The MGA With An Attitude
MGA Guru Is GOING MOBILE - (September 1 - September 15, 2018)
Saturday September 1, 2018:
Up early to discover low tire (about 10-psi) on left front, which explains the handling problem last night. Air up the tire, no immediately obvious leak point, keep an eye on it for a while. After a quick breakfast find a NAPA store to get bearing caps (and maybe bearings) for the trailer, but the place was closed at 8:45 am on a Saturday, and no more time available at the moment, so soldier on (the trailer bearing being only slightly loose).
 Ferry does not run out of Baie-Comeau on Saturday, but it does run out of Godbout, QC 25 miles east. We had the reservation, so dashed over there. Arrived in plenty of time, short wait, loaded onto the ferry at 11-am. Pay the balance of the ferry fee on board the ferry, to cross the St Lawrence River. Goodbye Quebec (for couple of hours anyway). Supposed to be a new (trial) WiFi on the ferry, so may get to the photos and notes for the past few days while en-route.
Two hours later, hello Quebec. Okay. we're still in Quebec, Matane this time on the south side of the big river. At least we caught the right ferry, and the time pressure is off for now. Right off the boat we spotted a Mini, most likely came off the boat just ahead of us. No time to chase him down, as we need to find an auto parts store (an open one would be good).
CarQuest in Matane was reported to be open at 2-pm, but wasn't. Another parts store up the street also closed on Saturdays. Bummer. Just have to fix what we have as best we can, and carry on. Jack up and remove the bearing nut to disassemble the hub seal and bearings. Get some petrol to clean the working parts. Remove all of the adulterated grease, clean everything, and load the bearings up with grease again.
Reassembled with a new seal (yes we did have a couple of those on hand this time). Back on the axle, adjusted for minimal clearance, and closed with a baggie and tape for now, and we will be on our way again.
If anyone has any ideas, we still need the trailer wheel bearings. They're common, and auto parts stores should have them. -- Timkin bearing set - l44643-l44610
The seals are easy: SKF 12458, CR 124580, NAPA 62303, CarQuest 470163
I think I will give up on the bearing buddies. They may be too heavy and knock themselves off with harsh road bumps. We will keep an eye on the wheel as we go, but I think it will soldier on for a while. Just decided to tarry on southward some more. About 100 miles to Campbellton in NB, or a couple hours more to Miramichi.
A few hours later when it got dark we landed in between at Bathurst, New Brunswick. I gave the trailer tire a good shake, and it felt perfectly normal in the bearing clearance, and not hot, and the baggie was still keeping dirt out, all good news. Some chap asking questions made a phone call, then came to tell us that the owner of a local hydraulics shop (for $25) could come open the shop to sell us a wheel bearing. Nice thought, but we should be good for now, not that urgent.
Sunday September 2, 2018:
Still in Bathurst this morning, caught up with grunt work, checking club web sites to see if we need more contacts. At 11:30-am I noticed a new event recently posted on the website for Fredericton Area British Auto Club, an Ice Cream Run at 3-pm today in Fredericton, NB. Navigator said it was almost 3-1/2 hours away. HAUL ASS! Get gas first, then haul out of Bathurst at 11:45. Shortest time routing, heavy foot, 70-75-mph when possible. Arrived at destination in Fredericton 2:25-pm. What was all the rush for? Time to grab lunch at Subway and eat half of it before meeting the club cars. They wanted to gang up for a group picture. Our MGA, one TR6 and two MGB. There was also a BMW serving as an honorary TR6 today.
Once on the road I couldn't help noticing the plate number on the lead car. All that fuss was for a seven mile drive to Dari Delite in Lincoln, NB. Peachy. We don't really care about to drive. We came to meet the people and check out the cars. They were mostly surprised to see us, as no one knew we were coming. A couple of them knew us by reputation, once they found out who we were. Ice cream was drip off your elbows good, lucky my banana split was in a dish. Didn't get the picture before the other guys were hosed down and clean again.
Party over, they all took off in different directions. We headed east a
couple of hours (including another fuel stop), landing in Moncton for dinner and WiFi. We have been here before, 2 weeks and 2 days and a bit more than 3400 miles past. For the guys in Chicago who think driving 900 miles around Lake Michigan was fun, maybe try driving around the Gulf Of Saint Lawrence.
Late night, thinking about heading south, but just before WiFi was closing down we got a local message and decided to stay overnight for a morning appointment.
Monday September 3, 2018:
For some time we have been trying to connect with Greater Moncton British Motoring Association in Moncton, NB. The club still exists, at least in name. A minimalistic Facebook page seemed to have no recent posts. We left a message there two weeks ago but got no response. After a late night message, today we got to visit Robb Steeves in Moncton, who was in years past the founder of the club. Word is the club is generally inactive these days, but we can still find a few people to chat with. As long as there is still an active Facebook page we will keep it listed as an active club.
Robb has lots of space for his toys, beginning with the 4-wide by two deep workshop with loads of attic space, a large garage on the house, and some more hidden nooks and crannies not so obvious.
There was a TR3 in the house front garage (among other things). A drive-through crawl space was hiding a MG Midget, and I recon space for another small car when needed.
The larger shop building began with an MG TD with MGB engine and overdrive gearbox. There was an AMC Hornet, and a Mercedes Benz 200 from the early 60's in the midst of restoration work.
In the back corner I think it's a Bentley that looks like a Jaguar Mk-I with a Bentley small V8 engine, and several more assorted engine for various applications.
Outdoors a Jaguar MK-I, and an MGB GT. Not enough yet? There was also a canopy building with enough space to store six more cars, beginning with an MGB and a Marlin kit car with Austin A-series 1275 engine.
Working to the back forget the big cars, but way in the back cornet was an AMC Pacer (surprise of the decade).
We took advantage of time allowed to chat for a few more hours before we had to head south. Running out of New Brunswick into Nova Scotia we passed an MGB that would find us again a few hours later. we also passed a very nice Alfa Romeo with an older couple, no idea where they were going. A few hours on we arrived spot on schedule at Chickenburger in Bedford, NS for a gathering with British Automobile Touring Association of Nova Scotia, Halifax Group.
This would be a really great turn-out of vintage British cars, just for fun. We were waiting a while for more cars to arrive, but then between chat an chow and a little more chat some of the cars left before I got the pictures. The place was crammed with British cars, all of the visible spaces were filled, and more. BATANS is a very active club, and we will be seeing more of these folks in the coming days.
As cars were firing up to leave, this late model MGB was running a little rough. It gave me the opportunity to use the Zenith-Stromberg carburetor mixture adjusting tool that I have been carrying around for a couple of years heretofore lying fallow. A little mixture adjustment and some oil in the dashpot damper worked its magic, and the car was running like an MG again. Get that victory picture.
Tuesday September 4, 2018:
Dinner meeting tonight with British Automobile Touring Association of Nova Scotia, Annapolis Valley group in Kentville, NS. Parked behind another MGA, and a TR3 promptly pulled in behind us. Had to take a second look at what first looked like a Twin Cam, but it turned out to be even more rare, an MGA 1600-MK-II "Deluxe", LHD roadster for North American Market, 242 built in 1961-1962.
Spot on time at 6-pm, apparently everyone else was there before us, and most had ordered dinner already (they never tell us these things unless we ask and pry it out of them in advance). 14 people here, nice long dinner with plenty of time to chat. A non-member (stranger type) stopped to ask if we might know anyone who might know how to tune carburetors on a TR6, so we now we have another appointment for tomorrow evening. As folks were leaving I got a few more pictures. Cars were parked around the neighborhood streets, so I likely missed a few.
Wednesday September 5, 2018:
Stopped for breakfast and WiFi this morning and this old Durant parked along side about mid day, I believe 1930-1932 vintage. Nice.
One appointment today with Donald Wein in Falmouth, NS, the guy who found us at the club dinner the night before. We would meet him when he got home from work about 4-pm. Well almost. We would wait just a bit for his arrival. The fabric shed was hiding his TR6.
The car was purchased as a disassembled stalled project, reassemble and finished several years ago, but not driven much due to bad running. Parts included dual Zenith-Stromberg carburetors and a six pack of Weber side draft carbs. His son talked him into installing the Weber carbs, and they sold the Z-S carbs (maybe a bad decision).
It ran rough and very rich at idle with out of balance air flow and lots of smoke. A little fiddling set the levers and idle screws to be fairly well balanced, followed by leaning out the idle mixture quite a lot, which left it idling quite well with much less smoke. Big improvement. Test drive revealed misfire and no torque during low speed acceleration. Bummer. Turn the fuel mixture back toward rich half a turn at a time on each of the six screws, until it would accelerate and pull well. Catch the grin before it goes away.
But that left it running rich at idle again (not a bad as to begin with). Conclusion is that we had the idle mixture right the first time, and it needs a change of jets for low speed acceleration, and I don't have those parts. Recommendation is to find a Weber carb specialist who has a box full of jets and can put it on a rolling road to get it set up right. But even as is it is now drivable where it was not good before. Still got that smile.
Then it was navigator's choice, and he headed us east by northeast staging for out next appointment in the morning. Two hours plus and 110 miles later we found WiFi spot in New Glasgow, NS.
Very shortly there was this Spitfire parked along side. Very nice. The car and driver are locals, apparently not club members. An email check found a new message from our next morning appointment, 15 miles and 20 minutes away. There was
a "come on over" attached, so we did, with arrival close to 10-pm. Say hello to Fraser Cox in Pictou, NS, a member of BATANS Northern Nova Scotia group. That's his nice MGA that reportedly has some bad running issues, which we hope to address in the morning. Chat until midnight then a few more hours of WiFi work before 3-am retirment.
Thursday September 6, 2018:
Slept in bit, then breakfast at Fraser Cox's place, and a few car friends showed up to chat and watch what comes
next. Car shuffle time. The Healey and blue MGB were visitors. The white MGA is resident, and subject of today's tech session. The red MGB hiding in shadows under trees at end of cul-de-sac is also resident here. Being a condo community, no car work outside, so get the white MGA into the garage.
The electrical side of the engine seemed to be in order, except the distributor clamp plate was flipped over with clamp bolt the wrong way around. Yes we did notice the fan blade on backward, but that can be fixed later. The carburetors had a variety of minor issues, all adding up to be a time consuming adjustment and tune-up exercise (but it made for a good tech session). Throttle intermediate shaft clamps upside down so clamp nuts were hard to access. Easy fix, loosen two outer clamp bolts and rotate the shaft 180 degrees to put the nuts on top. Choke cable anchor trunnion was leaned over at wrong angle (and center cable not connected). Easy fix, loosen mounting bolt, rotate anchor straight up and tighten the bolt, pull out and reinstall front end of choke cable to orient cable straight up over top of the loop, and install new cable stop to connect cable to choke arms.
Having adjusted the choke cable to correct length, the fast idle cam was too high, because the driving link was in the bottom hole of the cam rather than the center hole. We let Fraser do this one. Remove link and split pin and washer, but link does not come out of hole because the link hits throttle body. Remove cam pivot bolt and Thackeray washer and fast idle cam, relocate the connecting link, attempt to reinstall small shoulder bolt, drop the little bits on the floor, recover them and finally get the cam installed. Looked good except the cam was upside down, oops, do over. Banjo bolt leaking a few drops of fuel at rear float chamber connection, apply big wrench, no more leak.
Start up, running very rich, adjust both carbs full lean, in the ballpark, but then it wouldn't idle, and no acceleration at all from slow speed. Back to electrical side of the engine, it turned out to be points not opening enough. Points could not move to open farther, tail of points base hitting grounding wire screw way past any reasonable adjustment position, due to worn out red plastic rubbing foot (hate these plastic points). Install new points set and adjust points gap. While distributor is out, unbolt and flip over the base mounting plate and reinstall. Discover stripped thread on clamping bolt, oops, do over. Get a good used clamping bolt from the magic trailer, get that back together, put another bolt on the shopping list.
Timing set properly, back to the carburetors, still running rich. Turned both carbs full lean, still rich on the rear carb. Figure jets and needles to be somewhat worn from a past life being not well centered, need to replace needles and jets (sometime later). For quick fix, lower the needle slightly in the rear carb, reassemble, finish tune-up, and it runs great.
While all this tune-up fiddling was going on, I took the opportunity to snap a few pictures of a custom made mounting bracket for fixed position wind wings. This is a squared off "U" shape bracket with one edge captured between the windscreen frame and the windscreen mounting post. The wind wing acrylic panel was attached with wing nuts over flat washers, which looks like it was intended to make the fixed wind wings removable. Aside from the special bracket, this looks cheap and easy, nice idea.
Test drive reveals the white car is running like a champ, better than ever before, big grins all around. Note to owner, 2nd gear synchronizer is weak and needs attention, somewhat disappointing because someone was supposed to have rebuilt the gearbox (grrrr). Don't forget to flip the fan blade around.
Had a little daylight left, so got our red MGA into the garage long enough to drain and refill gearbox and differential oil (slightly overdue). Also add a little air to the LF tire, like every third day for the past week, still haven't found the leak point yet. Time for clean-up and a casual dinner, then BBS and email check, and get these photos and notes posted before midnight, maybe get a reasonable amount of sleep for a change.
Friday September 7, 2018:
Open day, so time to do a little shop hopping. After a 100 mile drive "back into town, we stopped to visit Peter Osborne at The Village Green Motor Car Co, Ltd in Halifax, NS. Love the beige coveralls that never seem to get dirty, about as clean as the rest of his shop. There are more doors and more space than is obvious here.
There is a 3 day a week tech who works a lot on Volvos (gotta do something to pay the bills). He likes to refer to the rest of the business as a hobby, but there are plenty of customers. He is heavy onto Jaguar, but seems to also have a soft spot for American Motors products, like AMX 390 in the show room.
There was a nice round wheel arch MG Midget, recent recipient of a five speed gerabox. Then a TR Spitfire rolled in to diagnose some problem with the electrical system. There was some suspicion that his long term storage trickle charger may not have been charging the battery. In the "storage garage" on the side there were plenty of projects to keep busy for some time to come, so it looks like this place will be around for a long time.
One more shop visit today, we dropped in for a brief visit with Bernie Smith in Fergusons Cove, Halifax. Bernie has been collecting British car parts for decades. He has tons of stuff for Jaguars from the XK120 models forward, and moderate stock of parts for MGs as well. So if you need parts for your Jsgul or MG, give him a call.
Breaking for a late lunch, I put navigator to work searching for badly needed wheel bearings for the trailer. After a few pokes we got lucky and found a parts store with the needed parts on the shelf. Quick side trip to get the parts in hand, and we can relax a bit with the pressure off. The re-lube and adjustment seems to be holding up okay. We finally ditched the baggie that was covering the trailer hub and installed a rear grease cap. Will get around to changing the bearings later.
Saturday September 8, 2018:
We attended a club barbecue party today with BATANS (British Auto Touring Association of Nova Scotia) in Waverly, NS. This was intended to get all of their local groups together in one place, which worked quite well, as there were certainly more than 50 people present. We arrived at 3-pm sharp, and there were at least 15 cars there ahead of us. The 2-1/2 car garage turned out to hold six resident British cars, beginning with a Mini, a big Healey, and a bug eye Sprite up front.
There was a TR6 hiding behind the big Healey, a Jag sedan behind the Mini, and a Land Crab (Austin 1800) behind the Sprite. Out front was a Leyland Mini (amazing what we find in Canada).
People kept crowding in until it was hard to walk around the yard. There was a nice snack table followed by a huge bucket of sweet corn on the boil, and two large grills full of burgers, brats and sausages.
Not enough yet, bring on the table full of deserts, including the six layer chocolate cake decorated like a large speedometer. Too busy chatting and stuffing my face, so shorted the picture files somewhat. As the party was winding down they fired up the lave rock gas fire pit, which is a very suitable substitute for a camp fire without the fuss (and likely cheaper to burn than firewood).
Party over, we had an invite for another visit 100 miles north in Pictou County, quite close to where we were on Thursday. Arrived here 9:15-pm (time stamp on the picture). Say hello to Pat Leahy, another member of BATANS Northern Nova Scotia group Looking forward to next day scheduling issues, it looked like it would be a very short morning, so we should have a look at his toys tonight. The Sprite is a very recent project acquisition that came with a lot of spare parts, hoping to have enough of the right stuff to assemble one complete car. But the challenge for tonight was a bit of tune-up for his 1973 MGB.
After balancing air flow and adjusting fuel mixture we were pretty close, but still running a little rough. Checking spark timing we found something like 45-deg BTDC at idle, not good. Investigation revealed a vacuum advance distributor connected to manifold vacuum (wrong), so first off disconnect and plug the vacuum line, reset timing to 32d BTDC at road speed (~4000 rpm) with mechanical advance all in, and reset idle speed again. Then it ran well enough, but it had little or no variation in mechanical advance, so it was still about 30d BTDC at idle speed (very strange). We may want to return for further check of that distributor later.
We found no connection on the rear carburetor for venturi vacuum connection (again very strange). Also found a broken hose nipple on the anti-run-on valve, so that needs to be fixed or replaced as well. For now it's running okay, but we're out of time. Thumbed through some catalogs and chat for another hour, got late, hosts were turning in, and I got to work until 2-am to bring you these photos and notes. Good night all.
Sunday September 9, 2018:
Hopped a ferry again this morning, across the bay from Pictou, Nova Scotia to Wood Islands, Prince Edward Island. Goodbye NS, we'll be back in a few days. Hello PE. Captain must have had pedal to the metal, as we made 16 miles in 69 minutes dock to dock (fast ferry). Nice island, few hills, fair roads.
Destination was a 2:30-pm appointment with several members of British Motoring Association of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown, PE at "the coach house". Not sure what that was, but we found the place by the street
address. It turned out to be a house with a small driveway along one side. When directed into that drive, we emerged in back to find a large court yard with several British cars and a Nice English style "coach house"? Sweet surprise. The car on the lift inside was an MGC GT owned by Danny Tweel, the club president. No time for a close look, but the big green thing may have been a Bentley. Another car or two would arrive later, the more common types, two MGA, two MGB, a TR3.
First patient of the day would be a 1977 MGB owned by Pieter Valkenberg. The car has a Weber carburetor, which installation had screwed up fuel vapor recovery, anti-run-on, and positive crankcase ventilation. That stuff didn't keep it from running, but there was a discussion about how these functions work, and how to restore them.
More important was the fact that the engine had died a couple of times with some electrical problem. In a fairly recent past life a pro shop had installed a Piranha electronic ignition. This has an optical sensor inside the distributor with a 4-wire cable running to a black box on the inner wing with three more wires for power, ground, and the trigger wire to ignition coil. Aside from adding a few new wires (and the fact that I don't like electronics in a vintage car), it seemed to be working okay, so leave it alone for now.
We found the wiring harness nested rather tightly in between the starter motor and inner car body, possible being abraded, so nudged that farther forward to be less restricted. In the process there was the now unused power resistor for what would have been (maybe) original electronic ignition. That piece was loose and had fallen between starter motor and inner body, and was causing an intermittent short from battery cable to ground (fireworks not nice). Pull that piece out and see how far you can throw it.
Then we got down to the ignition. When it last died the coil was replaced with a Lucas Sport Coil (the gold piece). That has 3-ohm primary resistance that is not supposed to work with ballasted ignition system. The original 1.5-ohm coil (the black piece), was still in hand, suspected of having failed. There was belief that the original ballast resistance wire in the front harness was also kaput, and there was a 1.5-ohn ceramic ballast resistor physically attached to the coil. This was all a mismatch, so we started poking around with a test light, volt and ohm meter.
We discovered the ceramic ballast resistor was not even connected, the original resistance wire in the harness was actually okay, and the original coil seemed to also test good. So we tossed out the ceramic resistor, reconnected the original ballast wire and original coil, and it fired right up. Go figure. It looks like someone threw a lot of unnecessary time and money at this car without doing the appropriate diagnostic work to find out what was actually wrong with it. Remove the Sport coil, remount the original coil, and it was ready to go home.
Next up was the second grey MGA, the one with disc wheels, belonging to Stephen Dowling. His father,
Ivan Dowling purchased that car new in the UK and travelled through Europe with it in 1962. This was running bad with very rich mixture and rough idle, tending to die when idling. First discovery was the front carburetor choke was stuck full on. Press up to reset the sticky main jet to normal rest position, and it improved a little. Normal tuning of the carburetors for flow balance and appropriate fuel mixture, and it improved a little more, but still rough idle. Ignition timing was excessively advanced (big time), so reset timing back to normal specs, and it improved a lot. After that a final tweak on fuel mixture, and it was time for a test drive. Yeah, that's it, check out the grin.
Time to knock off for the day, go post these photos and notes, and I recon we get to do some more of this tomorrow at a different location.
Monday September 10, 2018:
Today we shuffled off a little to the north side of Prince Edward Island to Hunter River to visit Bob Bentley
and a small collection of friends from BMA-PEI (a few of the same folks as the day before). First a better look at the "Bentley" that we briefly mentioned yesterday. It is actually a bitsa car put together from bits of other odd sources. Like it has a Jaguar engine that goes like scat, carried in most of a vintage Bentley chassis with half of a different Bently body, most of the front end and radiator cowling made by hand. A very impressive work of art, but not a real Bentley. The owner and builder is Peter Noakes, an affable Australian, newsletter editor and technical guru for BMA-PEI.
There was the nice 1963 pull handle MGB, say hello to the driver Heidi Litke. This car had a simple seat modification for tall and short drivers. Notice the adjustable bolt stops at bottom of the backrest for adjusting the angle of the backrest. Just add two 1/2-inch sockets with magnets inside, and you get an instant forward boost in angle of the backrest for the shorter driver. Neat idea. We will see more of this one later.
There was this very nice MG TC owned by Barry Clark that had a little bit of an engine problem.
Notice the long draft pipe on the side of the crankcase. Give the engine a good rev, and you get oil vapors shooting out of the draft pipe (and a following car gets misted with oil droplets on the the windscreen). This one is going to need a ring job (or maybe a rebore and new pistons). But it does have a nice Ford T9 5-speed gearbox from a Mercury Merkur XR4TI.
The tough job today would be the MGA Coupe that was hard to start an ran pretty bad. Initial inspection revealed
a lot wrong with the choke linkage. The thin steel rod link for the fast idle cam was in the wrong hole in the cam at the top, and in the wrong hole in the arm at the bottom, end result being no movement of the fast idle parts. The choke cable was too long, and two of the clamps on the throttle shaft were upside down, difficult to adjust. On ignition side the distributor clamp plate was upside down (also difficult to adjust). Put all of the asses and elbows to work for a couple of hours, and we would get all of this sorted out.
First test drive, not good, as it was popping and misfiring under load with not much torque. Check and reset timing and take it for another run a little better but still not good. Getting low on fuel, and suspect old gas, so took a short cut to refuel. Then back to the shop to resetting again, at which time we noticed something weird. Set dynamic timing to 32 degrees BTDC at road speed, and it would settle down to 25d BTDC at slow idle. This would be the distributor giving only 3-1/2 degrees mechanical advance inside the distributor when it should be more like 11 degrees (which would push mechanical advance from 10 to 32 with increasing engine speed). This is calling for a distributor rebuild (job for another day). Final test run has it running well on the road, a little rough idle from too much advance at slow speed, and a tendency for run-on at shut-down. But at least we know now what needs to be fixed.
Time to get the pull handle MGB into the shop for consideration. This one was running so bad it was difficult to start, wouldn't idle, and had to hold the choke part on to keep it running. Both carburetors were running extremely lean, the throttles were slightly out of sync, and ignition timing (with a recently installed new distributor) was a bit too advanced. Distributor clamp plate was upside down (easy enough to fix).
This was all much easier to fix, just standard tune-up kind of stuff, so in about an hour we had it all sorted out and running like an MG again. Catch the smiles all around.
A few of us remaining die hards spent another hour in evening chat until we were losing the sun and it was getting chilly. Then off to WiFi to catch the evening email and post these photos and notes.
Tuesday September 11, 2018:
Went a little out of our way today to pay the $55 toll for MGA and trailer to drive across the 8-mile long Confederation Bridge from Prince Edward Island back to Nova Scotia. It was nice to say we had been there and done that, but tolls and fuel together also saved about $30 compared to taking the ferry. Encountering rain in NS we stopped in Amherst, NS for lunch and WiFi work, and spent most of the rest of the day posting the CMGC September newsletter on the club web site.
9-pm and still raining, we made a phone call to out next appointment to say we weren't going to make it tonight, but got a "come on over anyway" invite. So after another hour of WiFI work, deciding to brave the roads at night we trucked on eastward two hours through the rain arriving Merigomish, NS a quarter past midnight, none the worse for wear but just a bit wet in spots.
Wednesday September 12, 2018:
Returned to the scene of the crime (so to speak), we were visiting Pat Leahy again (BATANS Northern Nova Scotia group) to take up where we had left off a few days earlier. You might recall his MGB had a Pertronix distributor with very little mechanical spark advance. Today I opened it up for inspection didn't see anything obvious wrong with it other than unusually short rotation of the rotor, and the center carbon contact pin from the distributor cap was loose and fell on the floor when the cap was removed. So we reinstalled his older Lucas 25D distributor (with a Pertronics module) and timed it for 32d BTDC at road speed, after which it settled down to 20d BTDC at idle speed. This too was short on expected mechanical advance (not quite as bad as the Pertronix distributor), as 6-degree stop on the bob weights doesn't seem right to me.
But it runs well on the road (in light rain), runs on a bit with shut-down, still begging for replacement of the broken anti-run-on valve. Call it good for now. This was the third distributor in as many days with too little mechanical advance. I wonder if it is endemic with current production parts.
By mid afternoon our friend Fraser Cox from Pictou dropped in to see how we were doing. This was a good time to check out Pat's new shed construction behind his garage. This would be the new home of his sand blast cabinet (to get the large tool out of the more valuable garage space). The older part of the shed has been home to his heat pump and a nice industrial grade air compressor, 5-HP motor, 2-stage air pump, sitting on an 80 gallon air tank. Go ahead and run the sand blaster all day.
Evening was time or a chili dinner and some extended chat about car clubs and the possible future of our vintage car hobby. Time flies, so it was soon late when I sat down for WIFi work in the quiet of the night.
Thursday September 13, 2018:
A quick look at Pat's shed addition, progressing nicely this morning. But then we have to get rolling, as we have an afternoon appointment 3-1/2 hours west in Annapolis Royal, near Kingston, NS.
Meet Declan McCann who is the public contact for British Saloon Car Club of Canada, Atlantic Provinces. In fact it seems like he is the Atlantic Provinces group. If you live in eastern Canada and have some interest in British Saloon cars, call this guy. He has a personal interest in vintage Mini's, a couple of them in process at the moment. He also has a collection of parts for the Saloon cars, in case you might need something.
With formalities taken care of, we had time to chat about cars and clubs and problem replacement parts (one of my favorite subjects). Out to dinner in the evening, then heading back east to land in Windsor, NS for the night.
Friday September 14, 2018:
This was supposed to be a day for grunt work, including a hard drive data back up. Just getting started, half hour into that process, when the nearly new remote hard drive crapped out. Grrrrr. Just bought this one recently, having done only one data back up on it, and now it's dead and can't even access the prior data. That $50 didn't go very far. Put another one on the shopping list. At least I got some other work done, and made a phone call, and we have an appointment for tomorrow.
Saturday September 15, 2018:
Today's appointment has not much to do with our mission statement, but I got a request to check out a car for sale in or travel area, and I had time available, so we would. We arrived in Mount Uniacke, NS at 10-am to take a bunch of pictures and test drive this Austin A110, Westminster MK II Automatic.
What better way to be introduced to a new model? Got to poke around up close, inspect everything I could see including the undercarriage. Very nice new leather interior and carpeting, rebuilt auto-box, and the suspension is in decent condition. I was pleasantly surprised at the sound structural condition, having had body sills replaced and a repaint some years ago.
It drives like a big sedan with power steering, power brakes, slush box, soft suspension, all as it should be I suppose. Replaced one tail light bulb and diagnosed a headlamp needing to be replaced, but otherwise stuff works as it should. All jolly good fun, except processing 160 photos and sending them out took more time than the inspection. That would soak up most of the rest of the day.
We did manage to do a little shopping to pick up and install a weather seal for front of the MGA convertible top, get more oil for the car, and some clothes for the occupants. Looked at a replacement back-up hard drive for the laptop computer, but decided to put it off for a week or so.
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