Carb Repairs, then Driving!

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.

It Runs!

Today we started the car up, as far as we know it has not been run for 38 years.  Had to clean the points on the fuel pump to get it running, clean points in distributor to get spark, and use ether to get initial running due to jets not dropping for fuel enrichment, ie choke.  But here's video proof:

We also checked compression again after running, dropped to 190 to 210 after running.  We also killed quite a few mosquitoes when it started, lots smoke due to oil in the cylinders which we think had created those extremely high compression readings.  So compression is still high, but believable.

Bled hydraulic system for brakes and clutch, they both appear to be fine.  The engine does seem to "run on" quite a bit, ie diesel, we need to confirm timing before getting too worried about this.

Good progress!  Few more details and we'll have it on the road!

Sledgehammers and Boroscopes

From very low tech to high tech, using the right tool is important.  In our case, this includes sledgehammers and boroscopes.

Ray and I commented today it seems like we use the sledgehammer an awful lot on this car.  Got a lot of swings in on getting the sheet metal back in place, esp on the rear.  Here's the latest picture of rear end, not perfect but acceptable:

Then here's a view of the two seats after we used the sledgehammer to bend the seat frames back into position:

Reinstalling seats needs to wait until we finish the minor rust repair and apply POR15 to the floors to prevent future rust.

Meantime, we've been wanting to start on the engine.  We had removed the plugs and poured about an ounce of Marvel Mystery Oil with motor oil into each cylinder.  After sitting for a few days, and using a more effective socket and breaker bar on the front of the crankshaft, we got the engine to turn over freely.  We then decided to use a boroscope to inspect and take pictures of the inside walls of the cylinders.  So here's the four cylinder wall pictures in order from #1 to #4:

It's a little hard to see, but in each picture the left hand side is the top of the cylinder wall (we had the piston at bottom position of each picture).  The wall surface is shiny and in most pictures you can see where the piston and rings stop on the wall.  So no gobs of rust on the cylinder wall that need to be removed.

We then did a compression test.  We had spun the engine some to get excessive oil out from on top of the pistons, but apparently not enough - all four cylinders maxed out the compression gauge at well over 200 psi!  Think we need to let that oil soak back down the side walls and try this again later.  But the key points is there is no evidence of cylinder wall corrosion or valves stuck open with crud, we may get lucky on this engine!