The MGA With An Attitude
MGA Guru Is GOING MOBILE - (July 16 - July 31, 2018)
Monday July 16, 2018:
We had a little diversion this morning, going to chase down a lead from yesterday's car show. A vendor there dropped a card on us, so we were adding another line to our Shops list. Say hello to Colin at Old English Car Repairs in rural Harrow, Ontario. Plenty of interest in vintage British cars, and he has been here for 40 years.
Then we had a 100+ mile run north to visit Obsolete Auto in Point Edward, ON. Lots of years here, and tons of parts for your vintage British cars. Looks like good club support as well.
Must have been an ad in a club newsletter that turned us on to Miron Rebuilders in London, ON, another hour to the east. This was supposed to be electric motor service, starters, generators, alternators and the like. It looked promising on arrival, but locked up and empty (along with half of the rest of the building), and the phone number reported as "unassigned". Rather odd message, and on-line listings are only address and phone number, so we recon this one is out of business.
We took one more shot in the dark, looking for Mark Whitfield in London, ON (not knowing the street address). Supposed to be another electric motor rebuilder. Been past here twice before, trying a phone call each time, and this time with same results. We get and active number with a welcome recording, and leave a message, but never get any call back. So no definite determination, but we will consider this one to be "dysfunctional".
 Spent the rest of the day planning for the next week or so of travel. We found a small informal club a few hours to the north, but having problems finding a compatible time slot for everyone involved. Catching up photos and notes late night.
Tuesday July 17, 2018:
A little farther east, one shop visit scheduled today for Bob Grunau of Grünau-Garage in Mississauga, ON. We have him down as making unique high quality parts (for vintage MGs among other things). No one home, and no answer to a phone call, so we left a voice message and moved on. Hope to get a call thorough sometime to verify the information (or not).
Then we shuffled off to find a WiFi spot where I was doing a Links Check on my web site (which I hadn't done for at least five years). Wow, what a nasty case of neglect. Spent the rest of the day fixing broken links, likely missed some of them, so I will have to run the Links Check again later.
Moving on a bit farther east tonight, stuck for a while in a creep and crawl construction zone, noticed cooling system getting too warm, so pulled over to top up the radiator (again). Did that six days earlier, so figured the core plug must be leaking more by now. While topping it up I noticed water (rather a lot of it) dribbling from the heater valve onto the distributor. Okay, gotta fix that, but not in the mood to replace the heater valve on the side of the road in the dark. So close the valve to stop the flow from the cylinder head, and clamp the baby Vice-Grip onto the hose to isolate the valve from the heater (back flow). Top up the radiator and drive on.
Wednesday July 18, 2018:
Morning meeting in Port Hope, ON, with British Saloon Car Club of Canada, Eastenders. We may have collected 15 people, eight cars, but nothing that looked like a British Saloon car. We had a new Mercedes 350 SLK convertible, a vintage Mercedes 280 SL convertible, A new Cadillac sedan, a vintage Cadillac convertible, a '64 Ford Thunderbird, a '65 Ford Mustang, and one MGA with a trailer. Along the way we picked up a '66 Ford Galaxie 500 convertible. They seem to like big toys.
Heading out for a short cruise today to Oshawa Community Museum in Oshawa, ON (back west). Mapquest says the short route is 29 miles in 31 minutes (56-mph average). The scenic route chosen should be 36 miles in 1-hr 12-min (30-mph average). But the rally leader drove a particularly slow stop and creep pace turning it into a rather frustrating 1-hr 45-min trip (21-mph average). Much like rush hour gridlock pace, not my idea of a casual country road cruise. At one point the leader's '64 Thunderbird died and had a tough time restarting, maybe a vapor lock issue? We finally got to the museum and city park, where I soon grabbed an ice cream cone and spent most of an hour at a shaded picnic table (forget the museum).
Then we had another short jaunt north across the city, 6-miles in 15 minutes to a restaurant called the Waltzing Weasel. That was good for a decent lunch and time to chat before the party broke up.
With the MGA cooled down (and sitting under a shade tree), it seemed like a good time to change the leaky heater valve.
Yes we had one in the magic trailer (need to reorder another now). About 15 minutes for the swap, then off to find a WiFi spot. I thought it was somewhat short lived, so I checked my records. Pior new heater valves have lasted 202,000 miles, 166,000 miles, and this one only 41,000 miles in 14 months. Do we see a pattern here?
Thursday July 19, 2018:
Decided not to go to a club meeting in Ottawa, because we did that one last month. After catching up photos and notes and email, I decided to have another look at the web site broken links and orphan files (which had apparently been neglected for about five years). Some of the orphan files were a couple new tech pages in process, long time forgotten and never finished, and I ended up finishing and uploading the new pages. Some of that was a book, a "Service Parts List for SU Carbretters" used on BMC Cars. That was an index page and 20 PDF files for a 406-page book. Fun project, gobbled up some hours, but I finally got it uploaded. Then back to investigating and fixing broken links. The rest of the day slipped away while the job was still muddling along, not nearly finished.
Friday July 20, 2018:
It's what I get for not doing link checking for five years. Spent the entire day fixing on-site errors, most of them reported as orphan files. Much of it was a much copied problem of putting large image in a small box on a web page. The page still works, just takes longer to load, while the small image file gets to be an orphan (not connected to anything). Some of it was uploading image files that I ultimately did not use on a web page, but forgot to delete. I was persistent and finished the first pass, sometime after midnight, but will have to run the link check again to see what I may have missed. And this is just on-site links, as I haven't requested checking of off-site links yet.
Saturday July 21, 2018:
Started the day by taking care of the required oil change, then a late breakfast and catching up with email I didn't get to yesterday (plenty of that). Just so nobody gets bored, we took in a local cruise night type car show at Canadian Tire in Ajax, ON. More than 100 cars I'm sure, much of it being "newer", and lots of it being big American stuff and street rods. Directing my interest toward pre-1980 cars, there was a fair selection beginning with '59 Ford, '65 Mustang, and four VW Beetles in a neat row behind, a nice vintage P/U truck that I can't immediately place, and a Cadillac convertible maybe 1948.
There was a '57 Plymouth and a '60 T-bird, and a couple of Datsun/Nissan Z-cars which may be spin-offs of variants of MG (if you can make the Datsun connection from the early 60's). The Delorean (with Renault engine) has not much connection to anything else, especially this one produced in Texas in 2012 (google DMC Texas).
There was after all some British interest there, like the '76 MGB converted to '67 spec, and the '66 MG Midget (1098) tailed up to my trailer. There was also an MG TD two spaces away, and a Triumph TR6, both of which left before I could get the pictures. And the was one lonely Nash Metropolitan, 1955 I think, but this may have had the Hudson badge on it. These are considered to be variants of MGA (or MG Z Magnette) because they carry a similar Austin 1500 engine. I did get to chat with all of these car owners, so it was a pretty good night.
Sunday July 22, 2018:
By chance we happen to be sitting today in Cookstown, Ontario, on ON-400, 25 miles north of ON-401. We were heading another two hours north to Owen Sound, but our appointment canceled out, so we skipped the four hour round trip and reverted back to link checking and planning.
Then we had a walk-in and became acquainted with Barry Grigg from Gilford, ON. He has a personal shop where he specializes in sheet metal work for vintage British cars, 6-miles east of ON-400. Good going, another one for the Shops list. Not only that, but he told us about another shop 25 miles south in Cedar Valley, ON that does mechanical and electrical for vintage British cars. Wow, a two-fer. That one is 12 miles from ON-400 via the scenic route. They can also farm out paint work, so collectively we get close to full restoration service for your LBC just north of Toronto. Now we're planning to visit the other shop in the morning (Monday work day). Spent the rest of the day doing touch up of linked files on my web site.
Monday July 23, 2018:
After breakfast and email check, it was time to check out the shop we found out about yesterday, so we were off to visit British Sports Car Center in Cedar Valley, Ontario. Cars on the side, cars in the back, say hello to the owner who was working on the '67 MGB when we arrived.
After a short chat we got a peek at the jobs inside, mostly MG and Triumph cars being the meat of the business, pretty sure there were at least ten cars indoors.
Then back to ON-400 south,followed by fighting stop and slow traffic along ON-400 west, and a couple hours later we arrived in Woodstock, ON to visit John Griffith, who is President of British Saloon Car Club of Canada. Aside from questions about our road trip, we spent some quality time chatting about car club organization, purpose, benefits, membership, web sites, why clubs may be getting smaller, and what they might do to improve the club offering. Late evening dinner, and crash for the night.
Tuesday July 24, 2018:
On a tip from yesterday, we paid a mid morning visit to Britcar Sales & Service in Woodstock, ON, another shop we just found. From the outside this is all you see, because there are no project cars parked outdoors. Say hello to the owner Philip Allen. He does mechanical and electrical work, and has several weeks backlog of business, but he controls shop traffic by only accepting delivery of customer cars when there is space inside to accommodate them. Finish one job and deliver the car, and then call another customer to bring in the next car. Nice tidy business practice.
Philip has been in the business more than 50 years, and I noticed a number of framed technical certificates on the wall. There was a Triumph certificate from 1966, but the one that made me smile was the Lucas certificate from 1967. Several years back I had posted on my web site a copy of the Lucas Technical Service "Overseas Technical Correspondence Course", but this is the first time I have ever personally know anyone who had completed the course and held the certificate.
Addendum: Phillip is retiring, aucthioning off shop equipment and memorabilia on May 4, 2019. The shop will be permanently closed after the auction.
The next story has not much to do with Brit car service, but on a tip we stopped to visit Woodstock Tire Service. They have this neat little Mini "recovery vehicle" (tow truck to us Americans). With the dual wheels it looked the business, and we recon it might be able to tow my MGA, but otherwise it is mostly just for show. At another business location they have a matching Mini delivery van which is used for regularly service, commonly delivering four tires at a time. Sorry I didn't get that picture.
Having some free time, we took another tip and went to visit Hilderley Motors in Innerkip, ON. Not a current service shop, but this place used to be a Chrysler dealer, then more recently the aforementioned auto shop. When it was to be sold recently, the seller refused to sell it unless it would be preserved. So the current owners, father and son team, are restoring the place. Thought we were going to find the son there today, but didn't happen, so we had to settle for a few pictures. We recon it will end up being someone's personal toy shop.
Wednesday July 25, 2018:
After fielding some tech questions, half the day spent doing the monthly trip report for CMGC newsletter (with lots of pictures of course).
Meeting tonight with Ontario MG 'T' Register, pub night West at Jake's Boathouse in Brampton, ON. We arrived unannounced at 5-pm sharp to find eight people already settled in, and one more to come shortly after. As is fairly common with the 'T' Register folk, no MGs were driven here tonight (except our MGA). A couple of the folks knew who we were in advance, and the rest seemed to be pleasantly surprised. Good food, nice chat, and a good time was had by all.
Thursday July 26, 2018:
Catching up on email today, I was fielding some questions about ignition system with ballast resistor. When I told the guy that MGA does not have a ballast resistor, he asked "What's an MGA"? Turns out we were chatting about a 1973 International 5 ton dump truck, but we did get it fixed.
More chat with another bloke about some disconnected wires in an MG. By the wire colors I guessed it was 1978 MGB with electronic distributor, but he said the connector had no place to plug into his electronic distributor. Couple of pictures later it turned out he had a Pertronics electronic distributor and Pertronics Flamethrower ignition coil with 3-ohms resistance, so the ignition resistor was removed, accounting for all of the loose wires.
Got a lead on a couple more shops, so we topped up the fuel and headed two hours west late night.
Friday July 27, 2018:
We began the day with an odd whining/grinding noise from the new (December) gear reduction starter. Well the engine started okay, so we will keep an ear on it.
A bit farther west and south this morning landed us in Aylmer, Ontario (south of London) for a visit to Dave's Mini Parts. This will be a bit more obscure than most, because it's a home business, mostly for friends, word of mouth. Say hello to Dave Allen. Yes he is into Minis, as the cute yellow one with a few paint bubbles is his daily driver. The TR6 is currently down for engine rebuild, head done, short block pending. Just steps away was the generous size workshop.
Just inside was his wife's car, the pink Cadillac Sedan DeVille, 1959 with the biggest fins and tail lights ever. (No she does not sell cosmetics, and is not related to Elvis). The Austin A40 Somerset is a project in slow development. The Austin Mini panel van is a little better off, actually driven home before the engine came out for restoration work. These are all family cars (not counting the Hyundai Tiburon and the p/u truck). Dave is now "semi-retired" from the car repair business, but will still help with an emergency break-down repair if needed.
Then we headed back west for two hours, getting back to Georgetown, ON for a cruise night tonight (having
burned a tank of gas for one shop visit, just because that's what we do). Fill up again in Georgetown, starter now sounding a little more weird, but our late lunch break was right next door. Sneaking up on 5-pm, the starter would just whine and not crank, so it got push start so we could drive a mile the cruise night event. Found a place to park heading slightly down hill, just in case. I took a brief walk-around early on, but maybe less than half the cars on hand yet, so leave this for later.
After a brief wander around the early arriving cars I opened the bonnet for a look at the bum starter. Half expecting to find a ground up pinion gear or sheared out starter gear reducer, I was mildly surprised to find the starter was partially disassembled with the bulk of the assembly having come loose from the end mounting plate. Okay, let's see how lucky we might be, like maybe we can just reassemble it, if it wasn't missing any parts.
Well, we did get lucky. Not long to remove two bolts and one cable to extricate the starter, also remove the distributor to get it out of the way. Then clear the trailer top for a large work space before opening the starter
for inspection, not knowing exactly what to expect inside. My first observation was that the loose screws were trapped between the end plate and engine rear plate, so even if we had noticed it earlier the starter would have to be removed to be fixed anyway. So at least it picked a good time and place to call for attention.
Nothing needed in the back end, as that's just the solenoid. Sure enough, a few odd parts dropped out or went "boing" up front, needing a little hunting for retrieval, but nothing was lost. After a little exploratory I figured out how it all works. The intermediate gear is an external tooth ring gear with five bearing rollers in a nylon cage. Those bits may well have been lost if we had driven any farther. I managed to reassemble everything, and this time put some Locktite on the screw threads so hopefully it won't happen again. Well actually I got it clocked wrong so I couldn't get the top mounting bolt in, so had to remove two screws again to rotate the end plate by one hole. Another dab of Locktite please. I should mention that I was the last person to tighten those errant screws back in December when I was first installing the new starter. At least I know who to kick.
Then back to the car for re-installation, and in fairly short order it was back together and working, no cost and no time lost, score one for the good guys.
Okay, back to cruise night as most of the cars were here by this time. We did find a few like minded friends. Was there some rule that all British cars had to be red?
Rows and rows of American muscle cars and hot rods new and old. I rather liked the old Packard, not oft seen on the streets. Collectively not why we came to Canada, just that we happened to be in the area with an open date on our schedule.
When the show shut down we headed for a local WiFI spot, and ran into some of the show organizers who thought the MGA was rather neat, and were happy we got the starter fixed. Late night headed an hour south in staging for a morning appointment.
Saturday July 28, 2018:
Morning rendezvous with Niagara British Car Club in Stoney Creek, ON. We rounded up 11 British cars with no rouges this time: Jaguar E-type, a large Jaguar sedan, (3) MGB, (2) MGB GT, MGA, (2) TR6 and a Morris Minor Woody.
Then we were off and running. Once out of town we found soe nice bsck roads, including a few steep hills that gave 2nd gear a hard time. First stop was Puddicombe Estate (and winery) in Winona, ON, where we hopped a little tour train for a ride around the farm.
The orchards included pears, apples, dwarf apples, bitter cherries, and several types of grapes, nearly all used for making wine. One interesting feature was some of the more delicate grapes being planted at the foot of the Niagara Escarpment for weather protection. The escarpment in most famous as the cliff over which the Niagara River plunges at Niagara Falls. Then some of the wine fermenting vats.
The E-type had a battery drain problem. Say what? The car has two very large electric cooling fans on the radiator, a pusher fan and a puller fan, eash of which draws 20 amps current. They run on after the engine is shut down until the coolant temperature drops to switch-off point. That can sometimes drain the battery enough to prevent restart, then requiring use of a booster box to get it going again. Maybe the battery is going bad.
There were a few odd animals on display for public entertainment, emu, pot belied pig, peacocks, and also chickens, horse and donkey (and maybe I missed a few). Don't forget the wine tasting on the way out.
Off again for more back road touring, and more 2nd gear hills, with another stop at Peninsula Ridge Estates
Winery near Beamsville, ON. More serious tasting, cash and carry here I suppose.
The next leg of the tour took us past the Organized Crime Winery (sorry no stop here), and brought is into Beamsville for a lunch stop at Butcher and Banker Pub. Good food and some friendly chat before the final tour leg taking us past the Viena Estates Wine and Spirits (no stop here either) and back to the QEW expressway (end of tour). Then we hauled tail north about an hour to Ajax, ON (been here before) before stopping for a WiFi break.
Sunday July 29, 2018:
Today we met with Victoria British Car Club in Bobcaygeon, ON, gathering at least 16 cars (14 British), (1) MGA, (4) MGB, (1) MG Midget, (1) MG TC, (3) AH 3000, (1) TR3, (1) GT6+, (1) TVR 280i, (1) Lotus ELite, plus a BMW M4 and a Sport Ute (gotta count those because the Sport Ute was the organizer.
Then off for a 20 mile cruise with a few interesting side roads. Only got off course once when navigator was asleep at the switch near the end, and we followed a big Healey that may have been bailing out at the time. A quick U-turn, and we were back in less than 10 minutes.
|
The stop was at Kawartha Settlers Village in Bobcaygeon, ON, intended to be a picnic. Some did and some of us didn't, but we did pay $10 per car to visit the museum. I took lots of pictures to remember, but not going to post them all. Starting with what looked like a barn, but was full of old sleighs and buggies and carriages of all sorts, and that's as new as the vehicles would be.
There were these vendor booths all over the place, indicative of a profit boosting tourist trap. A fair amount of antique/vintage tools and other artifacts of 18th century life, enough to justify calling it a museum. But much of it was as the name implies, a village. Some of it was restored to very good condition, while much of it was "restored" just enough for preservation, apparently trying to keep the original old life minimalistic appearance.
There was a neat little Kids Log Cabin, and a "shanty" just large enough for bed and fireplace (and must have once been a small table). There was the Bobcayeon Correctional Institute (circa 1874).
We found an implement shed, blacksmith shop, woodworking shop, artifact restoration center, and a museum, all made to look vintage but obviously modern creations (with cement floors and pole building construction). There were some structures looking like picnic shelters used to shelter some vintage farm equipment. A trappers cabin, and a waterwheel project (which might be able to turn a wheel but didn't look capable of doing any work).
Also one solid brick building labeled "Loyal Orange Lodge". The "Orange Order" gets it's Orange connection from King William III, prince of
Orange (the royal house of the Netherlands) who is credited for establishing the civil and religious liberties that we enjoy today (in Canada). After another half hour of friendly chat the party was breaking up, and it was time to adjourn and go find the WiFi spot to get back to work.
Monday July 30, 2018:
Sitting in Lindsay, ON today. After breakfast, BBS and email, the rest of the day was spent trying to check and correct off-site links, and I think there must be thousands of those on this web site. Not done for at least five years, there are lots of broken links, and I hardly made a dent in the process by midnight, but I have been able to find correct links or historical copies for most of the web sites that had changed or disappeared (as far as I got). As we were shutting down at 1-am, I check email one last time and found a late night message from someone in Grand Bend, Ontario (4 hours away) mentioning some problems with his MGA, and another friend's TR7. Well, we were going west anyway, as we had an appointment for a club meeting half way in that direction come Wednesday night. So we pointed it west and drove an hour, landing in Newmarket, ON about 2-am.
Tuesday July 31, 2018:
Breakfast and email in Newmarket, then decided to take the scenic route west to avoid traffic and construction on 401, shorter route but a half hour more travel time (3-1/2 hours), we arrived in Grand Bend at 2-pm to meet Robert Taylor. His MGA had a variety of minor ignition problems. The carburetors tuned up okay, but the engine was sputtering and running on 2 cylinders. No spark on #3, so we switched plugs 3 and 4, but still no spark on #3.
Pulled the distributor cap and used an ohmmeter to find open circuit on #3 HT wire, no connection in the cap. That was fixed by clipping the failed end of the resistor wire and reconnecting it in the side entry distributor cap, but then no fire on #4. We cleaned the rotor and contact posts in the cap, but still no go. Turned out the contact points were only opening a couple thousandths of an inch, and a little wobble in the cam would would work on three cylinders but no spark on the 4th one. Adjusting the contact points fixed that, and it was soon running like a charm (with a quick timing adjustment.
A bit later we were around the block to check out a Triumph TR7 belonging to Patrick Clare. This one had not run for a year due to ignition problems. Wiring looked a bit of a mess. The car had a Pertronix electronic distributor and flamethrower ignition coil, and an old Lumination ignition module on the bulkhead. Not to have two electronic units fighting each other, I disconnected the Lumination module and re-routed wires for the distributor and coil. As the new coil was 3-orms resistance (vs. 1.5-ohms as original), I also disconnected the ignition resistor and connected power from the ignition switch directly to the coil. Try that.
Perfect. It fired up instantly and ran fairly well. There was vacuum leak with a disconnected vacuum hose. That was supposed to be connected to a temperature actuated vacuum valve in the air cleaner, used to actuate an intake air deflector flapper for warm air intake from the exhaust manifold cover during cold start warm up period. Once the air cleaner was installed and the vacuum hoses were reconnected the engine settled down to a nice idle with only minor adjustment of fuel mixture, and all was right with the world.
Off to a local Bistro for dinner, then back to Robert's place to chat about cars and travel and car clubs and war stories and who knows what else until 4-am. Really? Okay, get some sleep.
|
