Sure is amazing the problems people have w/there B's. I must be lucky because 6 YR's after resto,all I do is change the oil and check fluid levels on my 72. Before that my 75 was the same, in 20 yr's ownership I did a kingpin rebuild and brake jobs. I did have to fiddle w/ the Stromburg @ times but thats about it. If I were uninitiated and visited this forum w/all the problems posted, I would definately not own an MG. I parted out the 75 recently due to rust issues, my fault, but the engine & tranny are still in serviceable condition. All I can figure is there are a lot of abused B's out there who's PO's had no clue how to maintain them.

yup it is amazing these even run when first purchased - i've spent two years sorting out stupid repairs the "mechanic" did - i know the PO - not her fault, she tried
stupid repairs tend to compound themselves - til they are no longer reliable
mechanically things are back to stock - couldn't be more content

our club is heading to ky lake,in the morning,(Patties- Grand Rivers) for lunch (all backroads) @ 6hrs round trip

hardtop is stored away and softop is back on

ric

Sounds like fun Ric, too far away for me though. ENJOY your trip & the unseasonable weather up your way.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2012 08:19PM by tazman72.

I would chime in and agree, but I don't want to tempt fate!

---

"OUR MG" Glacier White 1973 MGB, owned since 1983. Factory hardtop. Member MG Car Club Western New York Centre
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy" - Ben Franklin

I'm pretty happy with my 72 as well. In 4 the months since I've owned it the only real problem I've had is with the steering column universal touching the #1 plug lead on the dizzy and pulling it out. (Don't panic my North American friends, it concerns Right Hand Drive Mk 2 vehicles only). Suggested fix was putting shims under the engine mount to lift it away from the steering column. I've done that but it is still very close. I'll probably revert to a side entry distributor cap if it creates any more problems. Plus I put new seat belts in yesterday but that is not an MGB issue!


Happy motoring one and all ...

Andy

hi tomorrow - for the run will be 75 and sunny - but all week they called for 50% chance of severe thunderstorms then this morning storms are gone - who knows
anyone want to meet us we should pull into grand rivers @ 12:30pm
ric
sorry - i guess i highjacked your thread



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2012 09:19PM by feathercraft1952.

Usually we only hear about the 'bad' news with our B's. I suspect there are many of our vehicles that are very reliable and trouble free. But how many times do you want to hear that my B ran all last year with only "an oil change and gas fills".

Come back in 10 or 20 years and tell me how many 1980 -1999 cars are even on the road, let alone running without problems.

---

John & Marge Sugden
1976 MGB Roadster
1969 MGB GT

I think a lot of times what we see here are people trying to make their cars new again.

Not that that is a bad thing at all, but it does bring about a lot of questions. If these were some old square econo boxes, no one would care that compression on #3 cylinder was 12% lower than the rest.

You'd just drive them till they crapped.

---

Wayne Sanders
Rose Lodge, OR

"I don't care to belong to any club that accepts people like me"-joined Willamette Valley Club in 2011

77 MGB - Four tone paint - some kind of electronic ignition - hood props - cheap tires - new springs all around - mixture of poly and rubber bushings - original exhaust - fuzzy seatcovers - stereo out of old F150 pickup - virtually no rust - right front wrecked and semi well repaired - just about right for me!

78 MGB - Done right by a good PO, and I only bought it. Tell Jim how nice it is. But I did put in a Datsun 5 speed.

79/65 MGB - Tubby - Carmine Red - V-6 - T-5
Going to do this one more right, less rat rod!

I've always said that MGs don't have mechanical problems, they have mechanic problems.

And some of the recent discussions reveal that many owners are too poor/cheap to spend a nickel on their cars.

---

Terry Ingoldsby
terry.ingoldsby@DCExperts.com

Terry, I'll hold my hand up to being one of the cheap ones.

I've spent very little on my 71GT and it's as reliable as anything I've driven. OK, it's seriously cosmetically challenged, but that doesn't affect how it runs.

Maintenance is the key, and that needs more time than a lot of money.

Sometimes it's easier, but more expensive to spend money on changing a part rather than repairing the faulty one, but that's a choice the owner takes. Repairing the part properly is in most cases much cheaper and no less reliable.

Also there is often the view that the only way to make the car reliable is to fit 'upgrades'. They all cost money, and IMO do nothing to make the car more reliable than the stock system properly maintained.

---

Member of The International Society of Luddites (Unrepentant Chapter).

Take the time to understand what a part does and how it does it, then you'll have a better understanding of how to fix it when it goes wrong. Beats the scattergun approach every time.

Ignition testing made easy.

Making your MGB handbrake work

My You Tube Channel

Life with an MG TA and an MGB GT in the UK.

Agree, if were a Pinto, who ya gonna call?

I think new readers have to understand that technical issue help is one of the main things this forum is for. It would be pretty boring here if our MG's where totally reliable. We'g get nothing but posts like "I used a new wax today!" or "I armor-alled the seat covers! Yippee!" or technical articles like "How to put air in your tires, part I"...yawn.

-David



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/31/2012 06:27AM by dbandel.

Yes, this site is more an education on maintenance and repair for the shade tree mechanic/hobbyist. For those of us that only do the light work, it is always nice to know what the most likely cause of the problem is before you take it to a garage for repair. I have now had my 77B for a little over a year and it is getting to the place where I am starting to think it is more reliable. I am not doing any upgrades/improvements. I am keeping it as close to original as I can. So far my biggest challenge is the electrical and I have not spent much time on cleaning all the grounding points etc. But, I well soon.

Having owned this '73 MGB for almost 30 years and another B before that I can say that they are generally reliable cars when maintained. I have driven the B for years and years without a problem with only routine maintenance like oil changes and adjusting the brakes. But then two or three small things crop up unexpectedly, like when the ground wire in the dizzy wore out and caused the engine to cut out, or like when the float in the rear carb got stuck and I had to pull the carbs off and clean and readjust the floats, or yesterday when the ground wire fell off the starter solenoid so it wouldn't start. Sometimes big problems happen like when I was going to a cruise night with the B and got hit head on by a car that ran a stop sign. But then there are four or five more years of blissful fun. In general driving an MG regularly is better than letting it sit. For newer owners who read lots of threads of problems needing attention understand that many cars have been sitting for a long time and that means everything may have problems from the brakes to the fuel system.

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"OUR MG" Glacier White 1973 MGB, owned since 1983. Factory hardtop. Member MG Car Club Western New York Centre
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy" - Ben Franklin

It's Saturday morning. Time for all the TV shows dealing with cars and trucks. There are no MGBs on these shows. Nor are there any LBCs (little British cars)Or LJCs, or LGCs or LICs. But there are plenty of muscle cars and trucks from the 60s to the 80s, and even more cars and trucks from the 90s to the current day.

All of these shows deal with maintaining and upgrading vehicles which are judged 'more reliable' and certainly in most cases far newer than our Bs. The general consensus on these shows is that 'everything' that can be replaced should be with products made and sold by the sponsors. This leads to a mindset which infects even those of us whose cars are never featured on these programs, because these 'professionals' are doing it "the right way" with parts they never pay for, tools which we DYIers cannot justify buying and the assistance of gangs of true experts in particular areas we cannot afford to hire. What these shows prove to me is how solidly built and well engineered MGBs are.

MGs, well all import cars from the 50s to the 80s had a reputation in the United States for being 'unreliable.'

The truth is most were simply not maintained well. The reason is not the DPO. The reason is the Dumb Previous Mechanic. Why would a guy who spent all day fixing and tuning an American OHV 4s, 6s, and V8s say to the owner of an MG, Austin Healey, Triumph, or Volvo "I don't work on the foreign jobs." Sheer stupidity. Yet that is what greeted import owners across the United States well into the 1980s. Of course taking it to the dealer every three months for a good going over and maintenance was a good idea, if you had the money. And liked parting with your only means of transportation for at least a day.

So things that did not keep the car from running, even running badly, did not get attended to until the car absolutely quit. "It ran when I parked it." It just refused to start again.

This is the point where most all of us come in. Some of our cars will be fifty this year. The youngest is thirty-two. A very few have been maintained properly since they were new. The rest have been been brought back from the dead at some point. The surprise to me is the fact that so much of my Zom-B was in very good shape, despite the fact that it shows evidence of extremely poor maintainance since 1967.

Do I want it to be as reliable as it was when it was new? Well, duh!

Will I maintain it according to the Abingdon Works' schedule? Certainly since I have at least 'refreshed' every single system on the car myself.

what gets me is the number of folks who say - i'm pulling the engine and gearbox tomorrow,or removing the head,as if it were something you have to do every other week.

What gets me is the number of folks who say "I'm pulling the engine and gearbox tomorrow" as if it were a 2-hour job easily in the capability of most of the people who post here, which it is.

I find it the same on all car forums. For the most part, all that gets posted is the problems. So if you read them you have to keep a perspective or it gets frightening. I've found this to be the case on the Jag and Vette forums both. Everything gets exagerated and the panic spreads.

For example. GM has discontinued some electronic components for the early C5s such as the ABS module for my 99. As a result, there is widespread panic and hand wringing on the Corvette Forum. People who don't even have a problem are searching for used pieces to shelve as spares. I'd venture to say that for every person with a real problem, there are 10 others just seeking parts out of panic and cursing GM. If not for the internet, they would be happily enjoying their cars.

Interesting chatter and opinions here, most of which I completely agree with.

However, the title is/was "Newer vs. Older B's"....so....

Having never owned a "newer B", one with government mandated pollution controls and height requirements, what's the consensus here? Personally, I have never wanted to attempt to deal with all of the extra plumbing. It seems to me that they just got slower, less powerful, handled worse and were much more difficult to deal with than the pre-68 models. And more complicated for the owner/mechanic. Do most people de-smog them? Or am I just being put off by the extra snakes in the engine compartment.

That's all, ran out of pennies.

Thanks,

Dennis

You are quite right. I don't know if you can say "most" desmog without a poll but many do. I personally see benifits of a later car with the powerplant back dated. The ride height and bumpers are much more practical from a parking lot viewpoint. And the handling on the 77 up is not that bad with the factory swaybars and wider tires.