The Webmaster Zone

Well didn't get everything on my list done, I have been stricken with the dreaded flu thats going around, but between drinking a couple litres of tea and eating garlic like candy I think I've fended off the worst of it. On Sunday I carefully took apart the tachometer and picked and scraped the goo and old rubber off everything, then went at the case with some steel wool and elbow grease to get off the surface rust. Drilled a small hole in the back of the case to allow adjustment after reassembling, exactly 4.2 cm from the bottom-left mounting screw hole for the innards (looking from the back), and 3.2 cm from the upper right hole. After I taped up the case I gave it a couple of coats of Tremclad Gloss White and left it to dry in my painting booth (aka the bathroom). On Monday at lunch I went over to Octagon and picked up some new O-rings for the tach as well as an oil filter and one of those magnetic fresh air catch covers to eliminate a big draft coming from around the vent. Reassembled the tach later in the week, and today when I got home I just couldn't wait any longer so I went downstairs and installed it. Popped the bonnet and hooked up my new tach meter to the coil and propped it up where I could see it and did a bit of contortion to synchoronize the gauge to dead on with the meter. It looks great in the dash! The clean glass, polished chrome, new white paint and uprated bulbs make the gauge much, much brighter, in fact I was so pleased with the results that I pulled out the gas gauge and just disassembled and cleaned that as well. After installing the tach I used some spray contact cement to fix some carpet that was falling off the kick panels in the passenger footwell. I then mounted my fire extinguisher on the kick panel; I find I'm going a bit quicker around corners these days so I'm trying to eliminate "clunks" from loose equipment moving around. It looks great, come to think of it it's in the same spot as the '71 on page 44 of "Original MGB". I've seen them mounted laying flat on top of the transmission tunnel between the seats but I didn't want to drill into metal. Still lots of things on my to-do list but it feels great to fix these things I have been meaning to get to for quite a while. With the tach reading so low before, I had no idea how high my engine could rev!