The Webmaster Zone

Last night after work I ventured down to the garage and tackled the cooling system. Drained the radiator and the back tap, and flushed a few buckets of the old coolant back through the radiator to try and clean out a bit of gunk. Looked pretty dirty. Then I removed the three old hoses (didn't replace the heater hoses - do that another time) and put in new ones, replacing the worm-drive type rad clamps with the proper wire clips. Refilled with 1 bottle of RedLine Water Wetter and a 60/40 mix of water and antifreeze (which works out perfectly to 3L of water and 2L of antifreeze). Let the car run for a while, doesn't look like there are any leaks. I'll find out how much difference it makes in the border lineup tomorrow! I almost always have to turn off the car for a while in the line to keep from overheating. Another thing to check off my list, the short rubber tube off the bottom part of the radiator was cracked and looked just about ready to expire. Better to catch these things before they catch you, I say. I also took a good look at the front calipers and it looks like the chrome piston is seized on both sides. Not good, I'll be searching the MGs archives for information on rebuilding those... I got my 13-row oil cooler from Moss as well, I'll install that on Friday and of course post a full report on its effect on my oil pressure.

Well the new coolant is definately keeping the car a lot cooler, in the lineup at the border where I always have heat problems, I didn't have to shut the car off at all. When I got down to Seattle though I was greeted with an unpleasant suprise, my Moss Motors order got messed up and instead of sending a box with oil cooler hoses and a box with the cooler, they sent two boxes of hoses and no cooler. Called them up and they will ship out a new oil cooler kit Monday, so it will be another 2 weeks before I can finally get it installed. Bit of a drag.

Kim being the sweetie she is brought up the replacement oil cooler kit Moss sent up last week after discovering their error. Installation was fairly basic, after I managed to get the old bypass hose off. I had to remove the oil pressure gauge hose (which is leaking, gotta replace that) and the distributor cap in order to get enough purchase on the nut. Note that you must put the grommets on the hoses and then feed them through the radiator shroud and into place. Secured the hoses and put the rubber straps in place and fired it up to look for leaks. None were found and as it was a nice (if windy) day today a test drive was in order, we picked up some lunch to go and drove over to Point Grey for a nice meal overlooking the ocean. Great improvements in pressure! I was running about 14/32 psi at idle/3000 r.p.m. before when the engine was really hot, now its running 30/50 thats about a 50% gain not bad at all! I'm very pleased with the results. Coming up next (next paycheque that is) we have a caliper rebuild, and hopefully I can tackle the front suspension finally. Need to get a quote on a set of minilite replicas all around too (I can dream can't I?), it would be nice to make a cosmetic improvement for a change ;-)

Well I went to get my insurance renewed and suprise, my emissions certificate was expired. I was still going under the testing the previous owner had done, I could have sworn it ran out in November. So this Saturday I got a day permit and started in on it. Pulled off the rocker cover and adjusted the valve to tappet clearance using the rule of 9 (number the valves 1-8 put the car in 4th and roll it until a valve is rocking. Take its number and subtract from 9, that is the valve to work on. Rinse, repeat). Several valves were quite tight. Scraped out the old gasket and the top of the head with a razor blade. Ran a thin bead of blue silicon gasket sealer around the rocker cover and pressed in the new thick cork gasket, let that dry a while, then lightly oiled the mating surface on the head with fresh engine oil. Replaced the nut cover washers and grommets and torqued it down to 8 ft lbs. Hopefully that will eliminate some of the oil leaks around the engine, I still have to replace the short oil pressure hose as well. Then I adjusted the point gap and set the static timing (retarded ever so slightly), checked the spark plug colour (biscuit is the goal) and gap and replaced. Fired it up and it ran really well so I tried my luck at the testing station. I came very close to passing, I passed all the categories except hydrocarbons at idle by 30% so I'm sure after I adjust the carbs (the front is running slightly rich, the rear quite lean), perhaps retard the timing a little more, I can get it through. Damn I'm good *cracks knuckles* heheh

Gosh its nice out. Went for a drive this morning before heading to work, first to Octagon to pick up a caliper repair kit and some new gaskets for the carbs, then over to Canadian Tire for a few odds and ends. The air is cool but the sun is warm, perfect temperature for driving with a sweater on and the top down. The engine purrs along, the dry leaves swirl around as you drive by... I love Autumn!

Lots of news to share, on Friday I spent the day working on the car. I got permission from my landlord to use an outlet in the underground parking garage where I work on my car, so I purchased a long extension cord and a mechanic's light so now I can actually see what I am doing! Before I was using a flashlight, trying to illuminate my work area while holding tools etc, very frustrating. So that makes my life a lot easier. I pulled the rocker cover to find out why one of the tappets is making so much noise. Examined one of the adjusters on the #3 cylinder tappet that I had a bit of trouble with before - it was very tight, so I readjusted to 0.015" and tried to tighten the adjusting nut. Stripped! I pulled off the nut and thank goodness, the adjusting screw was alright (you can only take them out the bottom) but I had no nuts so I had to change and take the bus out to Octagon Motors and get a new nut. Gotta hate it when you have to run around for a 50 cent part. Came back, installed, set the clearance and replaced the valve cover. Replaced the fuel filter, the old one was, well, old and blowing through the end it seemed quite restrictive. Who knows how old it was. I re-checked the points gap and set the static timing by using my trouble light in series with the wire from the coil to the dizzy. Then I screwed up my courage, and tackled the carbs. Following Roger Garnett's SU Tuning Guide (available below) and the Haynes manual side-by-side, I synchronized using an old toy stethoscope I had, changed the mixture, tested, and repeated a whole lot of times. I finally got it just right, the problem is I can't get the idle low enough! This week I'll look for air leaks again, I think that may be the culplrit - and it may be as easy to fix as replacing the intake manifold gaskets. I replaced the air filter and float bowl gaskets, they were very old. It was idling at around 1500 r.p.m. at this point (6 hours or so after I began the day's activities) so I reassembled and went for a test drive. The tappet noise was gone, thats good... seems to have power. The exhaust note didn't sound the same at all though. Checked the plugs quickly for an indication of the mixture, looks good so I'm off down to Seattle. Halfway down and my left front tire self-destructs. I hate changing tires on highways with trucks blasting by! Glad I had the spare - however there is a tear on the sidewall of the spare where I removed a very large screw and I know now that prolonged driving is going to chafe the tube and give me another flat, so I take it easy and it holds out the rest of the drive to Seattle. Drove around all weekend on it actually, but once I was in hilly Seattle I really noticed that I had no power, and also that the car was generating a lot more heat than it should! I checked the plugs again, a nice tan colour so I decided I must have got the timing wrong. Turned the dizzy c.c.w. and that made it worse, so I turned it c.w. and bingo! Power is back. Guess I somehow had it retarded... it will be nice when I have a proper stroboscopic timing light, then I can check to see if the tach is accurate as well. One down! The hole in the bottom of the expansion chamber in the exhaust got a lot bigger on the weekend, the car sounds like crap now. Bottomed it out one too many times in my Trip to Hell (a.k.a. Squamish) couple months ago, now its caught up with me and its time for a visit to Octagon to get the center section replaced. On Sunday, I took the spare off, removed the tire and tube, sure enough the tube was starting to crack near the puncture in the radial. Patched the tube just in case, and put a patch on the inside of the radial to protect the tube and reassembled. Should be good enough for a while, I've got to get all new tires all the way around soon anyway. I'm thinking I will try and true the wire wheels I've got and get them sandblasted, then paint and clearcoat; I'd love minilite replicas but I have to be realistic, I don't have the cash right now. It seems the wheel that blew was unbalanced because with the new rim on, no more wheel shake at 100+kph! Bonus! Never content to rest on my laurels, I have all the parts I need to rebuild the front brakes so thats my goal for this week. Hopefully the chrome pistons will not need to be replaced. Should be f-u-n, stay tuned!