Jeff at Keene Driveline with a couple of Jaguar Salisbury axles. 603-355-4450

Part of the Sports Car Services ‘Do Right by Your Customer’ mantra is that if someone else can do it better, faster, cheaper, then let them.  Automotive machining falls squarely into this category, we’re fitters/installers but we simply don’t have the space or expertise bore blocks, grind cranks or do valve work.

Regular readers of this space may recall that last winter we turned a Dana 44 E-type differential over to Jeff to re-gear, but what might not have gotten mentioned was the he did the entire job, gears, clutches,

Close examination of Morgan front end

bearings and all for less than the big guns in the Jaguar parts world wanted for just the ring & pinion.  Jeff is THE  four wheeler driveline guy in this part fo the country.  We’ve been sending him driveshafts for balancing for a long time  (Persistant vibration above 60 ?  Hint:  Maybe it’s not your tires), and the tooling in his shop is simply jaw dropping.

Right now he’s inducing limited slip into a re-geared 3.54 Salisbury axle for Bob

What Steve found

Mitchell’s Jag Mark IX which is currently taking up about a quarter of our shop !  As Bob points out, it’s those little enchancements that allow the big sedans to make a graceful entrance & exit from a wet show field.

Steve has been giving this ’57 Morgan Plus 4 the once over this week.  Although it came in as a breakdown car with a broken throttle cable, the owner asked us to give it a complete servicing.

Before & after Morgan shock brackets

What Steve also found was this recently broken R/H upper shock bracket.  If you take a closer look at the previous picture you can see that the rust has only just begun to creep in to the break.

This is “Rule of Sublets” Part II: We flipped it to our neighbor the blacksmith who made us a new one as good or better than the original, and did so in the most authentic Olde Worlde fashion.

Seats installed

Steve

Steve’s first task of the week was to finish reupholstering and installing these seats into Paul Koutra’s MGB.  Paul’s owned it since high school and it’s a really nice car with a Downton-style exhaust and, we suspect, a mildly tuned engine.  It definitely has some giddy-up & go, along with an exhaust note that announces its presence in an authoritative but not overbearing manner.   A great car !

Sorry, This Week at The Shop Went up a little late because of last night’s fire works show

Repairs complete, Skip Tannen's Sprite heads for home

Ian, Butch & John wrestle the windshield back in a Sprite

Most british cars of the Post War era were fitted with glass from “Triplex” (although mid-seventies MGB’s also used “Sicursive”), and in fact it is optically superior to most replacement glass.  We use it whenever we can get our hands on it, which we do now factory direct.  Interestingly, while the rest of the world puts a windshield in a plastic bag and puts the bag in  box & foams it, this Old World glass company uses old world Amish carpenters to pack their glass in wooden crates which use nails instead of machine driven screws !  Thursday afternoon this Austin Healey Sprite got a new one.

Steve takes a Morgan off our trailer Monday

We have been enjoying the dubious luxury of being veritably innundated in work.  People are out enjoying their cars now.  In New England we’ve had a fantastic run of hot, sunny days that doesn’t show signs of abating soon.  Of course that means that a certain percentage of them break down, and just today while we’ve sent a couple of MGB’s out we’ve also had a couple MGA’s show up on recovery trucks so we’ve ended the day dead even.

David strips an "A" type overdrive

My first task of the day was to strip the tailcase off this “A” type overdrive, which is an adaptation for a car which was only a four speed during its production life.  This undertaking was somewhat complicated by the fact that the installing technician had glued the cone clutch brake ring between the maincase and the tailcase with red Loctite, and half an hour’s work took two and a half because red Loctite doesn’t really release without the judicious use of heat.  This is a technique known as “Heat & Beat” which  is interdicted by some internet server filters as possible pornography.

A four synchro transmission

As just mentioned, overdrive wasn’t optional equipment on this model.  I thought I’d toss a picture of the transmission in here just to find out if anyone needing an oil filter for their british car can identify it.

Bob Humphrey bought an MGC GT in 1973 back when he was in high school and used it well until around 1997 when he sold it to his father who needed a good running MG.  For maybe the next ten years his dad drove it until he parked it next to the attached one car garage in Framingham that held the MG TD he (his dad) bought new, and there it sat until we hauled it back to the shop last fall.

Bob told us it ran well ‘when parked’ but we really wern’t too sure about that, although we did at least get it running before we put it away and “futured” it for the spring, but it was not until some time after the solstice that we got at it again.

Butch worked on it for more than a week, and after the most limited of test cycles Bob picked the car up last Saturday afternoon, and Sunday evening Bob, his family, and the MGC were all back in Michegan !

To quote Bob, “The car performed really well- it didn’t give us any worries.  From my earlier years with the car I was used to seeing the temperature needle move more towards the “H” than the “N” but it never pegged out. And it never really missed  a beat.”    “You Can Do It In An MG” is an old BMC/BL advertising slogan.  Ayuh, you certainly can.  Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones did.

MGC in Michegan

Cpl. Reilly Clark wheels an E-type thru Keene, N.H.

Our corner of New England is hot but mostly dry.  This picture from last Friday was taken a little after 6:00 with the temperature still in the low 90’s, near perfect haying weather.

If you want to know if a car like an E-type is going to overheat, semi-urban rush hour traffic will tell you everything you need to know.  This Jaguar kept its cool.  Sharp-eyed observers will also have noticed that the tach’s not working.

Ian & Steve polish up a TD

Ian & Steve put the finishing touches on this MG TD which suffered from immersion in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene.  We actually have a sub-specialty in remediating cars which have gotten seriously wet.  A flooded drivetrain isn’t too difficult to figure out.. change the oil and then change it again, but to kill the mold which had established itself in the upholstery (the seat bolsters are packed with horsehair) we stripped &  soaked everything in a wading pool with a high concentration of household bleach

John rebuilt the Bug Eye front end

Sprites and Midgets use what is essentially a minaturized version of a Big Healey front suspension.  There’s a bit of an irony in this because while everything works quite nicely, it’s imperative that it sees the grease gun at least every 1,200 miles, otherwise the wear rate is diabolical, and the irony is it’s by far the more expensive to put to rights.

This is because while king pins and bushings cost about the same as on their larger breathern, not only are  the A-Arms themselves  wear items, but the unique taper thrust wheel bearings are hideously expensive to replace if they’re bad.  A note to our D.I.Y. friends, if you’re replacing them in your home workshop you need to be absolutely sure of how to align the thrust markings.  Consult your shop manual for fitting instructions.

Steve & Ian finished up this blue MGA which now resides in the Ray Boas “Push-Pull” stable.  Because Ray’s “other car” is a TR3, the reference is to the direction you move the starter switch to crank the car.  We’re on to a red MGA now.  Details to follow.

Ian checks over his front end work

Ian and Steve at work on MG's

Partly by happenstance and partly thru design, Ian and Steve have been working in the downstairs shop on MG’s this week.  This was already the scene of “Steve’s TD Line” as seen here a week or two back.  Having pulled down Myron the TD  sufficiently for the paint process to begin at East Coast Collision & Resurrection, we shelved him in the barn and brought in the next most needy MG, which happens to be this Iris Blue (but formerly Alamo Beige) MGA 1600, which after a Rip Van Winkle-like 18 year layover, is about to move to the Walpole, N.H. stable of our friend Ray Boas, who you can learn more about by checking our links page.

Patrick and I choked this MGA back to life last weekend under Ray’s watchful eye, pronounced it to be running “Pretty Good !” and took it out to see what it would do.  While a little bit light in clutch, the soon to be known as “Blue Belle” MG acquitted itself

While upstairs John & Butch were working on Sprites

well, apart from the desperate need of front shock absorbers, which Ian set about changing a few days ago.

But the project growed some because Ian found the left upper and right lower trunnion bushings to be completely worn out.  We rectified this with a good used upper trunnion and a new lower trunnion bushing, because a good lower trunnion was not to be had.  And that begat a new set of “V8″ A-arm bushings, too.

"Ask Myron"

Myron’s barn stay turned out to be brief, we brought ‘im back over Wednesday to use as a reference for the brake pipe routings on Steve’s chassis build up.

In the last ten days I have been to Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, Troy, N.Y. Strafford, N.H. Osterville out on Cape Cod, and Simsbury, Connecticut.  We have been very, very busy.

The purpose of the trip to Simsbury was to look at an Austin Healey which was a candidate for a full-on restoration, but also in the same garage was this rather unusual right hand drive Jensen C-V8, which is most definitely for sale.  Here’s a picture:

Buy it Now ! Jensen C-V8. Talk to John Skeadas: 914-403-1768