Chad's 1959 MGA

Installed the special order red top this week.  Looks great!  Even has zip out window! Installed second voltage regulator we ordered from another source.  Ignition light now acts as it should, and voltage shows battery is charging.  Will have to return first new regulator. Drove car on old tires.  Lots of shimmy going on.  Should have new tires on better rims in a day or so, will check again then. The list is getting shorter!

Slow progress due to summer travels and too hot to work, so it's been a while since an update. Dash is painted and reinstalled, looks great: We have a new steering wheel, not installed yet.  Cockpit trim and seats returned from Too Tall Tim and installed, he does nice work: Got fuel gauge working with a new sending unit.  Need to get new tires installed.  Rcd new red top, need to install it.  Charging system still not working, rebuilt generator tests fine, need to diagnose new voltage regulator.  New grill installed, needs some fettling to improve fit.  Btw, fettling is a British term for fine tuning. We're getting down to hopefully a short list of remaining items.

 Sure has been hot lately, makes it tough to work very late in the day!  Ray and I also enjoyed a great week of fishing in Canada in early June.  Ray loves those 15 inch crappie up there! Been installing parts.  Installed all new ignition wires, plugs, points/condenser, and cap.  Loosened distributor and it would not turn!  Took about four days of soaking in PB Blaster and strategic application of a chisel but eventually it came loose.  So we are able to set the timing along with dwell angle for points. Ray has been doing some great work on touching up the body.  Includes re-creating the pin stripes on the right rear fender where a dent has now been fixed:  Repairing a rust hole in the driver's side rocker panel (includes before shot, when hole was opened up): Painting the drip rail under hood.  And painting the rocker cover (also includes a before shot): Painting door sill areas:   Seats and cockpit trim were delivered by owne...

 Today we bled the brakes and clutch, after finally getting all the parts needed to complete the hydraulic circuits.  As usual, we have to try about four different approaches to get all the air out - mighty vac, single pedal depression, power bleeder, pump up several times and hold, etc.  Seems like we always get there, but takes a while and consumes about a pint of fluid.  Brakes stop but still need some more work.  Clutch felt fine but did not disengage.  We've seen this before, clutch disc seizes to the flywheel.  So started the engine with clutch pedal down and in second gear - starter struggled a bit but eventually it broke the disc free.  Time to drive it! Engine continues to run fine.  Clutch and gearbox operated fine, got into all four gears.  I'm sitting kinda high in the car because I'm sitting on a plastic crate which is about 6 inches tall, the normal seat bottom is about 3 inches tall.  

Had two fine examples of crud found in the MGA.  The first was inside the thermostat housing.  When the engine first ran, it eventually ran hot, which we thought was a stuck thermostat.  We now suspect it's actually this crud blocking the flow: We had also noticed the passenger side rear brake shoes had some differential oil on them, and an attempt had been made to seal the end of the differential at some point in the past.  We've learned about the root cause of this issue, see this picture from the Moss catalog (grey box, starts with remember): then here's what the vent looked like on this car: Lots of crud.  So hopefully we don't need to do anything further on the differential oil leak.

 With some help from Clay we determined there was indeed spark, perhaps helped by resetting the points again and filing them clean.  Cleaned up spark plugs.  Freed up dampers in carbs and added oil.  Sprayed ether into carbs.  Little blip of the throttle (by hand, throttle cable rusted solid) and the sucker took right off: Idles very well, no major coolant leaks.  After several minutes it got pretty hot, we suspect the thermostat is stuck.  New thermostat and throttle cable, then we'll run it some more.   Compression, as expected, is getting better - now 120/120/110/90.  We also adjusted the valve clearances to 0.018 cold.