The MGA With An Attitude
MGA Guru Is GOING MOBILE - (August 16 - August 31, 2019)
Friday, August 16, 2019:
Spent the whole day today trying to finish the hard drive data backup, and did finally finished it after 10-pm. Guess I will have to buy another remote hard drive and chuck the flash thumb drive before I have to do this again. We found this nice 1964 Ford Galaxie on the way out.
Saturday, August 17, 2019:
Off to visit the Michigan Rowdies today in Grand Rapids, MI. This is the first local chapter of NAMGAR circa 1976, and today they were celebrating the birth date of the club. Had a few nice MGA out front.
The resident garage held another MGA, a Riley.
There was also an MG TD. On the hoist was a 1966 Rover P5 Mk-IIC 3-liter Coupe. It took me a while to look this one up, and the owner Ken Nelson made a minor correction later.
The party was jolly good fun, as I have known a few of these people since 1988 NAMGAR GT-13 in Marrietta, Ohio. After copious amounts of food and chat there was an auction of donated parts and memorabilia. Late afternoon was time to break up the party and get back to WiFi work.
Sunday, August 18, 2019:
Back to visit Bill Hirsch in Caledonia, MI, although it was evening hours before we finally got together. He had dug out his TD, and we took it for a test run, seemed a it slow and had an intermittent misfire at road speed (not
fuel starvation). Checked the points, not opening much, so reset the points with better gap, and it ran better, but still had the intermittent misfire. Next test was to clamp a new condenser to ground and connect it to the distributor wire, but that didn't make any difference, so not a bad condenser. Grabbed an emery board
to clean the points, and that didn't help either, but in the process we found the distributor body would wiggle, like not tightened down at the mounting to the engine block. Tried tightening the clamping bolt, but it would still wiggle. Thinking it may have intermittent ground on the engine block, I connected a jumper wire from the distributor body to chassis ground, and the misfire went away.
 Okay, now we need to figure out why the distributor body is wiggling, but ran out of daylight, so we may get back to this tomorrow. As a later thought, I remembered that when the distributor body was wiggling the shaft and cam were not moving, so the points gap was changing. This is not the same as he shaft wobbling due to a worn bushing. This seems to be the body of the distributor wiggling while the shaft is secure. That implies the lower end of the distributor is secure, so maybe the distributor body is broken. Haven't seen that before; will have to check that later.
Monday, August 19, 2019:
Back at Bill's place again today, unfortunately a late start again. First choice was to see why the TD distributor had such a wiggle in the housing (not shaft wiggle). So we pulled the dizzy out of the block for scratch and sniff. Hold the housing and wiggle the shaft, and it moved a LOT. Okay, hold the bottom shank of the housing and wiggle the top of the housing, and it moved the same amount. The housing is in two pieces? Turned it over for the next wiggle, and the problem was obvious, a big crack all the way around the housing next to the bottom shank. Wow! Never seen that before, but at least we know the fix will be to replace the distributor.
Put the TD away and bring out the TC. It starts and idles well, but has a severe misfire (sometimes backfire) under acceleration or higher speeds. Carburetors adjusted properly, and ignition timing is good (in spite of being difficult to see the timing marks). We tried two different new condensers (left side of third picture below) with no improvement. Hard cranking for restart produced hot battery terminals, so grab the wire brush to clean the battery posts and connectors to fix that. Clean points, good points gap, good timing, good fuel mix, good condenser, what else? It might be a bad ignition coil, but we ran out of time again and had to knock off for the day. Will have to follow up later.
For now head east an hour and a quarter to meet with British Motoring Club of Mid Michigan in East Lansing, MI. We got there just in time for the 6-pm evening cruise with half a dozen cars. On return there was dinner at Buddies Pub & Grille with about 20 people. Then back to the car park to kick some tires and have a serious chat where there was a lot less noise than inside. For the curious, the white car is a TVR Vixen.
People wanted details on the 600,000 mile MG with a trailer, and what we have been up to for the past five years. Then they wanted a group picture, so we tried to sneak everyone in there. When it was time to break up the party there was a big Healey that wouldn't crank over, so I had a chance to haul out the jump-start box that I had fortunately given a full charge about a week earlier. It worked, so the Healey was on its way with a couple of smiles. Problem there was a faulty connection on the battery cut-off switch causing a blistering hot cable end, so they would have something to fix when they got home.
Not especially late yet, so we found a WiFi spot for a couple of hours, then drove another hour before stopping a bit short of Ann Arbor, MI.
Tuesday, August 20, 2019:
One day to spare, so it was a good time to take the day off and just hang out in Ann Arbor to rest and catch up a few odds and ends. Late night cruise south into Ohio and east, 2-1/2 hours total, stopping near Vermillion, Ohio for the night.
Wednesday, August 21, 2019:
Another 60 miles east this morning to be staged near our evening appointment. Spent most of the day in Bainbridge, OH. Our evening appointment will be another 16 miles on.
Meeting tonight with Emerald Necklace MG Register in Burton, Ohio. Billed as an ice cream run, it was actually a cruise night with vintage cars parked on the street, and 50's/60's music so loud we had to go inside to chat. I got one picture of Coffee Corners ice cream and deli shop before the camera battery went dead. Bummer. 48 hours earlier it was completely charged, and I hadn't touched it since. The camera is three years old, maybe needs a new battery, but I know they're hard to find. Meanwhile we had two MGA and six MGB (including one GT), and all the B's were rubber bumper cars. Fortunately someone else snapped some pictures.
Thursday-Friday, August 22-23, 2019:
Killing some time in Medina, OH then Dublin, OH, sneaking up on Saturday event.
Saturday, August 24, 2019:
We cruised into Bellefontaine, OH around 7-am and began making phone calls and web searching. There was supposed to be a "hill climb" event somewhere around here today, but we did not have the location yet. Had previously sent email to two people and a voice message to a third person with no returns. Some info from one web site implied that there should be two different MG clubs involved, Ohio Chapter NEMGTR and Ohio State BuckAyes (NAMGAR). One more call this morning made connection with an MGA club guy who said it was a real event but he knew nothing else about it. We eventually got a text message saying "try Corkscrew Hill". That didn't turn up anything on the net, but a search for "hill climb" and "Bellefontaine" finally turned up a Facebook page for the event called "Bellefontaine Hill Climb Revival". This appears to be a long standing independent event, and the only thing it has to do with British car clubs is that they were invited. Also incidentally it is not in Bellefontaine.
Turned out this was a week end event running 11-am Friday through Sunday 4-pm. Multiple tours and registration on Friday. Registration Saturday morning at Mad River Mountain Ski Resort in Zanesfield, OH. Hill climb a mile from the resort Saturday morning, followed by a TSD rally Saturday afternoon, and a dinner party at the resort Saturday evening. Sunday morning Autocross. Sunday mid day car show with awards by 3-pm.
After missing the Friday tours we were too late to register for the hillclimb (fully subscribed), probably could have gotten into the TSD rally and the evening party. We had a prior commitment for the next day, so scratch the autocross and the car show. What we really wanted was to meet some folks from the two MG clubs, but it was not to be. We saw one MG TD staging at the hill climb, one more at beginning of the rally, but didn't get to chat at all. No one there from the MGA club that I could find.
The Corvair was kind of neat (and loud), Porsche were over populated.
The rare Shelby GT 500 was nice to see. The light blue car is an Alfa Romeo Milano.
Austin Healey were well represented.
Sending rally cars off at one minute intervals, and cruising the car park in the evening.
We waited until evening but did not get to chat with any MG folks, so scratch the whole day and think about how to contact the MG clubs some other time.
Click for 28-MB 70-second video
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When we finally decided to leave, at least we took the opportunity to go haul up Corkscrew Hill on the way out. An up hill drag race is not the best use of an MGA 1500 towing a trailer, but at least we got to see the hill up close. I didn't realize how steep the hill was going to be after the first curve, and got into second gear a bit too early. We did get to wave at a cop going down the hill as we were hauling full chat in second gear going up. At about 55 seconds it began to level off and I slipped it into third gear for a casual finish cruise.
Sunday, August 25, 2019:
Today we rambled into Westerville, OH for a picnic with Central Ohio British Car Council. This is on our clubs list, but is not really a club. It is an organizing group that hosts two events each year, a spring car show and a fall picnic, for the benefit of multiple car clubs. So if you want to "belong" here, you should get a membership in one of the associated car clubs. We just made a phone call to get an invite to meet the associated club folks, and paid the standard fee for the picnic on arrival.
As we arrived we found at least three vintage Mini and one new one, two MGA (including ours),
About five MGB plus one GT, two MG TC, one MG TD, one TR6, one TR4 and a Morgan Plus 4, and a couple Miata standing in as honorary MGs.
There were about 50 people present from at least 5 different car clubs, Morgan, Triumph, MG, Mini and I don't remember which more (but apparently most of the Jaguar folks never come). I had a nice chat with a few people I knew previously from some of the other clubs, made a few new friends, a nice group get together. After chow we were back to the car park to kick some tires.
Star of the show today was a Sunbeam Talbot Alpine, downright sweet.
There was an MGB with a modern Corvette V8 shoehorned in.
Later in the evening I got a call from Adam Ansteth in Beaverton, Oregon that took us back four years. We were there for a visit in late
July 2015 to help a bit with his Austin Healey Sprite. I guess he was impressed with my MGA, because he recently bought one, and the turn signals (with LED lamps in the rear) were running amok, bright when they should be dim in front, dim when they should be bright, and flashing slow (or not flashing at all with headlights on). Not long to trace this to reversed contact plates in the front lights, and it was fixed while we were still on the phone. Then a problem with the fuel gauge, recently rebuilt and with a new sending unit. Gave him a few hints and things to test, so he will check on it and get back to me later. Adam has also installed separate master cylinders and clutch slave cylinder from a big Healey into his MGA. Aside from the wow factor I don't suppose it has any functional advantage, but he said the parts were very cheap, so maybe there's an economic advantage.
Monday, August 26, 2019:
Kind of a day off with nothing much important happening, except I spent more than two hours on the phone with a few different Verizon tech assist people (and lots of on hold time) sorting out three different problems with my cell phone account (none of which were my fault). But I did catch up with the WiFi grunt work for the past few days, a new tech page on greasing the MGA wiper motor gearbox in situ, and more tech about installing a starter solenoid to replace a faulty manual starter switch.
Thursday, August 29, 2019:
Killed a couple more days doing not much, and traveled only 100 miles in the past few days, currently sitting in Piqua, Ohio (no one with a hand up yet). Seemed like a good time for an oil change (somewhat overdue), now looking for the next set of tires for the trailer. Having pretty much finished our tour of about 350 car clubs (except a few we couldn't connect with), and 1100 shops around North America, we have plans to cut our travel schedule way back and relax some while we decide what to do next. Looks like our next firm appointments (at the moment) may be the Healey Rally on the 7th in North Aurora, IL, and British Car Festival on the 8th in Palatine, IL.
Friday-Saturday, August 30-31, 2019:
Spent a lot of time updating the CMGC web site Library pages to add a dozen books that I had donated to the club last month. This on the tail of updating for lots of years of neglected maintenance due to lack of information on book and video additions and some items going missing. Now up to the club Librarian to check the final web list against his actual holdings to see if we need some monor adjustments.
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