thursday to measure up for the supercharger belt drive.  He’ll be machining up the crankshaft drive pulley, but of at least equal importance he’s also calculating the belt length because the Shorrock installation has no provision for adjustment.  This of course means that the pulleys have to be sized to match the available belts, which are 17mm, if you’re wondering.

Ken will be making up a duplex pulley which will be spigoted to the crank pulley as a means to get the belts on and off.  Stay tuned next week for more on this and perhaps a picture of Steve’s Spitfire which is a charming car with a factory hardtop

Columbus Day on Outside the Shop.com:

CH Palmer with Warner & the 500cc Vincent single he built up from parts

Not really suitible for reuse

A screwdriver doesn’t always make a very good lever.  I’m guessing that one might have been used to deaccession this crankshaft pulley from the engine.  Fanbelt life is likely to be affected by its reuse so we’ll track another one down or ask Ken Booth to turn a new one for us on his N.C. lathe.

Too bad the teardown engineer didn’t use the threaded holes on eight side of the pulley center to draw it off.

Butch pulls down the Jaguar Mk IX steering box

Interestingly, at least to us, it wasn’t the first time to the Prom for the Mk IX power steering box.  Butch can be seen here pulling it apart.

Inside it was a small marvel of precision close tolerance machining from the 1960’s, but it’s a pretty good bet that the blue RTV silicon sealer dates from more recent times.  Butch is working here in a plastic tray so that the myriad ball bearings, small springs etc. don’t migrate too far from the workbench.

Steve was working downstairs on the preliminary assembly work on the MGB engine you see here.  After painting the inside of the crankcase with GLYPTAL insulating paint  and cleaning & chasing all the threaded holes in cylinder block, he began the build process by checking the main bearing clearances (.002″) and the crankshaft run out at the center

Steve installs an APT VP 11BK camshaft

main bearing (.00025′).  These figures are well within our acceptable range, and since this is a standard diameter crankshaft, it gives you some idea of how really well some of the shops at the failing British Leyland Motor Corporation were still able to hold a tolerance as the business began to fall apart in the mid-seventies.

On the bench behind the engine you can see the connecting rods which have been glass-beaded, balanced,  full floated and the big ends re-sized,  all of which brings them to our standards for reconditioning.  “Full-Floating” makes these connecting rods suitible for use with clip retained piston wrist pins which substantially reduces the friction and therefore heat that can be generated at the high RPM this engine will be capable of turning.  In this case the pistons are from JE, made to our order.

Very sharp-eyed obsrvers will have taken note of the XPAG-TD oil pump behind them, part of our next engine build up.

Seen Friday: A German Gran Turismo returns to its elements in Rhode Island

Steve flares a brake pipe

Butch took the week off to go to Texas so we sorted out five MGB’s which landed on us from Maine, Cape Cod & Chicopee, Massachusetts, North Walpole, New Hampshire and Tyson, Vermont.

In the picture on the left Steve can be seen flaring new rear axle brake pipes for the Cape Cod car.  The old ones had been pinched off by some  towing & recovery operator  who flattened them with the “J” hooks on his car carrier.  This is hardly an unusual occurrance so be mindful of the potential  consequences of the ride back home on the tow truck.

Steve is using our NAMRICK british flaring tool which puts a perfect I.S.O. bubble on 3/16′ Bundy-Flex tubing (we use the copper-nickel stuff) in less time than it takes to read this sentence.

John makes an axle flange gasket

Well we did have one other Abingdon-built classic sneak in here.  This Bug Eye has been off the road for a while and the owner asked us to put it back in good running order so it can be sold (INQUIRE).  The right rear hub carrier was leaking oil into the brake assembly, which  was about as much of a surprise as the damaged brake pipes on the MGB, but what was a surprise was that we were out of the UNIPART GFG 110 flange gaskets.  So John grabbed the .020″ gasket paper and made one.  All repair shops used to have it, but walk into ADVANCE Auto Parts or the like and they don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.  Go to NAPA instead.

Payen AK 660 head gasket

John’s first assignment of the week was to change the head gasket in the MGB  from Maine.

Virtually all MGA & MGB engines have a valley (low spot) above the engine I.D. plate, and this one was no exception.  ANY time we have an MGB (or MGA) cylinder block out for overhaul we have the machine shop deck it, which means make it dead flat.  What was interesting about this one was that the  N.H. “high performance” machine shop that did this one decided to use a copper head gasket and plenty of blue RTV sealer instead.  Yeah, we know who the guilty party is, it’s the same guy who thought he’d never get dimed-out for using a combination of left-over Glacier and Vandervell main bearings on the 100-M of our intimate acquaintance.

Regrettably, he didn’t know how to use his balancer too good either, and we found ’em when we pulled it down to have it balanced correctly with only break-in miles on it.  We also changed out the cheeseball sand cast pistons and substituted a set of forged JE pistons instead because one of them had already cracked thru the ring lands.

Take a closer look: The black Payen head gaskets are the gold standard for performance engines.  Don’t let anyone tell you different.  The nice thing about the copper head gaskets is that they peel off easily when you change them after they’ve failed.

It’s fall in Vermont.  This picture is from earlier today

Foliage on the Westminster West road

Approaching Randolph, Vt. on I 89

Saturday, September 15 marked the occasion of the 22 annual British Invasion of Stowe.  It is the largest all-british car show in North America, and true to form, after having attended roughly 20 of these, I’ve yet to make it all the way around the Show Field.

In southern Vermont the day started under sunny and pleasant conditions, and when I snapped this picture near the Randolph exit, I didn’t realize it was about the last time we’d see blue skies

Jason Marechaux works the crowd

for most of the rest of the day.  This show has enjoyed an incredible run of luck with the weather, and even though it rained lightly off & on practically the whole day it wasn’t a factor on the show field and I never needed recourse to the L.L. Bean boots in the trunk of my car.

We aligned our promotion (such as it was) with Jason Marechaux and Company from East Coast Collision & Restoration.

If you wern’t able to get close enough to bend Jason’s ear, or was it the other way around ?  Tammy’s story boards told the story

Seen thru a Mini body shell: On duty at the ECC&R tent

You can see some of them behind Jason in the picture above, along with reprints of some of the profiles I’ve written for MESH New England Magazine this year.

If you’re not familiar with MESH, a year ago I wasn’t either, and one of the high points of the day for me was actually meeting Russ & Laura Rocknak who are responsible for this thoroughly interesting and visually stunning publication.  Much like these cars which we so admire, there really is no replacement for the look and feel of the printed and lavishly illustrated page.

I put some time in amid the story boards and the gutted Minis which were later to be joined by the panel van which we expended a great deal of effort on earlier this year, and which caused me to do a sufficient double take when I saw it all trimmed out that I thought it might be a ringer.  Joe Delaney from E.C.C.&.R. put the finishing touches on it including some stainless steel trim he fabricated which was just unbelievably nice.

Marshall blown N type MG of Chris Nowlan

The question always arises, “What was your favorite car at the show ?”.  A blue Lotus Elite was tugging mightly on my heart strings most of the day, but our friend Peter Caldwell alerted me to this Pre War MG in a corner of the show field I hadn’t gotten to even by mid-afternoon.

I have a weakness for the overhead cam four & six cylinder MG’s of the 30’s with their cam drive taken thru the vertically mounted generator at the front of the engine.  It was said, by Abingdon technician H.N. Charles perhaps, that “No overhead MG ever ran right after the first decoke”.  Small wonder, I’ve put a couple of these together and you’ve got to be on your game to get your cam timing and valve train geometry right.  It’s really no wonder that Morris Motors fobbed the pushrod engines off on MG beginning with the TA, it must have cost a fortune just to build them, let alone keep them properly maintained.

The weather finally cleared at the end of the afternoon as the crowd was breaking up and in search of dinner.  We never found the Jaguar Association of New England gathering and headed south instead, stopping at the Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland Four Corners for our supper.  Don’t be put off by the name, the food and drink were excellent.

2nd & 3rd pictures: Mary White