The MGA With An Attitude
MGA Guru Is GOING MOBILE - (February 1 - February 15, 2021)
Monday, February 1, 2021:
Updated a tech page for Radiomobile radio installation to add pictures of Control Unit mounting brackets.
 Posted a new tech page for installing inner tubes in tires on wire wheels (and sometimes also steel wheels). Don't forget the rim bands and stem bushings.
Evening receipt of a *.PDF file for CMGC February newsletter. Got a small start on converting it to HTML, but need the Publisher file to do the rest.
Tuesday, February 2, 2021:
Start the day by posting a new web page for another side mount engine stand. Received the Publisher file for the CMGC newsletter, so that will kill most of tomorrow. Got a message saying my new phone battery was shipped. Might be a day late shipping, but might arive on time.
Wednesday, February 3, 2021:
Killed most of the day converting the electronic publisher file to web pages to post the CMGC February newsletter on line. Grunt work. Got a message from Amazon saying sorry your order was late shipping. Expect delivery in another 1 to 3 days.
Thursday, February 4, 2021:
Finished posting new tech pages for MGA engine mounts, LH, RH, Twin Cam RH, and the packing plate used for the engine mounts. Four drawings, four printable PDF pages, four pictures, and all of the dimensions for the packing plate. Not difficult, just more grunt work.
Got another message from Amazon saying your order has been shipped. Twice now? Meanwhile my phone battery is getting worse, and won't hold a charge for more than 8-hours.
Friday, February 5, 2021:
Hey, it's Friday, so let's get back to tech Central and see what's going on. The first item was final assembly of the overdrive unit to the MGB gearbox. After waiting a week for delivery of an overdrive gearbox gasket set, the set included the OD bottom plate gasket, but did not include three circumference gaskets for the OD outer case. So there was a pause to make some paper gaskets. Then a question came up about the shaft key for the oil pump cam. Nice keyway in the cam, but no keyway in the shaft. Once we verified correct location for the cam on the shaft, it happened to have a shallow drilled hole where we expected the keyway in the shaft. Conclusion is that this needs a small steel bearing ball to serve as a shaft to cam key. I don't know if they found a suitable ball bearing yet, but at day's end the OD unit was still not installed.
The Midget is getting close to being driveable, needing to bleed the clutch slave cylinder. Looks like the only way to have access to the bleed nipple on the slave cylinder was to remove the starter motor, which we did. Then not long to get the clutch working, and get the starter re-installed. There was a mild dent in the RF wing just aft of the wheel arch, which was a good opportunity to try out a new dent puller tool. The idea here is to stick a plastic pad in the middle of the dent, then use the special tool to pull on the shank of the pad to pull out the dent, followed by a bit of solvent and scraping off the pad. Maybe it did pull out most of the dent, but then it pulled the paint off the fender, so that was a bit disappointing.
Then we have a new club member who brought in a Jaguar E-Type on a trailer. He lives somewhere farther north, but brought the Jag to Florida to be able to drive it here during his winter Florida visits. All was well until it quit running while he was driving it, so now we get to fix it. Guys were mucking around changing and testing coils with no success. For a 10-second test, I gave it a short spray of starting fluid and still no fire, so obviously no spark (and probably not a bad coil). So grab a test light to immediately discover no power on the white wire to the coil when ignition switch was on.
So go to the source of that wire on the ignition switch. Yes the switch works, and there is power on the white wires at the fuse. So run a long jumper wire from white wires in the dash to the coil, and it fires up and runs. Disconnect the jumper wire, and it dies. Okay, it's a 1969 model with alternator (negative earth), and it has electric tachometer with induction loop for the white wire on back of the tach. That means there is a second white wire from ignition switch to the induction loop on the tach, then following on to the coil. We never did figure out if there may be an in-line bullet connector in that wire, but after fiddling with the induction loop on the tach (just left of center in the last picture below), coil input power was restored, and the engine started and ran as normal. Score one for the good guys.
Not knowing exactly where the bad connection was, we collectively didn't trust it not to happen again. So we made up a long white jumper wire, and installed add-on spade connectors on the fuse input and on the coil input. Keep the jumper wire in the car just in case, and we could send the car home with a big smile on the face of the owner. -- Current good news, my new cell phone battery just arived, and it shows 35% charge on installation. A few hours on charge brought it right up to 100%, and running cool.
Saturday, February 6, 2021:
New phone battery recommendation is same as for the computer battery, full charge and full discharge through 3 to 5 cycles for conditioning. That might take a while, as the phone still shows 83% charge after 18 hours. I suppose that's good news, but it might take a few days just for the first full discharge. .... Posted a new tech page the MGA Twin Cam engine mount shim left side only), that can also be used for one or both sides of other MGA or MGB through 1974.
Sunday-Tuesday, February 7-9, 2021:
Posting new pages in the MGA Part Numbers index. Kind of fast and furious, forgot how many new pages, but lots are for the engine mounts (and shim), light bulbs for most applications on the MGA (including multiple world markets), and some electrical connectors.
Wednesday, February 10, 2021:
Update on a Faulty Replacement Part, and excuse me if I sound funny while blowing up and ruminating (grrrrrr). You might think that in 17 years the parts industry could get around to fixing this problem with the Silentbloc bushing for the MGA leaf spring. The inner steel tube should be 2-inches long, and the ID should be minimal clearance over a 7/16-inch bolt. In 2004 it was reported to be too short (needing spacer washers to make up the length). In 2016 they were reported to be still too short, and also too small ID (could not get the bolt through). Now in 2021 the are reported to be too short again (now a little less short but still not serviceable without spacer washers).
I recon this now takes the record for the 2nd longest running faulty part, beating the faulty spin-on oil filter adapter (now fixed) by 6 years. The too-tall leaf springs are still the current leader, first reported by myself in 1997 (before I had a web site to post it).
Thursday, February 11, 2021:
A little more work on new pages for the MG Part Numbers index. But the notable happening today was an evening Zoom meeting with the CMGC committee appointed to consider what to change in the CMGC web site. This kind of discussion has been going on (and off) for several years with lots of yelling and screaming and not much results, mostly because club management hasn't been able to decide what it really wants. This is going to be kind of long, so if you don't want to waste your time on my report of a committee meeting, you can skip the rest of today's notes.
A couple months ago they (some of the CMGC Staff members collectively) requested a pull down menu for the home page, which I promptly composed and posted for their consideration. That was nixed with a further request to remake the page with "responsive design" to make it user friendly for mobile devices. There was a web site with an explanation of what that means, and a function to analyze a web page to see if it qualifies. In essence it means that when viewed on a smaller screen no information should be lost. It took me about 15 minutes to remove the fixed page width restrictions to allow the page to have variable width. When I ran that through the "responsive design" analyzer, it responded with "easy to use with mobile devices". So I posted that for management consideration and got two responses. The first was from the same guy who recommended "responsive design", and he said, "I can't believe they had that response". The second was from the club president saying he intended to form a committee to consider what to do with the club web site. So naturally it has been on hold for six weeks while they struggled to form a committee.
So we finally have a committee of 5 (including myself), and #6 (the club secretary) sitting is as a recorder. The Zoom meeting started with some discussion of a prior email survey with 10 essay questions (mostly leading questions) and only 14 responses from 200 club members. And I suspect at least four of the responses were from members of this committee. That means about 5% response from other club members. There is a proposed new survey with 14 multiple choice questions (very easy) and with room for comments. The idea is to be fair about best efforts at getting response from as many CMGC members as possible, so send it out first as email, and for those who do not respond within a week or so, follow up with a printed mail copy with return envelope. For those who still don't respond, we should assume their attitude is, no importance, good enough the way it is, no reason to change it. We should give due statistical consideration of the opinion of those who do not respond. Think about that for a moment.
When they finally got around to asking my opinion, my reply was to improve the data content, particularly related to current events, coming up and recently past event reports. Also get back to using the web site as a grand extension of the newsletter, allowing instant updates and unlimited space for event photos, so we can reduce the size of the printed newsletter (fewer pictures) to save real money. To do that, we need better and timely information about current events. The worst problem is that no one is sending such information to Webmaster, including management people, and no one is telling the event hosts that they should do this. It doesn't work when Webmaster is the last to know, getting most of the available information from the newsletter long after the fact. That discussion didn't last long, as I suppose certain people don't like to talk about things that irritate them.
For an example of leaving Webmaster in the dark, I mentioned the recent e-mail survey where 14 responses were distributed to many staff members, but not to Webmaster. How is Webmaster supposed to know what to fix? That was an awkward moment, as most of the members of this committee are staff members and will know who did sent the forwarding message. But it has been a couple days now (typing this on Saturday), and I still don't have copies of the survey responses. Another example of management's "obstruction" is no approval of web site changes that were requested and that I had already submitted for consideration, six weeks ago. That was another awkward moment, follower by "Just do it, go ahead and post the proposed page updates on line" (which I did within an hour after the Zoom meeting.
I normally don't like committees, but this one may actually be doing some good. At least people are talking, and slow progress is sometimes better than no progress. The committee chair was going to submit a report of the committee meeting to management at the next Board and Staff meeting (which only happens on the first Monday of the month, and to which I am never invited). That would mean waiting a month for another committee meeting, and reporting everything we chat about to the Board. Forget the obstructionist Board, we need to get something done sometime. In the meantime, we have agreed to hold these committee meetings every two weeks so we'll see how that goes.
Friday, February 12, 2021:
Back to Tech Central to see what the guys are up to this Friday. The first work bench held the continuing efforts on the late model MGB overdrive gearbox. Installing the solenoid control that pushes the tiny steel ball to control hydraulic flow. Also installing the hydraulic valve, which shuttles to operate the overdrive clutches, when triggered by the solenoid. Closing the covers on the O/D unit and on the side of the main gearbox. And finally having to remove the O/D unit again, because the steel ball on order to serve as the oil pump cam key had not arrived yet.
On another work bench someone was beginning to port a cylinder head. Pretty sure he is on the learning curve,
strictly amateur, but what better way to learn? I casually reminded him not to grind through into the water jacket, which may keep bugging him for the duration of the project. But I don't think he's going to grind it too much, only port matching to the aperture in the manifold gasket within one inch of the surface. He wasn't finished today, so story to be continued, possibly also port matching the intake and exhaust manifolds.
Then a couple guys pulling the old radiator out of the Midget and installing a new one. Must be getting to be "old hat", since they pulled the same radiator to install a new water pump last month.
One guy fixing a misalignment on one of his air cleaners on an MGB, where the outer screen didn't want to tuck
inside of the chrome cover flanges. After fighting with it for a while, I think he succeeded, but was learning that aftermarket parts are not always a good idea. Then when it was running very rich, I said I could tune it up in a flash, but he was going to have to take the air cleaners off again to adjust fuel mixture on the HIF carburetors His only reply was, "Not today".
Near day's end Jerry (our Tech Central host) was installing a new accelerator pump in a Weber downdraft carburetor. That didn't take too long, but it turned out to be a good opportunity to have a long discussion about all kinds of Weber carburetors.
Then it was time to head off to a WiFi spot for our daily email and BBS with tech questions, which easily killed the rest of the evening.
Saturday, February 13, 2021:
Jerry is racing at Daytona this week end, so it's a day off at Tech Central. Pretty sure he took our youngest club member along with him as pit crew and observer, so that's good. Maybe we can change his interests to a real sports car, rather than stuffing a V8 into one of his Nissan 300Z cars (all 3 non-running at this time). For me it is a day off to catch up on the photos and notes for the past few days.
I received an email late Thursday that I didn't have time to respond to at the time. It came from Michael Green, West Coast British /LAND ROVER Specialist, in Livermore, California. He has a nice web site, not so important everything he does, but in this case who he is. He is the son of Dickie Green who was the Chief Mechanic for the BMC racing team at Le Mans in 1955 when they were racing the early MGA prototypes (just before production cars got to the dealers). There was this attached picture that looked familiar, and as it turned out, was already posted in the Variants section my web site along with the 1955 Le Mans cars. The person second from the left in this picture is his father, Dickie Green.
In the Books and Literature section of my web site there is a 16-page copy of Safety Fast magazine from 2005 dedicated to the escapades of the racing team and the MGAs at the 1955 Le Mans race. There is a similar picture there, half way through the article (page 8) that identifies all of the people in these pictures. It identifies Dickie Green as, "who had been brought in from Aston Martin for his racing know how". That may be some of his prior background, but at the time he worked for BMC, was Chief Mechanic on the BMC racing team, and had spent a great deal of time in the works competition department (being quite familiar with the development of the MGA model and the race cars).
The 2005 magazine article also identifies the man on the far left in the picture as "Harold Wiggins the department's machinist". That may be incorrect, as the team had a Chief Mechanic and three more technicians who could maintain the cars, and I don't know if there were machine shop facilities at the race track. But Michael Green identifies the guy on the end next to his father as Marcus Chambers, Team Manager, which makes more sense that he would be there with the racing team.
Just an interesting moment, brushing up on the history of the MGA. It is amazing what information may occasionally pass my way through this web site. Incidentally, that BMC Competition service van is a very interesting vehicle in its own right. I don't have it posted on my web site, because it is not specific or exclusive to MGA. But since it was special ordered just before the 1955 Le Mans race, and it seems that servicing these cars may have been the first major assignment for the van, I may do a documentation article for it to post in the History section of my web site.
Sunday, February 14, 2021:
Looks like I may soon be posting drawings for the three wood bows for MGA convertible tops. Someone has original good condition used parts for all three, 1500, early 1600, and late 1600 types. Give us a little time.
Notable today, my cell phone finally died in late afternoon, 9 days after it was fully charged with a new battery. Beats the crap out of going dead in 6 hours after full charge.
Monday, February 15, 2021:
May soon have a new tech page for fixing a gearbox that locks in one gear, or locks in neutral. Someone has one doing this, and can get pictures of the bothersome loose interlock arm caught in the act, plus pics before and after the fix. Give this a few more days to develop. Hey! Just seeing that someone is making new ones now, available on eBay and Amazon, part number 22H746.
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