Patrick dusts a few thousandths off an overdrive thrust washer

Butch, John, Steve and I have been holding down the fort during the week, and we have been very, very busy.  Patrick has been in every Saturday (and some Sundays) for more than a month putting transmissions together.

This past Saturday he finished up George Arsenault’s Healey Side Shift.  George drove down from Bridgton, Maine to supervise the final assembly.   Next up there is another 4-synchro E-type TX in his queue.

Butch bids BJ8 adieu

Wednesday it stopped raining long enough to pack the BJ8 off to Panel Palace to install the hood, grill, trunk lid & bumpers.  We’re hopeful, but not confident that we’ll see it again in six to eight weeks so that we can finish running it in and make any necessary adjustments.

That means Butch is now back on the Austin Mini Panel Van which was painstakingly rebuilt by East Coast Collision & Restoration. It’s really going to be a big moment here when it’s back on the road again in a few weeks.

Steve finishes up an MG TC steering box conversion

While John has been working  thru a log jam of MGB’s with the usual problems, Steve has finished up a steering box conversion in an MG TC.  I asked him to road test the car before he started so that he’d have a baseline for comparison, and he reported that it scared him pretty good at speeds above 30mph.

Some readers may already know our rating system for TC’s, which is the terminal velocity (usually anything above 40 mph) where you are truly in doubt of where the car is actually headed.  The rare TC will approach 50 mph with its original

an XK 120 in for brake work

steering box in excellent condition, but those cars are few and far between.  Steve’s efforts delivered a substantial reward.  After he drove it, I drove it, and it was with no small amount of surprise when, glancing at the speedometer as I found myself gaining on a black BMW, I was already well past the magical 50 mph threshold.

Like the MG TC, the Jaguar XK 120 is one of the greatest automotive shapes of all time.  It is a clean and stunningly well proportioned and functional design.  As much as I prefer the XK 140 on purely mechanical grounds, the XK 120 has it all, and that makes the XK 120 Fixed Head Coupe an even more remarkable piece of machinery, because in my judgment the shape, if anything, is even better.  Brakes, which we’ll be getting after next week, will make this Jaguar a complete package.

Another Milestone Car: On a rainy Monday the winter beater GT rolled past 100,000 miles

MGB GT rolls up 100,000 miles

Phase 1 BJ8 on test

Butch got the Healey Blue over Old English White BJ8 out for a hot lap Tuesday.  He reported that the power was all there and then some, also seconded by Ron Diurba, seen here behind the wheel, who added that it handled, too.

We asked him to confirm his observations by sampling one of the other two BJ8s here currently, which he did.  We thought it was gonna be a road warrior, and now we know.

calculating speedometer calibration

Our next up task was to mark out 52 feet, nine and a half inches on the barn floor to produce some data by which Nisonger Instrument can calibrate the speedometer to account for tire size, final drive ratio and the Toyota transmission fifth gear factor, all of which make the standard speedometer hopelessly inaccurate.

We did it twice, actually, having used a 50 foot mark out instead of the one which is 1/100th of a mile the first time.

Access Denied: Zerk fitting obsructed by nyloc nut

Suitable for Servicing: Nut & bolt reversed

Generally speaking, we prefer to own our mistakes rather than trying to bury them, work and life are usually a lot easier that way.

This E-type was last serviced by a high class Jaguar repairer  in Rocky Stream, Connecticut.  We know that by their service sticker on the door.  But we also know that we have different standards for what constitutes “chassis lubrication”.  The grease fitting on the front driveshaft universal joint was completely obstructed by the nyloc nut which you can see in the picture on the left.

Cold chiseling your way to success

A suitable repair using high class materials

Now we can also pretend the zerk fitting isn’t there, or we can rectify the situation and installed a longer zerk.  Because replacing the U-jont when it goes dry and fails means the IRS has to come out, we rectified the situation and installed s longer zerk.  Cedric & Nigel apparently also replaced the speedometer cable.  This repair was made easier by cutting a slot out of the side of the TX tunnel with a cold chisel.  What’s done is done, of course, so the only thing to do was to at least make a commensurate repair, which we did, using a Castrol Syntec oil jug.  Carpet hides a multitude of sins.  Yes it does.

Outer brake pad installed wrong way up

The season is upon us now. Wednesday we had an MGB towed in from Keene, N.H.  for some brake work.  John was kinda’ surprised when he looked it over and discovered that three out of four brake pads were installed wrong way up !   Why can’t we ever get away with something like that ?  It was shipped over from a general repair shop that told the owner that his MG needed a new master cylnder and a brake servo.

This certainly pigued our interest; we’ve only seen a single late MGB booster failure in 25 years.  We’re guessing the mis-diagnosis might have had something to do with the master cylinder hold down nuts having backed off about a quarter inch from the mounting flange.  John tightened them up again and , Et Voila !  Boost, but not much brake.

Another seasonal sign:  Holsteins behind the shop Thursday

Spring Scene: Cattle graze behind the shop Thursday morning

John and some of his friends

Sometimes the planets just align.  Tuesday it was the “T” series MG’s that aligned.  From right to left they are MG’s TC, TD, & TF, and also John.  Not since we had six (yes really !) red MGA’s here all at the same time have we had a line up like this to contemplate.

These cars constitute the bedrock of the british sports car world.  The TC of course bridges the gap between the pre-war and post war MG’s, the TD represents MG’s headlong dive into the U.S. market after WW II, and the TF was the hurriedly cobbled-together place holder, the stop-gap which was almost never built, between the TD and the MGA.

A mangled brake tubing flare. click to enlarge

New flare on our NAMRICK flaring tool. click to enlarge

The black TD is here for brake work, among other things.  John was highly suspicious of the brake line on the right, so he pulled it out for a closer look, although there isn’t much to see, it’s been pretty thoroughly mangled.  Someone is very lucky this didn’t lead to a catastrophic failure.  God may protect children and small dogs.  Apparently, he also protects fools.  In this case the former owner, an individual capable of doing great harm to himself and others.

Well, we just happened to have a complete TD brake pipe kit lying around so John got right to work replacing ALL the lines.  Of course , if we didn’t we could have just made them up, which is something we do nearly all the time.  It’s a job made much easier by the use of a vice mounted English flaring tool.  It actually takes longer to cut the pipe to length than it does to make the flares.

Grotty old brake fluid -click-

fresh brake fluid replaces it -click-

So let’s talk for a moment about what’s inside those brake pipes.  Cutting straight to the chase, brake fluid is HYGROSCOPIC, which in plain english means that it absorbs moisture.

That’s great news if you’re in the brake repair business because that dirty, wet old brake fluid is working assiduously to destroy the brake cylinders, pistons and seals thru corrosion and acidity.

In this shop we strongly advise changing brake & clutch fluid every two years.  The brown grunge being pumped out of the E-type clutch slave cylinder on the left has been long neglected.  It’s not terminal yet.  That stage is identifiable by small particles of the brake seals floating along in suspension, eaten away by acidic brake fluid.  The color of that fluid is black.

Think of this maintenance as being analogous to changing the oil in your engine, which removes the contaminants which are the by-products of combustion.  We use Castrol GTLMA brake fluid.  You should, too.  Forget about silicon fluid with its host of problems, it’s by changing it that you gain the benefits of periodic maintenance.

Patrick’s next assignment: This Austin Healey side shift transmission and overdrive after cleaning and before final layout for assembly.