A good half day's work

Started out checking into the brake issue.  I could see nothing wrong or interfering with the brake pads.  But I did notice that the new pads hit on parts of the rotor that the old pads did not.  We did not turn the rotors, so this leaves these rusty areas for the pads to hit.  I tried to capture it in this picture:

I cleaned up the rusty portions on the outside of the rotors on both sides with sandpaper.  Can't get to inside due to dust guard.  Took the car out and drove it.  First few applications of the brakes were just fine.  But later they starting squeaking again, not quite as bad as yesterday.  So I suspect just driving the car and wearing down these rusty portions of the rotor will resolve this issue.

Installed some other parts.  New shifter rubber and leather boot:

The leather works out kinds funky with the short shifter.  I installed the snaps to hold the footwell carpeting in place too.

I cleaned up the chrome rings on the gauges on the dash, looks good:

I also took apart the plastic shroud over the column to see why the turn signals don't cancel.  It appears they should cancel, but that portion of the switch assembly no longer functions.  A new switch costs about $30, so it's not worth trying to repair the old one.  So either Greg lives with the non cancelling turn signals or spends another $30!  This decision can be delayed.

Installed new spark plugs and drove car.  It still has a large hesitation when accelerating.  Need to put some more thought into how to resolve this one.

Driving the Car!

Ray and Greg were able to install the passenger seat and carpet while Vince was traveling earlier this month:

Today Vince installed the new Grose float valves plus he created copper tubes as float chamber overflow pipes.  We had an issue with the old float valves leaking, which then dripped on the exhaust manifold, not good.  No leaks with these new style float valves, but even if they do leak it will now dribble out the bottom of the car safely!

Vince then, with some trepidation, took off to drive the car from Boonville to his home in Evansville!  First significant drive of the car in we believe about 40 years, went 12 miles on a very hot day.  I made it, although the car did hesitate a little at part throttle.  It was then I remembered we had not replenished the oil in the carb dampers.  Oops!  After getting home I filled them up and it got MUCH better, still not perfect yet though.  Probably need some new spark plugs too.

There's a very loud squeal coming from the front brakes when applied hard, sounds like metal on metal, hopefully this is something obvious and easy to fix.

Despite the heat the car ran about 185 and had great oil pressure.  Tranny and clutch all worked fine, wheel balance is pretty darn good, got it up to 65 with no vibration.  Quite a few little items to still work on, but this is a major step!

Here's the car in it's new temporary home:

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.

Interior progress and waiting on parts

Did get other half of front suspension dismantled.  Plus Ray's neighbor at PM Maintenance, Danny, was able to use a torch and get the lower trunnion bolt out for us, thanks Danny!

Waiting on parts to put front suspension back together.  Meantime we're moving forward on the interior.  But first here's a picture of a windshield pillar after Ray sanded it down and painted it, looks pretty darn good:

We got some PC-7 epoxy, which is what the pros on old steering wheel restoration use.  Filled in biggest cracks and put a quick coat of black paint on, looks decent in a picture but in person needs a little more work.  But we think it will look very good when done.

Vince brought the two door caps home to start dismantle and recovering using the vinyl and beading from our interior kit.  The biggest challenge is the rusted up fasteners which typically have one end in a blind location embedded in wood.  When the threads will not break free, then the part embedded in the wood starts spinning.

Here's the parts from the first cap after dismantle:

Here's a closeup of a screw anchor Vince recycled from an old MGTD interior door to replace the one he had to drill out to dismantle the assembly:

The plywood at the base of the soft member of the cap was pretty rotted away, and was damaged in trying to get the screw anchors out.  Vince replaced this with plywood from above mentioned MGTD since it's a flat piece with just six holes in it, then glued the foam to the piece.  Picture shows foam, then new plywood piece, then old damaged plywood:

Finally here's a picture of the rebuilt door cap next to the old one from the other side.  Turned out pretty good.

Hopefully with what he's learned, Vince can do the other door cap in much less than six hours!

Exterior is Done, Front Suspension Causes Troubles

The exterior of the car is now done, looks great!  Even let the new owner install the ultimate "bling" on the car, the MG logo in the middle of the front grill.

Next we wanted to replace the front suspension bushings, a very typical failure on these cars that causes the wheels to be "bowlegged".  When we took it apart though we found we needed more than bushings.  The lower trunnions on both sides are supposed to have a bolt connecting them to the front and rear A arms which rotates within the bottom of the kingpin.  These bolts had seized in place, which meant the rotation now occurred between the bolt and the A arm.  The likely reason they seized is lack of grease.  And the effect is "wallering out" of the holes in the A arms:

In addition, on one side this high pressure on a small area of the bolt had caused the A arm to cut half way through the bolt, clearly a possible safety issue.

So the lesson here is - grease your front suspension components!  Not a real expensive fix, but it is time consuming, including waiting on parts to arrive.

Dreaded Windshield is Done!

Installing the windshield with new rubber along the bottom of the frame is one of the toughest jobs on an MGB from our experience.  It wasn't easy on this car, but was reasonable.  We tried a method we read about using fishing line to hold the rubber in place, we weren't that impressed with this method.  Good thing we also did our prior trick of putting a wire inside the rubber extrusion to pull the flap back forward after installation.  Turned out real well:

There is a little bit of graying around the edges of the windshield, actually shows up more than in real life in the above picture.

The front headlight buckets and turn signals are installed plus the front bumper:

And the rear bumper is installed:

Things are lining up quite nicely.