Car was sold to Ashish Talwar of Merit Cars in New York. I expect to see the car on their website soon at www.meritcars.com.
Here's a picture of the car being loaded for shipment, if you look closely I had Jose the driver wave in the background. I had fun driving the car up this long trailer, the wheel ramps are just barely narrow enough for an MGB, not much room for error! Jose was getting a little nervous.
So another RayVin project comes to a close. Thanks again to Tom and Jan for providing us with a nice little car for a project!
Here's some pics we took today, I think Ray did a great job on the touchup painting. We have the car listed on Craigslist, plus will have it on the local British Car Show on September 21.
Found a spare tire, connected wire to make wipers work. Found speedometer root cause (sticky speedometer itself), now it works. Vince did a little cleanup work on the dash, looks ok:
Ray's been doing great on touchup painting the many spots that needed it. As mentioned before, these pictures look much better than the car in person, but it definitely looks acceptable for a driver:
So we are sticking with the plan to put it up for sale at the September 21st SIR Brit British Car Show in Newburgh!
Vince drove the car home, about 15 miles. Good news - engine ran fine and stayed cool. Bad news - front brakes got super hot and made awful noise when pushing on pedal. We've seen this before - the pistons in the calipers have corrosion on them, making them stick and apply pressure on the pads while driving. We got new calipers and brake pads from Autozone at a very competitive price, no shipping. Also found the clutch slave didn't have the flexible line installed on the correct port, putting the line in a bind (saw same problem on our club project car, line starts leaking in about 2 years). So Vince was able to install brake calipers/pads, then bleed clutch and brake systems.
The seats were still not right. We had bent the frames to remove some of the excessive backward leaning from the rear end collision. But it was not enough, esp on the driver's seat. Here's what it looks like now:
This looks and feels normal. The driver's seat back was simply not hitting the lower seat frame correctly. Normally there are two 5/16 inch bolts that screw into the bottom of the seat back and their heads engage with the lower seat to allow adjustment of the rear seat angle. Where the bolts thread into the seat back was out of position enough that the bolts did not hit the seat bottom frame. So we fabricated a bracket which bolted to the bottom of the seat back using the original mounting nuts, then installed new 5/16 inch bolts in the bracket at a new angle so they hit the seat bottom. Lot cheaper than new seat frame, and seems to work very well:
Ray's been out of town, Vince has had a lot of small trips, need to drive the car some more and see what else we need to address. We know the speedometer doesn't work, root cause is a 90 degree drive that is stripped (we got a used replacement, it was stripped too). Steering system seems to have too much slop - might be wear in the U joint in the steering column, need two people to diagnose this correctly.
Summer heat and travels make this a slow time of year for progress, but we feel confident it will be ready by our local club's annual car show in September!
Vince has been doing a lot of traveling, plus Ray had a fishing trip, so progress slowed some. Got new tires installed, replaced leaking water pump. Changed engine and tranny oil. Rear diff fluid was super thick, replaced temporarily with automatic tranny fluid then later with 90W gear oil to make sure it's cleaned out. Interior back together. Got a good quote from our friend Darrell for welding and body work - passenger dog leg and rocker plus typical cracks in both door skins by wing windows. Here's what it looks like after Darrell's body work, which will then be painted by Ray:
In general the paint looks much better in pictures then in person. We have had rattle cans of custom paint made to closely match the original color, but that process is not perfect. We are ending up with a nice looking "20 footer". So the buyer can either just drive it as is and enjoy a nice early MGB, or they can disassemble the car and paint it and make a REALLY nice car out of it. Or do both - enjoy for now and paint it later!
Was fun watching Ray driving the car to Darrell's, a trip of about 6 miles, it ran like a champ. Just a few more parts (choke cable, weeping fuel sending unit), then just drive it until we find other things that need to be addressed. With luck, it should be on the market soon!
Car must have been stored with gas in the carbs, because there was varnish packed all around the jet bodies which prevented them from moving up and down. This means you can't adjust mixture, plus there's no choke effect.
Took a while to figure out how to get it all apart, here's a picture with the jet assemblies disassembled:
The black things with flexible tubes on them are the jet bodies. The one on the right came apart, had to destroy it to get it out of the brass threaded piece lower in the picture. Luckily I had an extra used one that was in good shape to replace it.
Then checked valve clearances, dwell and timing on ignition, and finally adjusted carbs (air, then spark, then fuel mantra we hear about in MG seminars). Installed the drivers seat, then ready to drive!
This video is Ray backing off the lift. It looks like he kills the engine in the street, but actually the battery laying loose in the trunk had become disconnected:
Then here's Ray driving around the parking lot by the shop. We both drove the car - this thing clearly benefits from the high compression pistons and the header. I would not be surprised to find it's got a more aggressive cam in it too. Listen to it as Ray circles the lot:
Got about a dozen or so smaller things to finish up, but considering we've had the car for about two months we are very pleased with the progress to date.
