The Webmaster Zone

I bought an inductive timing light and a combined tach/dwell meter today, both Sunpro units. I had set the timing statically in September but had overheating problems which I fixed by rotating the dizzy around until the car ran well. I knew the timing was off, but I didn't know how much. I read the instructions and figured out what went where taking into account the fact that my '66 is positive ground; very simple to hook up. First I connected the tach/dwell meter to check my tachometer. I knew it was wrong and I was itching to prove it. Back in October I calculated the engine r.p.m. for a given speed and gear, by multiplying engine speed, transmission ratio (4th no O/D is 1:1), rear axle ratio, and tire circumference to give m.p.h.. I got almost exactly what can be found in the Special Tuning Manual: 17.6 MPH/1000 RPM in 4th gear, no OD. My speedometer is (correctly?) calibrated to k.p.h., courtesy of the PO, so I didn't trust that either. Going down the I5 I realized that if I timed it so that I was taking exactly 60 seconds between mile markers, I would be going 60 m.p.h., which would tell me if the gauges were correct. The speedometer is close to correct; but it's still the wrong speedometer for my transmission as I've talked about before. The tachometer was way off, reading about 4,500 r.p.m. when, by my calculations, it should read 3,400. I could have had a helper twist the potentiometer in the tach while I did a timed 60 second mile, but I wanted to calibrate the tachometer either out of the car electronically or by a meter hooked up to the ignition system, out of paranoia more than anything else. Well it turns out the tach is wrong, which should come as no suprise. I pulled it out of the dash (remove the two thumbscrews in the back and the supports under them, remove indicator stalk cowl and slacken and rotate stalk for clearance, pull tach out the front) to get started on that. There is a small potentiometer inside than can be rotated to adjust the display. I have seen advice to drill a small hole in the case to aid in adjustment without the need to remove the case. Tomorrow's job; instead I turned the meter to measure dwell after rocking the car and setting the points gap to 0.015". I was suprised to see it only reading about 30 deg, my Haynes manual lists the dwell as 60 deg. I pulled off the cap and made the gap smaller by eye. After several iterations I got the dwell angle to 60 deg; but now the points gap was very small, much smaller than 0.015". Interesting that the first time I set the timing I found the gap to be quite small; now I'm not sure if my method is wrong or there is something wrong with the points or another component. Regardless, its set to 60 degrees now. I hooked up the timing light and slid under the front of the car to find the timing marks. Armed with a bit of Liquid Paper I tipped the end of the three timing marks (TDC, and 5 and 10 BTDC) and touched up the mark on the pulley wheel. Fired up the gun and whats this? The car is running extremely advanced, about 20 degrees. Possibly changing to the correct dwell made it worse. I slacked the adjustment bolt on the dizzy and rotate it far clockwise. Improved, its almost TDC now, but not far enough. Recheck the dwell and now its huge! Reset to 60 degrees. Check the timing, reducing the dwell has advanced it more. I fiddled around for a while longer, it seems like I have the dizzy turned as far as it can go clockwise, and the timing is still advanced from spec, so that will warrant some investigation. Packed up and went for a test drive. SWEET JESUS! I had no idea how bad it was; it still felt peppy and could match modern cars; but now it pulls like a TRACTOR. Watched the temp gauge carefully and listened for pinking, and all seems well so far, so I'm pretty pleased. I'll have to remember how it was in case I can't pass emissions next year. More to come tomorrow; its weekend MGB fever!

Pulled the heater switch and the (bypassed) panel light dimmer rheostat last week and took them upstairs, disassembled, cleaned all the junk off the contacts with 600 grit sandpaper, applied dialetric grease and reassembled. Put them back in the dash carefully, the heater switch is very solid now, no more need to wiggle the switch around trying to avoid the "dead spot". The two red and one red/white wires to the panel dimmer were duct taped together so I removed the old sticky tape and sprayed the connectors with WD40 which is great for getting rid of the sticky residue left by stickers or tape. The DPO had pushed the female spade connectors together and then squished them with a pair of pliers to hold so I used a small screwdriver and a pair of pliers to reconstruct their shape. I connected up the rheostat and installed it back in the dash and replaced the 4 panel bulbs with the Radio Shack #50 bulbs. With the rheostat all the way down they are about as bright as the old bulbs, they make the gauges quite readable and the light seems to be whiter from them but that may simply be the result of the old bulbs being, well, old. See the tech tips collection under Interior for the part number of those bulbs. I am going to pull the other two switches and clean them as well, I see the headlamp switch has some duct tape on the back of it so no doubt it could use some attention. Onto other things, last weekend in Seattle my speedometer was acting up again, sticking in the cold weather. I didn't think much of it until I was driving somewhere and I heard this nasty grinding noise that I didn't recognize at first but then realized was coming from the speedometer area, but then abruptly stopped and my speedo hasn't risen off zero since then. I have been trying to get my speedo out for the last week, the nut holding the speedo cable on was very very tight and I couldn't get a good grip on it because of the angle working behind the dash. I finally used a pair of pliers to turn it a bit at a time while laying in the footwell and that got it off. It looks like the drive on the end of the cable isn't turning though, so more troubleshooting is in order. I hope the problem doesn't end up being too expensive to fix. I am going to hunt for a new speedo anyway, since the one I have is wrong for the late model (black label LH type) all-sync overdrive forked into my 66. I should have a speedo with 1280 turns per mile, but I have a 1060 (from a Midget I believe) so my odometer is running 20% fast which I have verified against mile markers on the Interstate. No idea why the 1060 is in there. I could really go for some nice sunny warm weather right about now! I'm flying off to Minnesota at the end of the week, I'll do an oil change, brake bleed and valve adjustment when I get back.

Last night I pulled apart the heater motor to find the cause of the horrible squeaking noise and jamming that was preventing me from being as warm as I would like to be. It was very easy to remove and disassemble the heater motor, just three 5/16" nuts to take it off the heater box and three more to separate the halves of the motor. I then pried the clip off the plastic fan and pulled it off the shaft and removed the windings. Sanded everything until it was nice and clean, and noticed that one of the clips on the inside of the motor housing that holds down the magnets was bent up, no doubt causing the rubbing sound. Pushed it down and lightly smeared some grease on the shaft where it contacts the housing and reassembled. Problem solved, it blows like a champ now! I was positively roasting this morning. I took this morning off from work and went to try and pass AirCare again, since my insurance expires in two weeks and I can't renew without an emissions certificate I thought I would give it another try. We have rolling road testing here that measures CO and HC emissions at 45 kph and idle. The first time through, I almost passed; slightly better than the last time I tried, I think the Lucas Sport Coil is burning a little cleaner. I still failed the CO at idle test though, so I pulled into the parking lot and tried to lower my idle. The idle screws were backed out all the way already (I am almost positive I have an air leak around the intake manifold somewhere) but I noticed the choke screw was just touching so I backed it off completely and that dropped it down 200 rpm to about 1000. Got back into line (the same line, I didn't want the testing equipment to be a variable) and I passed!!!!!!! I did a little happy dance of joy and treated myself to a few odds and ends at Octagon Motors, like new rubber pads for the brake and clutch pedal. The PO had a rubber on the gas pedal but nothing on the brake and clutch, which is bass-ackwards, and when my shoes are wet the pedals could be a bit slippery. I'm off down to Seattle again tonight, I should be toasty warm with my new heater. It turns out the fan cutting out wasn't because the heater was getting stuck though, the switch is flaky, so I will pull that and see if I can fix the contacts. I also need to rewire the panel lights dimmer so I can install my superbright Radio Shack bulbs, the PO bypassed the dimmer, I can see the two red and one red/white wire being held together by duct tape (DPO).

The weekend after my last installment I went down and tried the screws around the headlamp bowls but they were still stuck after soaking in penetrant, so I got out the impact driver. Gave it a few good whacks with my big lead hammer, felt something give way; I looked down to see that the end of the driver had gone right through the bowl and the fender! I tore off the rest of the rusted out bowl with my hands and had a look; the fender behind the bowl was about 1/3 completely rusted away. I wasn't sure how to continue, but I knew the bowl on the other side wasn't as rusty as the passenger side so I would use this one to figure out how to proceed. My first thought was to fabricate a ring out of sheet metal and place it behind the fender so there would be good metal to screw into when mounting the headlamp bowls. That would sandwich the remaining metal between two surfaces and be quite solid. I set out and picked up tin snips and then headed out OMG to pick up new headlamp bowls, the one was rusted way beyond the point of return and rather than risk a second trip I decided to replace the other one as well. While at OMG I found out that the metal behind the bowl is actually two pieces, the fender and a metal ring behind it, and it was the metal ring that was primarily affected by the rust, so I purchased two of the rings as well, so I scrapped my sheet metal idea but now I had to go and buy a cold chisel to remove the old ring as it was tack welded into place. I'm certainly collecting tools at a fast pace! All this is spread over several days, I couldn't drive anywhere because the car had no headlights so I have to take the bus all over the place to pick up tools and parts. Anyway, I got everything together and transferred the old wires and adjusters from the old bowls to the new ones, then set at it with the chisel trying to undo the spot welds. Well after about 15 minutes with not a lot of progress, I called it quits as I didn't want another noise complaint quite so soon. I then thought I'd give drilling the old bolts out a try. After breaking 4 bits and lots of cursing I learned a lot about how to drill out screws. First, use good quality bits. Second, start with a very small size bit and go up in small increments. Third, be gentle, if you have to push really hard for it to bite you are probably using a bit that is too big to start. I also put a bit of motor oil on the bit before drilling each time to try and keep the bit as cool as possible, which seemed to work. At first I was having no luck drilling out the screws so I thought I would drill new holes since the new bowl screws were large metal screws instead of the small bolts that were used before. However, there are cutouts in the fender to allow clearance for the headlamp adjusting screws and I didn't want to cut more holes in the fender so I went back to drilling out the center of the small bolts. I found that the new screws would actually screw nicely inside the old bolts once a large enough hole was drilled so I did that for the remaining 7 bolts. Then I mounted the new bowls and put everything back together. Its so nice to have a car with eyes again! Cleaned the headlamp wire contacts with an eraser and smeared with dialectric grease. Adjusted the beam aim and after some fiddling got the trim rings back on. All that work and you can't even tell anything has been done from just looking at it! I did find a generic replacement spring for the one wiper arm at CT, since OMG doesn't sell the springs separate from the arms and the wiper arms are quite expensive. Put a new screw into the existing hole on the passenger's side arm, and used some blue loctite on the driver's side arm as the splines were slipping. Let it set for a few days and since then I have been driving in the rain a lot with no problems, so I can mark those two jobs complete, although I'll be looking at swap meets next year for some used wheelboxes and arms in decent condition. This week I will be greasing the heater motor so it spins properly and seeing if I can get a bit more power out of it. Its getting chilly!

Being coastal, Vancouver doesn't have as much of a winter (although you can see it on the mountains) as a "monsoon season"; its been raining non stop for a couple of weeks and it will probably continue for a few more, which gives me lots of incentive to make the car as waterproof as possible. Had another go at getting the wipers off today, they are the early clip-on type wipers and try as I might I couldn't pry them off, so I let them soak in Liquid Wrench for a few days. Got the driver's side wiper arm off without too much problems after the treatment, but here is a handy hint: first screw the 3/4" chrome nut just below the wiper arm up to be flush with the top of the threads on the wheelbox that it screws onto, because the metal is very soft and if you try and lever the wiper arm off with a screwdriver it will make a mess of the threads at the top. I learned that the hard way, but when I went to do the passenger side I knew better and it went very smoothly. Removed the 30 year old disintegrating grommets and replaced with new ones, then put the chrome bit on top back on and screwed the nut back down snugly. I discovered that the passenger's side wiper arm was actually being held on by a screw that had been drilled through the side into the splined shaft, because the splines are all but gone. Its always an adventure working on the car. I also broke the spring in the passenger side arm, it was old and rusty, and it snapped when I tried to remove it. Since I was on a roll I decided to attack the headlamps next. Removed the chrome rings (a paint can opening tool is very handy for that; I picked one up recently for 30 cents) and removed the headlight assembly so I could get a good look at the bowls. One is quite rusty, the other not bad, but I couldn't get the mounting screws to budge so they are soaking in penetrant and I'll attack them tomorrow with the impact wrench (I'm learning to work smarter, not harder). Progress is slow, but each system I go over is another item I can check off the list. I'm giving attention to parts that haven't been touched in 32 years when they were assembled in Abingdon so its a good feeling when I can save a part from rusting into oblivion. All it takes is some effort, and a whole lot of patience, and a bit of money (although I've found the more effort and patience you put in, the less money you need). I got paid yesterday, so its off to OMG next week to buy springs, bushings, and a few other things for the front suspension rebuild. I won't be able to get everything, but if I get a few parts at a time I will get it done eventually. Some of the paint was chipping off around the wipers, so I had a close look, it looks like the original BRG was painted over with blue at some point, then green again, and then red.

Received a used Lucas Sport Coil from a fellow MGs list member today, so of course I had to go downstairs and install it. Made sure to attach the + side of the coil to the dizzy (positive ground, remember) and pulled each plug and increased the gap from 0.025" to 0.035". I could feel the difference immediately! It accelerates faster, throttle response is better, and it even idles smoother. The old coil looked very old, so it was probably ready to retire soon anyway, what better replacement than a shiny gold Lucas part. Keen.