The MGA With An Attitude
MGA Guru Is GOING MOBILE - (August 16 - August 31, 2020)
Sunday August 16, 2020:
Good morning Indiana. This was about to be the first "normal" day we had in five months. We had about an hour left to drive to a "cottage on the lake" owned by Roger and Ruth Deacon in Howe, IN. They have hosted the annual business meeting for Michiana British Car Club for 16 years, and decided not to cancel it for some some virus. Bully! We were first to arrive at 10-am, followed minutes later by Roger and Ruth in a Triumph Stag (with original aluminum V8 engine). Very nice car, and a peek under the bonnet revealed an impressive Edlbrock 4-barrel carburetor.
 Next to arrive was a later model MGB with fuel vapor recovery disconnected, anti-run-on valve missing, and a Weber downdraft carburetor in place of the original twin SU's. This one was idling too fast, so we had
a chance to help. There was some discussion about how to slightly modify the Weber carburetor to restore fuel vapor recovery and anti-run-on functions, and installing a PCV valve to restore Positive Crankcase Ventilation. After tinkering with the carburetor a bit, adjusting choke linkage and fast idle parts, we finally determined the problem was a taught throttle cable. Simple adjustment of the cable jacket mounting relieved the tension on the cable wire, after which it was easy to adjust idle speed, and catch the owner with the big grin on his face.
By this time a caravan of cars from Fort Wayne had arrived, making 11 cars. I think a few more arrived later, as we ended up wo 25 people at the party. There was Charles Loew from Fort Wayne who wanted to see if it might be reasonable to hone out and repack the brake slave cylinders for his MG TF. And there was a TR Spitfire here sporting a twin cam engine from a Mazda Miata.
Then we all moved around to the lake side of the property for shade and breeze and friendly chat. This was soon followed by out BYO lunch, and then the official business meeting, including some discussion about a possible cruise day around end of month. Then time for more chat while a few people took a cruise around the lake on the powered pontoon boat. Charles Loew left a little early to pick up his wife for lunch. We followed about an hour later to head down to his place in Fort Wayne to check out his MG TF.
This is the one with the brake slave cylinders temporarily disassembled. It has not been running well, just around the block a couple of times, and towed home once, hopefully nothing serious. We found the front carburetor running rich, and could not turn it far enough to lean it out properly. Solution there was to remove the dashpot cover long enough to lower the mixture needle a tiny bit, after which it was possible to get proper mixture adjustment. The rear carburetor was running seriously on the lean side, so that was easy enough to adjust more rich. Finally a shade tree mechanic job of synchronizing air flow, and we had it idling nicely. Vroom, vroom, was followed by the traditional grin. Sorry, no test drive with no brakes.
Then we were off and running again, heading 90 miles west to Hanna, Indiana to visit my brother (one of them). We hadn't seen him for a couple of years, and he had lost his wife recently. Good to drop in for a visit with chat running to midnight. Score for the day was one club meeting two cars repaired, and driving more miles in two days than we have in any one month since March. It sure feels good to be mobile again. Just hope it can continue.
Monday August 17, 2020:
Made it to brother's place in Hanna, IN last night. Nice visit and stay over, but he no longer has a WiFi link, so this page upload is still delayed a day at a time.
 Tried to drive a little today, got a mile and had the ignition crap out. This has been bothering us for a while with very occasional misfire.and getting worse with time. Yesterday it was cutting out for a second or two at a time, occasionally, but not enough to take us off the road. This time it finally died and would not restart, rolled it off the road to check with a test light. Poke here and there, finding nothing amiss, and it started up again. So we drove it back to brother's place to park in the shade to tinker.
Test light showed a "dirty blink" when cranking, like not cleanly making the ground connection through the
points. So I pulled the cheap Chinese distributor out for internal inspection. No smoking gun,but the contact points looked a little dirty, so I sand papered the crap out of the contacts, and another push-on connector between the signal wire and points spring arm. I don't like the construction of this thing with multiple push-on connectors and the vacuum advance plate wobbling around notably.
Put it back together, and it ran well enough to drive several miles to the nearest small town, so put it on probation and wait to see how it goes
We found a Burger King with open dining room (limited table space), and WiFi, but their WiFi seems to be download only (like we found at the Canadian McDonald's), so I can browse a web site and read a BBS, but cannot log in to check email or FTP to upload to my web server. Bummer, keep looking.
Ah-ha! Later in the evening we found a McDonald's with open dining room (limited seating) and functional WiFi. Winner. But limited to 7am-7pm due to "deep cleaning", whatever that is. I might guess it is just an excuse for short hours due to limited traffic at this time. But it works, and we had time to download email, upload the travel log, and read some of the BBS. Tomorrow I can send the email responses, and now maybe we can get back to a half way normal travel life.
Tuesday August 18, 2020:
Found another McD with open dining room (limited seating). Smaller but serviceable (WiFi and power outlet). I hope this is the beginning of a trend.
Wednesday-Saturday August 19-22, 2020:
Now a third McD with open dining room, all in small town Indiana, not very close to brother's place (20 to 35 miles one way), so WiFi every second day now. Otherwise continued grunt work on the part numbers index list.
Sunday August 23, 2020:
Bit of a diversion today. Nephew showed up to take the engine out of his dirt track stock car Monte Carlo (which he is selling). He wants to put the engine in his '55 Chevy.
Then we were off to WiFi for a few hours, and more numbers grunt work in the evening.
Monday-Wednesday August 24-26, 2020:
Intentional day off of WiFi on Monday. Dropped into the nearest "open dining room" McD's (19 miles away from brother's place) for a few hours of WiFi on Tuesday, which went well, lots of catch up on email. And one new
web page for the sector gear in the MGA Coupe window lift mechanism. This part is now available new from an MGA enthusiast who has them laser cut with precision. Wednesday we tried the local tiny town library in Hanna, Indiana, which might have been okay, except their WiFi was down after a little power glitch, and their Comcast cable was dead (not knowing when it might be fixed). So back to bro's to continue grunt work on the MGA part numbers index. -- And we have a tentative appointment to visit two friends (one old and one new) with MGA's in process on the north side of Indianapolis sometime in the near future.
Thursday August 27, 2020:
Another brake light switch bit the dirt today. We caught this one early when it was still partly working but took too much pedal force to light up the brake lights (no brake light under gentle braking). It had been hinting at failure for a month or so, which is rather unusual. We cut the switch open, and got no surprises. The contact arrangement was pretty much like all other modern brake pressure switches with rubber diaphragm and a copper plate landing on fixed contacts, dual springs, and finally one badly burned contact attributable to slow-make and slow-brake action encouraging arcing.
The real surprise here is that this was the switch given to us by a reputable restoration shop in California who insists that they cannot send a customer car out with a bad brake switch. This one is made by "Commercial Ignition",
and I believe is from old vintage stock. The number ID is "XBLS7 Brake Light Switch, INTR 51600". UPC 5 022515 006402, and "016062 Brake Lte Swch Early, Bin 03659 LocationWH1", which I suspect was the retailer's part number and inventory information. On the back of the box was, "Commercial Ignition, Bermuda Road, Nuneaton, CVIO 7QQ, England". Useful life was 35,285 mi, in 17 months. So much for guaranteed long life from new old stock. I think this one will go on the "Faulty" list (but you will likely never see another one anyway).
Then we cut open a switch we had been carrying around for a year and a half. This is the Duralast RB401 that lasted 3-yr 8-1/2 mo, 130,204 miles, the longest lasting brake switch we have had in the past six years. The contacts were not notably burned, like maybe it should have been working. However, this is the first time I have ever found brake fluid in the contact chamber, so it most likely died from hydraulic lock preventing motion to mechanically make the electrical contact. That could account for gradually increasing pedal force rather than complete failure. Other people have reported this failure mode, but I had never seen it before (rare I suppose).
By coincidence, the new replacement switch is another Duralast switch, but I think this one is from a different manufacture (not made in Spain). Time will tell.
The left turn signal was intermittent from the night before. After a little testing I tightened a terminal screw inside the switch to fix that. Then we were off for our semi-daily WiFi fix in mid afternoon.
Friday August 28, 2020:
After successive 90+dF days it was slightly cooler today, so we took the opportunity to catch up some MGA maintenance with one of the most hated jobs, R&R of the MGA windscreen wiper motor (on a LHD car). We found a shady spot under the car port with a little breeze, but half through the job the sun was dead on us, and the breeze was entirely gone. The wiper motor had been acting up since early March, and I had procured a working MGB 2-speed wiper motor, but never got around to the tricky modification. Today we would remove the dead unit and see if it might be fixed. So with the normal amount of foul language, we removed master cylinder pushrods, removed the rubber pedal excluder (some bolts under the dash), disconnect pedal springs, removed the pedal pivot bolt, and dropped the pedals on the floor. Then remove wiper arms, undo the flare nut attaching the tube casing to the motor gearbox (stubby wrench helps), disconnect a few wires, remove a few bolts (some under the dash), and 4-janded wrestle and pry the motor unit put of the blind corner of the engine bay.
First discovery was the screws securing the gearbox cover were finger loose, so maybe the parking commutator was not always grounded. Inside still clean and nicely greased as we did it about 16-months back. Electrical test showed dead, even when jump wiring to bypass the loose grounding cover. The opening it up to check internal connections we found very good carbon brushes (which we had replaced last time around) and a slightly burned commutator, which could account for it going dead half way up the first stroke. So we chucked the armature in a lathe to polish up the commutator, and put it all back together with crossed fingers.
Bench test before installation worked, and it had enough torque that I couldn't stall the cable in motion. With a minor adjustment it parked with cable fully extended, just as prescribed. So we sweated and swore through the re-installation in the car, push cable, nuts and bolts, pedals, excluder, pushrods, and shimming the bogus splines in the wiper arm hubs so they wouldn't fall off. Finishing up final adjustment of pedal pushrods and putting tools away by flashlight after dark. But IT WORKS! Top up the screen-washer fluid, call it a night, and go have a cold shower.
Saturday August 29, 2020:
An easier maintenance day today. Change engine oil and filter, add hydraulic oil in the front shock absorbers, and diagnose why the carburetor cooler fan was not running. That last one was easy, as it turned out to be a
burned fuse. It has an in-line spade terminal fuse, and it was only 5-amps, so I think we will go shopping for a 10-amp fuse.
This was our every second day WiFi day, so off we went in mid afternoon. Got the oil and fuses. Carb blower works again. Found a new friend on the road, smile and wave. For the return trip at dusk I switched on the headlights to find low beams but no high beams. We also had no turn signals, so I must have buggered up some connections when pulling and pushing on the harness while servicing the wiper motor. Will tend to the new electrical bugs tomorrow.
Sunday August 30, 2020:
Electrical debugging time.
Missing high beams seemed to be the easiest problem, so attack that first. As expected, it was wires pulled loose from the dipper switch, so easy enough to crawl under the dash to dismount the kick switch, reconnect the wires, and put it all back. Then the failed turn signals turned out to be a blown horn fuse, which may sound odd to the well informed. Some years ago I rigged up 4-way hazard flashers in this
car, which moved the flasher supply wire from the ignition fuse to the always live horn fuse. We were tapping power from the horn fuse while testing the wiper motor, so I suppose I shorted the fuse to ground with an alligator clip when connecting a jumper wire. The brake lights are still connected to the ignition fuse, so they were still working. A new fuse was one inch away in the proper spare fuse holder, so that turned out to be a quick fix as well, and we tucked in a couple more spare fuses before closing up shop. Then it was back to a few more hours working on my part numbers index list, and a few more hours catching up with these photos and notes for the past few days.
Monday August 31, 2020:
Aside from the normal routine of every second day WiFi for BBS and email, a friend sent tech information to post a new web page for a 3D-printed spline wrench to hold the gearbox input shaft while changing the front bearing. There is also a downloadable printer file, in case you may have a 3D printer handy. And we drove 45 miles today with no incident with the car,so I recon we banished the electrical bugs.
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