MGC GT & a Shorrock Supercharged MG TC. Click to Enlarge

Sunday, after visiting the “Cars & Coffee” at Kringle Candle in Bernardston, Massachusetts, I trundled down to Austerlitz, New York in my MGC  to check the coolant strength in another  MG which I thought might be a taddy-bit low.  From Bernardston the direct route is down I91 to the Massachusetts Turnpike and then a short jog on Route 22.  Because Rte. 22 runs quite close to Bennington, it seemed like a good opportunity to take in the foliage along Vt. Rte. 9 which winds thu the Green Mountains between Bennington & Brattleboro.

Gasing up at Sunoco in Canaan, N.Y.: The 3 litre six cylinder MGC engine. Click to Enlarge

This turned out to be a fine idea if you were traveling from West to East like I was, but Westbound traffic was piled up for five miles behind a still unrepaired washout on NY Rte. 7 in Hoosac.

The MGC got kinda’ hot cranking up Woodford Mountain, and with the temperature gauge needle still parked right across the “H”,  I pulled off by a bridge over the Deerfield River and baled water out of the river to cool it down.

October 7: MG TD parts on a Fitchburg lawn

It’s a never ending source of wonder, the ways in which “T” series MG’s keep turning up well over half a century after they were built.  We were contacted by the son of the original owner to come and collect this MG TD in Fitchburg last week.  “Some parts are off the car” we were warned.  That was a bit of an understatement, however it’s mitigated some of the labor costs on the dismantling, which we started Tuesday and finished Thursday.

Finishing the job: New guy Steve Reed gets the body tub ready to come off the chassis

After a slow start to the year, our work load has steadily increased to the point where we’re juggling space just to warehouse the work that’s been piling in here.  It’s a wonderful problem to have, but on the other hand, we really don’t like making people wait, although there’s a big difference between a tune up and a complete restoration, of which we have four going on currently.

Mission Accomplished: MG TD body tub & chassis

Steve Reed interviewed Tuesday over lunch.  Afterwards I handed him the downstairs Whitworth tools and told him use his best judgment to take this TD the rest of the way apart, which he did.

John Manning is going Deep Sea Fishing next week off Cape Cod, so Butch & Steve and I will be doing our best to keep our heads above water while he’s gone.

Also next week I’ll be prepping our favorite British Racing Green TR3 for the Texas 1000 again.  It’s here now because the owner was concerned about it’s ability to to find the red sector of the tach in overdrive 4th.

Prepping this veteran campaigner again for the Texas 1000

Wednesday while I was gasing it at Exit 4 Sunoco in Putney, the owner of a very  nice Porsche with New Jersey plates querried me about the car. I told him the purpose of my pending roadtest, and he laughed and said he had trouble keeping his car under 100 mph.  When I caught up with him again at the Massachusetts border on I 91,  I was doing the laughing.  Needless the say, the Triumph was running very strongly.

Outputs: If you’re tuned into New England you know that the leaves are turning on their colors and even starting to  drop off.  In a similar fashion we have much going on around here these days.

An MG TD heads back to New Jersey

Last week started off with Jug Clough from Rapture Transport (603-714-0018) collecting this MG TD for the return trip to New Jersey.  Jug hauls all manner of wheeled vehicles from the mighty Packard V12 sedans and sport phaetons, to the most pedestrian Honda motorcycle, and he offers the added convenience of an enclosed trailer.

Broken half shaft in a Riley 'One point Five' differential

The axle half shaft broke in this Riley ‘One point Five’ differential, and we popped the diff out of the car to fish it out.  This is a fairly common problem in Sprites and Midgets, which also use the same axle.  We threw a used half shaft in the car while we’re waiting for replacements.  These balsa wood axle shafts are still available, but we’ll put in two new ones made from EN 30B high strength steel.  We stripped off the ring gear cage and cleaned everything out, and changed the pinion seal.

"To do the job, use the right tools" The 18G 579 seal installer on the vice

Fans of the illustrator R. Crumb may recall Mr. Natural‘s advice to Seekers of The Truth, as quoted in the picture caption here.  The seal driver has an open center to clear the pinion shaft, which makes it much easier to install the oil seal straight.  Just past the vice, next to the tub of Castrol Wheel Bearing Grease, is our seal puller.  Of course, if you were actually on the scene in the ’60’s, you’re not obligated to remember that.

An MGA 3 synchro TX laid out for assembly

In other driveline news, we’re tossing together this 3-synchro MGA 1600 gearbox to replace one we previously installed, which leaks.  With a capacity of three quarts of oil they can leak quite  a lot  and safely, but we have our professional pride to consider here.  These TX’s always need cluster gear needle roller bearings, the counter shaft and 2nd gear baulk (synchro) ring, but while we’re in there, it’s our standard practice to replace the rest of  the bearings and the 3rd/4th gear baulk rings, too.

Out of Gear ? This E-type was built for speed

Inputs: By the mid ’60’s Detroit per-formance had caught up (and then some!) with the E-type.  There wasn’t a great deal Jaguar could do with engine, so they dropped the final drive ratio to a 3.54, instead.  That was great for acceleration, but it came at the expense of top end, and since this car has Weber carburetors instead of the emissions friendly (but not much else) Strombergs, it runs out of gear on a daily basis.

Now I’m about to do something very unusual, and that is to swear the 100 or so of you who read this page on a daily basis to absolute secrecy.  We’ll farm this one out to Jeff at Keene Driveline for a 3.31 gear swap, because this is actually a Dana 44 rear end, something he does all the time.

The Dana 44 may very well be the the oldest automotive component still in production, having gone into service in 1942, and still to be found underneath your 2011 Fiat-Chrysler, Jeep product.  Jaguar glommed-onto it around 1950 as a more reliable replacement for the ENV (London) differential they were using initially, and referred to is as the “Salisbury” Axle.

A history lesson about some very old American manufacturing companys, Salisbury and Thornton will be forthcoming, but not today

Foliage East of The Green Mountains. Click for More Color

Foliage West of The Green Mountains. Click for More Color

John matches the fit of this TR3 intake manifold

We have been working steadily to coax more reliable power out of this Triumph TR3.  Currently, it’s running a fully balanced  89 mm bore engine on a set of Omega pistons (not the chancy Asian ones), big valves, and a Revington 1058 Sprint cam with an aluminum flywheel.

Carburetors are the standard SU H6’s, but I’d been eyeing a spare TR4A four into two exhaust manifold which has been beckoning to me from an untidy corner of the shop

John massages the fit of the TR4A exhaust manifold

While it might be a straightforward idea, some modification was required.  In this picture you can see John grinding the #’s 2 & 3 exhaust runners for clearance around the balance pipe on the TR3 intake manifold, which was retained here.

manifolds fitted up on the TR3

Here’s how it came out.  John worked methodically taking small cuts, checking his clearance initially with a .004″ feeler gauge, until he was satisfied that he was in the zone.

Final Fit Up: Carbs & Manifolds Installed

The final result:  Now it looks like this.

John also made up a heat shield for the generator out of stainless steel and fabbed a bracket to move the brake pipe union an additional critical inch away from the outer collector on the exhaust manifold which was now much closer.  Sharp eyed observers will also take note of how we manage fuel filtration.

New Two Branch Collector Pipe

Here’s the view from underneath The new two branch collector pipe with the overdrive sump plug in the immediate foreground.

"One Off" Two Inch Exhaust

In order to take maximum advantage of the improved exhaust flow, John and Butch collaborated on this custom two inch NAPA exhaust system featuring a Thrush muffler which lets the power out without shattering the neighbor’s windows.

Readers’ with long memories will no doubt recall that the old muffler quite literally blew up on the New England 1000 this past summer, and a Midas Mufler shop in Newport, Rhode Island fashioned an emergency replacement out of N.O.S. ’56 Cadillac Coupe deVille resonator.

John Road Tests His Work

What’s our Mantra ?   John road tests his work Friday afternoon.  He pronounced it “Most Satisfactory”.

What was your scribe doing Tuesday afternoon ?

We’re letting the question about the Mad River run for another week, there wern’t any takers. So here’s another.

Thursday afternoon I went up to Warren, Vermont in the Mad River* Valley to fetch a TR3.  I had heard that Rte 100 was open again up thru the towns of Rochester, Hancock & Granville which had been cut off from the rest of the state.

End of The Line. Click to Enlarge

My assumption was this meant that Vt. Rte 107 which connects it to Bethel was also open.  It wasn’t.  As you can see, Rte. 107 now dead ends in the White River.  It’s gonna be a while before this road is open again.

We are putting togther the Healey Blue over O.E.W. Austin Healey which was recently painted by Jason Marechaux and his crew at East Coast Collision & Restoration.  This Phase One BJ8 has a few mods, such as the fully-side draft HD8 carburetors which are blowing thru a DMD manifold into a stage 2 Denis Welsh aluminum cylinder head

Butch marks out to install a high volume AZX 1405 fuel pump. Click to Enlarge

To cope with the potential fuel demand, we’re going with the AZX1405 high volume fuel pump which is sitting on the driver’s floor in this picture.  This fuel pump is more commonly found in a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, or in the trunk of a “Series 3 Jaguar E-type V12″, to quote the company’s official nomenclature.  This is one of the solid state pumps with which we have been experiencing a zero failure rate over the last ten years or so.  We keep this pump in stock.  If you’ve been thinking about more fuel volume, give us a bell and we’ll tell you how we install it.

Butch helps John run a TR3 overdrive harness

Earlier this week I tasked John with making the overdrive in this TR3 operational.  It’s original to the car, as evidenced by the “LO” (LHD/Overdrive) chassis number suffix.  For Triumph applications, it’s usually the ground side of the electrical circuit which is switched.  Much confusion had obviously ensued with the wiring of this one, because the switch was, and now still is, wired hot.  The simple fix here was to replace the veritable ‘spaghetti junction’ of wiring with an “A” type Triumph O/D harness, which we keep around for occasions just such as this.

An MG TC in its element; John comes back from a roadtest on a rainy day

You know our mantra: road test, road test, road test.  John gave this MG  TC the once over and finished his road test in the rain earlier this week.

V.O.R. Back about 25 years ago when the automotive aftermarket was still largely manual entry, lead times on pick, pack & ship could sometimes run to several days.  But there was a magic phrase which wasn’t Rumplestiltskin, or even “Rapunzel Lay Down Your Golden Hair”that got your order moving at warp speed.  No it wasn’t “Neutrino” either.   The magic phrase was “Vehicle Off Road”, and in fact the mere utterance of even the initials would often get you your critical order on your doorstep overnight.  Of course in the internet age, it’s kind of fallen into disuse.

Trivia Question: How did the *Mad River get its name ?   As usual, the first three correct answers are good for a free oil filter, if we stock it.