Weekend wrenching

[Skid Row Joe]

Originally Posted by alabbasi

Then I gave the 280 a good wash as the guy next door agreed to take care of the stone chips. He has a mobile operation and normally does stone chip repairs for dealers.

Al, I need removal/touch-up paint service on my E300 smoke silver color. Is this man available? Reasonable if I bring in to his shop for appointment while I wait?

Thanks,

[alabbasi]

Originally Posted by Skid Row Joe

Al, I need removal/touch-up paint service on my E300 smoke silver color. Is this man available? Reasonable if I bring in to his shop for appointment while I wait?

Thanks,

David is a good guy. Email me through the website and I will send you the touch up guy's details (I cannot PM you from this site). I think he's reasonable and I have used him on a couple of my cars.

[sjefke]

Originally Posted by alabbasi

Bert

Thanks for the response, the carbs have been rebuilt by a local re builder in Dallas, TX who has offered to take a look at the car. I suspect it's just an adjustment issue.

Couple of tips:

1 - ask rebuilder whether he/she renewed the SU throttle shafts. They usually change jets, needles, gaskets, etc. but skimp on replacing the metal shafts, and those wear out cause air to leaking into the carb along the shaft.
2 - Make sure the inlet manifold is bolted tight. Easy to get air in between.
3 - If emission system is present, disconnect if possible.

That's why I love my '63 B - just fuel & fire systems under the hood, nothing more to worry about.

Also, use the little levers on the back of each carb to test settings while engine is running (see workshop manual). If lifted, engine should speed up a bit and then drop slightly. If immediate drop, then mixture too poor. If engine speeds up and stays there, then mixture too rich. You can tune the SUs yourself. MGB workshop manual procedure works great.

Compared to MGs, I dread the day I have a problem like that with my Benz.

Bert

[alabbasi]

Bert

The guy who rebuilt the carbs put new shafts and butterfly's in it. He's quite popular amongst the MG circles and rebuilds a lot of SU's.

I will run these checks on the weekend. I had some horrible issues with my 280SEL 4.5 that were addressed by replacing the computer with one from a junk yard. I spent a lot of money trying to figure it out before I found the cheap junk yard part. Now every time I pass a D-Jet car, I pull the computer and map sensor.

[rusty_parts2001]

I finally got the '64 SEb coupe running again, after replacing plugs, points, rotor and condenser. I set the gap to perfection, I thought, but the darn thing wouldn't start. After checking, rechecking, and resetting the gap many times without success, I was stumped. It just wouldn't fire up.

Then I replaced the new Bosch condenser (made of some tinny brasslike metal with a thin green wire) with the old Bosch condenser (made of a nickel like material with a heavy gauge black wire) and the thing fired right up, and idled really smooth. From previous advice and suggestions here, I had replaced most of the injector pump hoses, and messed a little with the idle air screw.

The kicker is that both condensers bear the same part number, so I guess either the new one is defective, or the old one was sufficiently different that it made a difference. The dwell currently sits at 34 degrees, with the feeler gauge setting I made. The book calls for a dwell setting of 38 degrees. Should I fool with it to set a little narrower gap? What difference does 4 degrees of dwell make (I'm just asking, out of curiosity)?

[alabbasi]

Mine was pretty lame, I replaced the suspension pump on the 6.9 and now it doesnt leak. However my freshly rebuilt and installed MGB engine had it's oil pump fail and hence we're having to tear it down and throw more money at it.

[alabbasi]

Today was a light but productive weekend. A good friend and fellow MG owner stopped by to look at my recently rebuilt and destroyed engine. It was rebuilt but ran for about two hours with no oil getting to out of the sump. He told me that he was amazed and how good the engine still looks considering how long it was run without oil.

This is probably because we lubed the snot out of the cam and every other moving part of the engine.

He took the engine away to take at apart completely and perform a postmortem. I got a call from him a few hours later and informed me that the oil return valve wasn't correctly installed and this is why the engine ran dry. He also told me that the cam bearing was not correctly installed and the key ways used were not correct and as a result, it would have probably blown up in a couple of hours.

He's going to take the engine to the machine shop to get the block boiled and measured and then take it from there.

Today I changed the oil on my tire smoker 6.9. It's always fun to change the oil on a 6.9. You always end up wearing it. The car runs much smoother now with the oil and filter change. The old oil was super dirty.

Next job was to replace the self leveling valve on my 79 6.9. It's been sitting nose down for some time and would not raise when you would pull the lever. It sat so low that on hard braking, the tires would rub against the wheel arch.

I could not find the self leveling valve until Ron told me where to look. Upon inspection, it looked like the ball joint on the upper part of the control arm broke and as a result, valve was doing it's own thing. I had a spare control arm from a TD that I installed after moving the climate control servo and before i connected it to the upper arm, I cranked the engine and raised the valve lever. The front suspension came right up which is excellent news. I set it correctly and the attached the arm. The car now drives like a dream.

After that, I went over to a friends house and help swap the dashboard on his 85 Jaguar XJ6. His wood was peeling and looking awful . But he managed to land a wooden dash from a Vanden Plus model for $150. Replacing the Dash was about as easy as it could get and between the two of us, we had the old one out, all the gauges, switches and computer swapped over and installed in about 2 1/2 hours. I wish MB dashes could be that easy.

[sjefke]

Pressure valves on MGB engines are often cause of problems and almost always due to human/mechanic error. If I recall, workshop manual warns about it. Oil pumps can also be nasty in not priming and pumping properly on first run. Best practice (I do it with all engines) is to leave all the sparkplugs out and run the engine on starter ONLY until you see the oil pressure rising in the meter. When I installed my rebuilt engine way back I was glad I followed this procedure because it did not show oil pressure either. In the end, it turned out to be air in the oil meter line and some bleeding to care of that.

My B once blew a oil cooler hose (due to poor hydrualic shop work) and ran for half a minute without pressure. Engine survived. They may not be as technological fancy as the MB engines, but those BL B-series cast iron blocks are sure sturdy.

Good luck!

Bert

[Dee8go]

I think I may have wrenched my back this weekend . . . but I did get a new hood pad glued into my wagon and cleaned the gunk off the engine so I can see if anything is leaking in there.

[rusty_parts2001]

Did you remove the hood to do it, or glue it with the hood open?

[alabbasi]

So this weekend, I found a Euro 500SEC in the Junk yard and a Chevy Powered Jag. The 500SEC donated it's Fuel Distributor for the Euro 6.9 project. The Warm Up regulator and cold start injector also came along.

I also picked up the engine mount brackets for the Chevy powered Jag as mine collaps when the PO ran the car off the road.

The recently painted silver 6.9 finally has a working windshield. The work took about 2 hours with two guys working on it. But at least I know of a company that is capable of doing the work. My other silver 6.9 could use new rubber and front windshield as the windshield is clouding up an the 6.3 also needs it.

What horrible weather here in Dallas. You can just about work.

[thorsen]

The MGB story reminds me of when I rebuilt the engine in mine so my fiance and I could leave our wedding in it. It needed a new camshaft and main bearings, and I put a new oil pump in while I was there, just out of principle.

Started it up and took it for its maiden voyage. About a mile down the road the oil pressure dropped to 0. I got it back and the oil pump had broken.

And back on topic, here was my weekend wrenching. http://youtube.com/watch?v=xmmjfvhTGzY

[alabbasi]

Most of my time has been spent on fixing up my new house but today I thought I would go to the shop and spend some time there to unwind. My buddy Chuck who helps me with the cars was working on getting the MG back together. While he was there, I thought I would switch out the fuel distributor on the 76 Euro 6.9 with the one that I pulled from a Euro 500SEC (aluminum) in order to determine if it will run better.

Currently the car is very hard to start and cannot be cranked without constantly squirting carburetor cleaner into the throttle body for about a minute.

The old fuel distributor was in awful shape, it was caked with varnish on the underside and the piston fell out as I pulled the distributor off. It seems like that the clip that holds the piston in place was missing.

The car ran a little better once the distributor was replaced, but it did not cure the starting problem. So I replaced the cold start injector and the warm up regulator from that 500SEC at the junk yard. It didn’t seem to help. The warm up regulator was slightly different and so it would not mount correctly. I stopped at this point because I was out of ideas. I also thought it would be good to soak the old WUR for a few hours in part cleaner so that I can replace it next week.

The Euro 6.9 was painted and a really shoddy job was performed. So I spent a bit of time wet sanding the trunk lid in an effort to unscrew the cock up of a job that the last guy did. While it did improve the paint, it was by no means good enough. I’m going to have to repaint the car (little by little).

My primary goal is to be able to get it running at least to the point where I can easily drive it in and out of my shop. There seems to be another injector right by the fuel distributor (as well as one up front near the radiator). Does anyone know what could be failing that it would prevent the car from starting? Like I said, if I run the engine on carb cleaner for about a minute, it will run on it’s one, but still seems to be under powered.

The fuel filter has been replaced and so have the fuel lines so I do not think it’s a blockage.

I then tried to drive the MG home after having the engine rebuilt again. It ran fine while at the shop but as soon as I got around the corner it acted up and died on a busy intersection. Luckily the car is light and I managed to push it into the gas station. I thought I may have run out of the gas (as the gas gauge stopped working after the engine was pulled) but it didnt seem to be it. I got the car running and it seemed fine so I got on the highway and went on my way ..... for about half a mile. For anyone in the know, I broke down again on I35 heading north just after the 635 exits. I did not feel safe in the MG with all those 18 wheelers blasting by. I got the car running for long enough to get onto the service road before it died again and then a friend hooked me up using a tow rope and drove me home. I really should give in stick to what I know best and buy a 450SL.

A good friend and MG expert is going to stop by in a couple of days and take a look.

I am also going to take a stab at selling 6 cars by the end of February. I don't know which ones will go but I suspect that the 280SEL will be the first one to advertised. I love driving it, but if I don't sell it, I'll never get the urge to do anything with my 6.3.

[sjefke]

For the MG, my first guess is a fuel pump problem (very common). Did you renew the pump? If so, check the ground too. Bang your hand (or use rubber hammer) on the board behind the passenger seat where the pump is mounted. If it was stuck, that can get it going again (especially after the car has been sitting for a while). Otherwise, crawl under it and tap it with a hammer. It should tick.

Otherwise, ignition problem. Make sure the distributor has the right cap and rotor (they sold me a wrong one more than once) and is tightened. These cars are pretty simple and parts are cheap enough that you can replace an entire system (like fuel pump and distributor) without much cost (compared to MB).

Good luck,

Bert

[alabbasi]

Thanks for the response, this car still needs a bit of work. I think I identified the problem to be a loose distributor cap. There is however a leak in the tank somewhere. I think it's a fitting but I need to take a closer look.

The car came to me in boxes, It's been put together and taken apart a few times and it feels loose!

I need to take it up on a rack and tighten everything up.