Warner lifts the head from a 4.2 E-type

Monday we got the head off this 4.2 E-type for valve guide work.  Because it was a bit reluctant to part company with the cylinder block we ended up using the motor hoist to help it along.   Warner assisted with the heavy lifting because he chose a propitious moment to wander into the downstairs service bays for a visit.  I believe the last time he was seen on these pages was in January when he was lead tech on the Black Tulip MGC GT which has run up a pretty good milage since it went back on the road this past spring.

Jaguar valve work is a taddy-bit more sophisticated than the cheap & cheerful pushrod cast iron heads we work with most of the time, and we only know of two machinists who have the necessary measuring equipment to determine if a recut valve seat is within the clearance range for the available valve adjusting pallets.  This cylinder head will get .002″ O.D. oversized guides, which we keep in stock (also .005″ & .008″), as well as the requisite valves, springs, tappet guides, hold down kits, etc.

Using a generic puller on the radius arm bushings

While the cylinder head is out for reconditioning, we’re also tidying up the Independant Rear Suspension.  The large radius arm bushings securing the arms to the floors frequently are fused to the anchor posts.  There are any number of ways to get them off, but this is how I like to do it.  Once the IRS is out I’ll take it the rest of the way down and we’ll send the differential assembly to Jeff at Keene Driveline to install a 3.31 gear set.  For Jeff it’s just another Dana 44, and we can’t come close to touching his $250.00 labor for a complete overhaul.  We do everthing but paint & fenderwork here, but this falls under our First Law of Sublets:  If someone else can do it better, faster, cheaper, then let ’em.

Butch & John Strip another E-type IRS at East Coast Collision & Restoration

Wednesday Butch & John went up to East Coast Collision & Restoration in Mount Holly to strip the suspension out of this Series One E-type which we had previously reduced to a rolling shell earlier this year.  We maintain a close working relationship based on mutual respect with  Jason Marechaux and his very busy crew.  After many years of being terribly disappointed by most of the bodywork we’ve seen come thru our shop, it’s hugely rewarding to see what a genuinely skilled and committed paint and structure guy can do.  The incremental cost of having a correct workmanlike job done is so small, it’s a wonder their waiting list isn’t years long.  Sarah Mae took this picture.  You can contact her at 802-259-2452 to schedule your work

Supplemental Rations

An MGB GT is the most versitile of sports cars.  It will easily haul three bales of hay, even four in a pinch.  When a scheduling error resulted in 12 hungry holstein heiffers Tuesday morning, a quick trip to Holton Farm made everyone happy.  This is, of course, my winter beater MGB GT, which by virtue of four studded snow tires goes anywhere in any weather because it always starts irregardless of temperature.  You can read more about it in the January archives under the subject line of “Winter Motoring”.

You Can Do It In An MG Part II

Somewhere on a Lonely Highway this week: an MGC at nearly full chat

An MGC is a true high speed cruiser with excellent fast road stability, good for about 125 mph with a healthy engine.  The result of this testing indicates a freshening up is in order this winter

Most of the time we do a pretty good job of not having to deal with Weber carburetors, the ne plus ultra Italian tuning instrument, but this week the stars aligned, and we have six of ’em on our collective plate.

45 DCOE Webers before cleaning & laid our for assembly. Click to Enlarge

When we do have to deal with carburetors in a major way, step one is always a teardown & cleaning.  For this purpose we employ a special machine, known as an immersion cleaner, which uses an air motor to agitate a parts basket at varying speeds in a mildly caustic solution that strips gum & varnish off carburetor parts like nobody’s business.  You can judge for yourself its effectiveness by taking a closer look at the brass emulsion tubes, main jets, air corrector jets, idle jets, starter valves & pump jets laid out here for assembly on the right.

Side Draft Webers on an E-type Jaguar

That’s an almost infinite number of tuning combinations, and in our opinion they represent both the strength and ultimate downfall of the Weber carburetor.

By comparison, the SU HD8 (meaning 2″) carb uses only  one metering jet and a choice of either a weak, standard or rich needle to accomplish all that tuning.  In our experience, a side draft Weber has a sweet spot within about a 2500 rpm range, and while you’re in it, it’s ‘Oh Baby, Hold On To Your Hat’, but everything outside it is a compromise.  In the case of this E-type, they’re working quite well and only represent a slight impediment to stripping off the cylinder head for some valve guide work.

Because we do see ’em from time to time, we keep a very basic kit of gasket sets and jetting for both side draft & down draft Webers on hand.

Butch & Gus mark out an Austin Healey for windshield installation

Meanwhile, work has been progressing at a slower pace on this Healey Blue over Old English White early BJ8.  In this picture Butch and Gus, who is a guest worker, can be seen marking out the front shroud with masking tape prior to the installation of the windshield.  Also visible in this picture is the 5 speed Toyota transmission specified by the owner.  It’s a great idea and the ratios match up well, but we’ve been disappointed by the engineering on the release mechanisms on these conversions.

The problem, as we view it, has to do with the basic assumption that the release bearing is concentric with the centerline of the clutch & flywheel assembly.

Elliptical wear pattern from a misaligned roller release bearing. Click to Enlarge

In the picture at left, the thrust plate  misalignment of the roller release bearing from another Toyota transmission conversion in an Austin Healey is clearly obvious.  The British Motor Corporation, and also Jaguar, knew it wasn’t a given that the release mechanism would run concentrically with the centerline of the flywheel and clutch assembly, so they always used a carbon graphite release bearing to compensate for this elliptical contact pattern.

Butch makes a pattern for an Austin Mini instrument panel

Every so often we end up repairing a grenaded clutch assembly in a car where the owner has had a “high performance” roller release bearing installed, which has been blown up by the side forces which are the inevitable result of the same clutch contact patch graphically illustrated by this Healey pressure plate.  Some ‘Big Improvements’ simply aren’t.

Here’s Butch making a cardboard pattern to check the fit of a dash panel in the Austin Mini van which is an on-going ground up rebuild here at the moment.  Checking your engineering work with a pattern isn’t just for interiors.

The Thanksgiving Holiday provides a convenient line of demarcation between the driving season and the off-season for our british sportscars.  Here in Vermont, this event has been punctuated by a heavy snowfall on the Tuesday night before the Holiday.

Our Westminster locale, I believe, is approximately 800 feet above sea level, but Butch & Steve live on the leaward side of the ski areas, Mount Snow & Okemo Mountain respectively, so the first topic of conversation Wednesday morning was ‘how much’ ?   In our valley it was around five inches, Butch reported nine, but Steve blew us all in the weeds with 14″ of snow in Ludlow.

Steve preps a TD for Winter Storage. Click to Enlarge

We have noted with some amusement that according to their  Holiday Sales Flier, our California Cousins at Moss Motors seem to believe that February marks the end of the winter salt season in the Northern U.S.  Well Dudes, I’m putting you on notice that I have a picture of Warner stuck on the manure pile in six inches of snow on Memorial Day with the lilacs in full bloom !   The last significant snow falls around here occur by  the end of April.

There is a large body of instruction as to how to put a car up for storage.  In the accompanying picture, Steve is topping off and correcting the coolant strength in this MG TD Tuesday morning.  Close observation will also show that he’s topped off the fluid in the brake master cylinder as well.  That’s a bottle of  Castrol GTLMA brake fluid on  the ground by the left front wheel.

Our protocal is very simple: Add fuel stabilizer, take a ten mile run, pump the tires up to 4o p.s.i. disconnect the  battery and cover the car.  A wash & vacuum are always a plus

An MG TD prepped for storage is entering hibernation.

If your storage is damp, we’d recommend a car bubble with an air circulator.  Under those circumstances, some Marvel Mystery Oil thru the spark plug holes would be a good idea, too.

The TD is keeping company  between my XK 140 and an MGC.  We’ll revisit it periodically with the air tank and the battery charger to keep things up to snuff.

John has been overhauling the most worn out clutch we’ve encountered in 25 years, not only have the rivets holding the friction lining to the disc worn thru on both sides, they’ve also chewed a 3/32″ deep trench in the flywheel, renderering it junk, effectively.  The owner asked us to change out the 2nd gear baulk ring (or “synchro” ring as it’s commonly known), so I stripped down the gearbox for access to the 2nd gear synchronizer assembly, and as soon as I pulled the layshaft, the semi-caged needle roller bearings deposited themselves in the bottom of the TX main housing.  This is an indication of wear.

2nd Gear Synchro Hub Assembly with a Visitor From Another Transmission. Click to Enlarge

This is the 2nd gear synchro assembly for an MGB, which features a late steel baulk ring, but not from this gearbox, as it has a three bearing cluster gear, not the four bearing gear of the late ’67  TX.  These steel baulk rings are pretty much bullet proof, you can judge this by the relative lack of wear on the three outer ears, which are the initial contact point when 2nd gear is engaged.  The inner hub on the right, interestingly, has a partially broken tooth, the result, I suspect, of the fact that the hub had to be pressed off the mainshaft  because it didn’t slide like it needed to, the probable cause of  the owner’s complaint.

The operating principal of any 3 synchro transmission, doesn’t matter if it’s an MG or your XK 120, is that as the shift fork pushes the outer hub toward 2nd, the blocker teeth in the MG synchro ring, or swedged onto 2nd gear in the case of a Moss Box, create enough early friction to alter the speed of the gear to avoid crunching the synchronizer outer hub onto the short dog teeth of the gear.

Synchronicity: John & Steve work on rear brakes

Slide the outer hub in the other direction and you engage the spur gear outer teeth directly with the cluster gear, and, Et Voila! first gear, which, because it’s straight cut, is always a little whiny, unlike the helical-cut 2nd, 3rd & 4th.

Butch is still deep in the assembly of an Austin Mini panel van, which we’ll report out about later on.  Having just changed-out the very wobbly clutch shaft & pedal bushings from this MG TD, Steve is seen here bleeding off the brakes while John replaces rear wheel cylinders as he waits for me to produce a transmission to finish his clutch job.

Thanksgiving greetings go out to you

Wayne (pictured) & Devon drive the Holstein heiffers down from the upper pasture Wednesday morning to feed them

A red MGC recovered from Framingham Tuesday night

That previous car was, of course, the MG TF.   The superbly engineered but much maligned MGC is arguably the best of the Post-War MG’s, and with only 9,000 produced, certainly one of the rarest.  Right at the moment, this one, which we recovered from Framingham Tuesday night, is now sitting within 250 feet of 1/10 of 1% of all the MGC’s ever produced. How that came to be is a matter as much of serendipity as by design…

Butch re-bushes the Rily front end

Butch finished up with the Riley One Point Five sedan Friday by changing out the front suspension bushings and fabricating an exhaust-tight sleeve for the front pipe, which has a clamp style joint instead of a flange & gasket.  Steve took this picture of Butch wrestling with the torsion bar front suspension.  He won the match.

A universal joint far beyond the end of its useful service life

This universal joint was the cause of a truly monstrous driveline vibration in a 1500 Midget.  Click on it for a better look.    Fortunately, John found it before it completely tore loose and ruined the driveshaft.  he replaced it with a genuine Hardy Spicer U-joint with a zerk fitting, which is the only kind we use.  If you do the maintenance, which is to grease ’em as per the maintenance recommendation for your car, they’re forever.  The universals in my MGB, which are the same ones, are now north of 150,00 miles and they’re still perfectly fine.

Steve evaluates a 4.2 E-type

We sent Steve out Friday afternoon to evaluate this 4.2 E-type.  The picture is taken on the Westminster Heights road near the junction of Interstate 91, which we use as part of our extended road test loop when we want to evaluate a car’s high speed characteristics.  It would be accurate to say that few cars are as thrilling on the road, and later during our lunch break when it was parked in front of an XK8 convertible which inexplicably pulled up shortly after, it drew a continuous crowd of  gawkers while the poor XK8 languished in its forelorn anonymity.