Seats, Steering Wheel, and Front End/Wheel Balance

Greg finished up the steering wheel with it's leather cover, turned out very nice:

Also the door panels are installed, carpet on inner sills, and rubber trim installed around door opening:

Seats are done and ready to be installed, a friend ended up donating some better used foam cushions which worked out just fine:

Interestingly, the red piping didn't line up real well from seat back to seat bottom until we swapped the seat backs between the two seats - wonder if they had been switched before?  They line up much better this way, passenger seat on left is well aligned while driver's seat on right is about 3/8 inch off.  Very comparable to our other MGB's. 

When we had the tires mounted we were told the tire shop could no longer balance wire wheels, their newer wheel balancer might mess up the splines.  They claimed this is a problem with all newer wheel balancers.  We had been given an old manual wheel balancer but knew we were missing some pieces of it - called the donor and got the missing pieces.  This thing works real well, here's a picture of the old Snapon model WBK-2:

It even came with a good selection of weights.  So today we got all four wheels balanced plus adjusted the front end to 1/8 inch toein.  We're getting very close to getting this thing on the road!  Unfortunately we need seats installed to drive it, and it's much easier to put in carpet and side panels in wheel wells without the seats in place.  Patience, patience.

Front Suspension Done, Water Pump In

Front suspension is complete, all bolts good and tight and cotter pins in place.  Inserted grease in all three grease fittings on both king pins.  New boots also installed on steering rack.  Installed new wheels and tires on front, looks very sharp:

Tackled water pump.  Turned out it would have been easier to just remove the radiator at the beginning, after working around it for about an hour it was much easier to just get it out of the way.

Had an interesting issue, the water pump uses two 5/16 inch steel dowels to position is relative to the block, probably to maintain clearances between the block and the rotating pump vanes.  These dowels were retained in the old water pump, and one would not come out even when gripped with my best vise grips.  Quick trip to parts store for replacements, no luck.  It's such a simple part, after some thought decided to make one of Ray's 5/16 inch drill bits about 3/4 inch short.  In this picture you can see the one dowel that came out sitting on the vise jaw, the one retained in the old water pump, and the 5/16 drill bit about to be attacked by an angle grinder in the area of the red mark.  Sorry, Ray, but the drill bit will still work.

Rest of the installation of the water pump went fine.