The Webmaster Zone

Well, I fixed most of the leaks by using some silicone RTV to help the lower windshield seals seal properly. I'm just using the B for short errand trips right now, the valvetrain is very noisy since #2 dropped and I'm basically just trying to use up what gas is left in the tank before my insurance runs out at the end of the month. Then its time to start total disassembly!

OK, for all of you that have been emailing me wondering when I'm going to update the web site, here it is. The reason that I haven't been doing much work on the car is because I moved from Vancouver to Seattle recently, which took a pretty hefty chunk out of my free time for the last month or so. I did adjust the valves a few weeks ago, to my suprise they were almost all too tight. After my dropped valve incident, I'm pretty paranoid about keeping them in good condition now. Unfortunately the mechanic that worked on it torqued the valve cover down too hard and destroyed the gasket, and of course I didn't have a spare on hand so I temprarily made one out of a big piece of cardboard and some blue gasket sealer. Seemed to work fine until a new cork gasket arrived. My main problem now is water leaks, highlighted by the torrential rain that arrives here in the Northwest in November and my continued lack of having a garage. I took the seats and the carpets out of the car two weeks ago and I've been trying to dry out my beautiful new floorpans and track down the leaks since then. I drilled two small holes in the back of the floor pans to let the standing water drain, and determined that my hardtop is leaking a lot of water especially around the quarter lights, the back of the door and the latches. It is in pretty rough shape so I pulled it off and put the soft-top back on which has reduced the flood to a trickle. I also noticed that the fresh air intake was a little swimming pool and was dumping water through the vent into the cockpit, so I got under the car and poked some wire up through the drain hose (to the right of the trans in the trans tunnel) which then of course released a gush of cold dirty water right up my sleeve. I'm going to make cleaning this drain part of my routine maintenance and do it every time I'm down there greasing the U-joints. The leaks that remain are one in the driver side behind the dash, which might just be that the wiper bezel nut needs to be tightened, and around the posts of the windshield. I've had a leak problem ever since the windshield rubber was replaced (or new leaks, rather). Hopefully we will get some nice weather soon so I can pull the windshield and try to extract the one snapped bolt for the center stay rod, and also file a bit of material off the frame leg so I can get the bottom bolt in on the passenger side. I might also switch the order of the post grommet and body-to-frame seal (currently the order is frame-seal-grommet-body) and use some silicone sealant in that area. The dash cover got warped when the idiots that installed my windshield put it in, so I need to straighten that out too. I wish there was some light after work in the winter. I hope I can find all the leaks soon and put the seats back in, I *really* miss driving it. I'm also considering buying one of those EZ-UP type instant garages for working on the car while its raining (which is most of the time in winter).

For a while now I've been trying to find the source of a "clonk" sound that comes from the rear-right hand side of the car when I go over bumps. If you search through the rest of my story you will find that I've done quite a few things to try and solve it, with no luck. Well today I decided to really dig in and try and solve it. I jacked up the rear right wheel, put it on a jack stand and removed the wheel. Then I removed the brake drum and checked out all the brake parts, but there was nothing loose in there. I carefully checked around the axle and leaf springs, pulling and pushing to see if anything loose. I even checked the fuel pump and 12V battery, which are on that side. Nothing seemed loose, but then I noticed the top of the shock link arm was loose. On closer inspection the fastener that passes through the top of the link to the shock arm had somehow come loose, and there was about an inch of slop in that area. This fastener or bolt is built-in to the link arm, so it can't be fixed or replaced as far as I could see. The slop in the link arm seems to have damaged the shock itself, possibly from the forces being put on it at weird angles, because it was leaking shock oil all over the place. I removed the nut from the shock link to the spring bracket - trying to turn this nut was causing the bolt that extends into the bottom of the link arm to simply rotate. I thought I would have to saw the bolt, or split the nut, but then I realized I could clamp the bolt with a pair of vice-grips which kept it stationary while I removed the nut. Removing the shock was easy, after wire brushing the two nuts in the wheel well and lubing them up, they were easy to remove along with the two long bolts that attach the shock to the body. Today I exchanged the shock and picked up a new shock and link arm - driving the car over felt a bit weird without one shock, but there was no clonking so I'm sure I found the problem! I'm coming down with a cold, so I'll have to finish the job later. Update: installation was a snap, pictures are below. The second question people always ask me about the Bomber, after "What is it?", is "Parts must be expensive". In actual fact owning and running this car is pretty cheap, once its restored to an acceptable condition. Case in point, this shock replacement job. With a total cost of $100 (canadian), about 2 hours in my own labour, with no special tools other than a jack and some SAE wrenches, I replaced the entire damping system at one corner. Can't beat that! I love working on this car..

Last night I was driving up Knight street here in Vancouver, accelerating up a mild hill, when I hear a soft "bang" sound in the engine bay and all of a sudden the car loses all power like its only running on a couple of cylinders accompanied by a nasty rattling sound. I pulled off on a side street and coasted to a stop - called a tow truck and now it's at Octagon awaiting a diagnosis on Monday. I have been driving it in a somewhat "spirited" manner lately, and I'm sure the 2000+ miles I've put on it in the last two months didn't help. While I was waiting for the tow truck I took off the valve cover, and the rockers and valve stems looked OK. I'm pretty sure its something in the bottom end of the engine, I'm just praying the crankshaft and/or the cylinder walls aren't scored. This comes as a bit of a suprise as its always had better than average oil pressure. Stay tuned; I'll update as soon as I get more information. Update - Got some good news today, Octagon did a compression test and there was no compression in #2 so they pulled the head, expecting to find a broken valve or a broken piston (or usually, both). By some bit of luck the intake valve stem broke up high enough that the valve didn't fall completely into the cylinder; the rattling sound was the piston pushing the dropped valve back up on each revolution, so the piston was not damaged. I had noticed that the tappets were pretty noisy and that one was slightly louder than the others, so now I guess I know why. They're going to lap in a new valve (and check if hardened seats were ever installed to satisfy my curiosity) and take it for a test drive! I would like to also take this moment to send my sympathy to the injured and their families of the cowardly and abhorrent terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon today. This is not a crime against America but a crime against Humanity and I only hope that by the next millenium these kinds of brutal acts will only be read about in the history books. Update 2 - Today I picked up the car from Octagon, the bill being considerably less than I had initially expected. Removing the head was about a 6 hour job and the parts cost was negligable. While they were in there they noticed some old damage to the top of another piston from some incident in the past, and that the valve guides are nearing the end of their useful lives. Combined with the fact that it appers hardened valve seats were never installed to deal with unleaded gas, this just re-inforces my original plan to have the engine completely rebuilt (with some performance modifications) this winter while the body is being sandblasted and painted. As is, the engine could easily give me another 20,000 miles of service and the valve train is considerably quieter than it was before. I'm just relieved to have it back, tomorrow I'm going to give it a good wash and cleaning to say "welcome home".

This month I did a LOT of driving in the MGB. During a recent trip up to the cabin in the mountains, I had just rounded the last corner of the hour-long hillclimb through the mountain pass, when I heard a pop and suddenly the exhaust was very loud. I pulled over and took a look under the car, and the exhaust pipe had completely cracked in two just behind the center muffler. This is the exact location that I had someone do a little weld where the bracket had cracked - I think the heat of that welding weakened the area and after the long, hot drive when the exhaust cooled off it just couldn't take it. I wired up the pipe from my trusty emergency kit and had an uneventful (but rather loud) weekend. After I returned, and consulted the great people that frequent my BBS, I decided to have a straight pipe fabricated to replace the center muffler rather than putting in the original part. I went to a generic Speedy muffler shop and (after waiting a while) a nice fellow measured and made up a custom S-bent pipe, cut out the center muffler and broken pipe, and clamped it in place. As an added bonus the whole procedure including installation cost less than a new center muffler without installation. I'm pretty happy with the result - the exhaust note is quite a bit louder, but not ridiculously so. Its got sort of a "braaap" sound when the car is cold, but once the engine warms up it mellows into a nice rumble. Also, the car seems to have a little more power, which is probably a result of the reduction of backpressure combined with my free-flow K&N air filters. After getting the muffler fixed, I took the car to Green's Automotive in Richmond. They are one of only two shops in Vancouver that specialize in modification of rims (the other being Panther in Surrey). While I waited, they pulled off the rear rims, removed the tire, cleaned and polished the rims and shaved 4 mm off the back of the mounting flange. After a rebalancing job, they were back on the car with just over 1 mm of clearance between the bottom of the lug nuts and the back of the rear brake drum. The result is that the tires don't rub on the fender anymore!! What a relief. After all this work, I took the B on a 1200 mile journey all through the Southern interior of BC, visiting family and enjoying the scenery. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face for weeks after blasting around twisty 2-lane country roads with the top down...

Lots to report, first I finally got a new speedometer installed. I ordered a large-face 1280 tpm speedo from the UK to match my later top-fill overdrive transmission. Only the UK spec Mark II MGBs retained the large face speedos in that specification, since in North America they had converted to the small gagues with the new safety dashes. Unfortunately the supplier I ordered from doesn't test the used parts before shipping them. The first speedo I received had an inoperative needle, but the odometer worked and it was in very good condition. The supplier immediately sent me a second speedo at no extra cost, but that speedo was also broken, the needle worked but the tripmeter was broken and the face appeared to have water damage. Rather than wait for a third speedo, I combined parts from the two and made one that completely worked and looked good. Buyer beware; make sure your supplier guarantees used parts have been tested!! It's great to have a speedo again, it reads correctly (approx 3400 rpm = 60 mph in 4th gear, overdrive off). On the way down the I5 to Seattle this weekend I did a check on the odometer accuracy, I drove 75 miles as indicated by the mile posts on the highway, but the odo read 78.4 miles which works out to an error of 4.53% fast, probably because of my non-stock tires. Next up was refitting the windscreen. This is a notoriously difficult job, mostly becaues of the tight areas you have to work in (unless you remove the dash - no thanks). Of course the first time you do a job on the car is always the hardest but once you get over the "learning curve" its not so bad. I needed to refit it because the "Speedy" window place that replaced the seals didn't do a very good job of putting it back on - the seals leak, and only one bolt was holding the windscreen to the body on each side. Not to mention their is a bit of that milky discolouration at the edges of the windshield now from them pushing it so hard to get it lined up - I told them to use a 4" c-clamp to line it up but when I got it back the guy said "it took 5 guys to get it on!". Great.. this is why I would rather do things myself. Getting it off was pretty easy, then I trimmed the frame to body seal so that it lined up properly with the post seal and tightened the frame screws. At some point I should drill out the frame rivets, they are getting a bit rusty. Then I sanded down the area on the body where the frame sits and ran the bolts through the frame (out of the car) to clean up the threads; the left bottom bolt had been crossthreaded to top it all off. Getting the screen back on took about 5 tries; I'll skip the details but basically follow the instructions in Art's windshield fitting article below. I managed to get three of the bolts in, but for some reason the lower passenger side bolt hole would just not line up.. something is physically blocking the frame leg from going down far enough on that side. Rather than risk crossthreading it again, I've left it out; I'm pretty sure the reason is the fender. The fact that the C-clamp method worked just fine on the driver's side leads me to believe that fender has had serious accident damage at some point; its actually two fenders welded (poorly) together, and I bet something is out of line inside that is preventing the windshield leg from seating properly. Since I'm replacing that fender anyway, it can wait. Since I was working under the dash anyway, I thought I would fix the wiper system. I've been running on one wiper for quite a while since the splined part the wiper arm clips to twisted completely off several months ago. It had been wiping less and less of an arc for quite a while - it looks like the previous owner had actually drilled a hole and screwed the wiper arm to the spline and probably caused it to fall off. The wiper motor was easy to remove, but figuring out how to get the faulty wheelbox off was tricky. First, remove the nuts on the back of the wheelbox which releases the tubes that the cable (rack) moves inside of, which turns the gears which turn the wipers. Then you can draw the rack out, either with the motor, or by detatching the cable end inside the motor and drawing it out by itself. You can see the rack and the faulty wheelbox in the picture below. I spread the grease around and slid the new wheelbox on, and then fed the rack back into the tube under the dash. I rotated the good wheelbox (driver's side) 180 degrees before feeding the rack back in to give it some "fresh" gear teeth to engage. Don't forget the hard rubber spacer between the wheelbox and the inside of the body, and it helps to tighten the nuts that secure the tubes to the backs of the wheelboxes last, as the flexible cable makes it a lot easier to get everything lined up. Gave it a test with the garden hose, works great! Almost looking forward to a bit of rain to see how much better it is. Almost. Did a few more things that I haven't been able to take pictures of yet. I emptied, propped open and dried out the boot in the sunny weather, it had all kinds of crud in it from years of having a messed up lid and bad filler neck seals letting water in. After it was dry I attacked it with a wire brush and a vacuum cleaner and then gave a little shot of rust paint to slow down a copule of areas until I can get the whole car sandblasted. Later I went to a carpet store and picked up a 4x6 black carpet remnant and, using the old smelly filthy carpet as a template, cut out a nice new carpet and laid it in. What a difference, now I don't mind putting things back there for fear of the smells and stains it might pick up. I also flexed my soldering skills, if you read back you will find in my journal the time when smoke started coming out of the dash when the parking lights were on which I traced back to a short circuit in the boot. To prevent further problems I simply cut the damaged wires which led to the license plate lamps and taped them up. I bought some 14 gauge wire and new Lucas 2- and 4-way connectors and rewired that whole system. I used a lineman's splice with solder and heatshrink tubing for splices, and a butane lighter to heat and solder the bullet connectors to the wires. After assembling I packed everything with vaseline to prevent corrosion and so now that's all fixed too.