Steve Lyle's Journal

When I disassembled the car, the door mirrors were in such a sorry state I just tossed them. Probably a mistake. My advice at this point - keep everything, even if you think it's junk.

So in one of my part buying binges, I looked up the style of the door mirrors for a '72, and ordered 2, one right, one left.

One of the last things I did before hitting the road for French Lick was to install the driver's side door mirror. I had foggy memories of reading posts about problems with the current model of the '72 mirror style - and those memories became clear when I tried using it. It could not be oriented to give a clear view of the area you're supposed to view with a door mirror. Yeah, if you moved your head into an awkward position, you could see where you needed to, but basically, it was useless. It just could not be adjusted to scan "out" far enough.

So I didn't bother installing the passenger side mirror, and drove last year without a functioning door mirror. It looked ok, and if a door mirror is required by law (and I have no idea if it is or not), I had one. The lack of usefulness generally wasn't a problem, since I tend to swivel my head for a clear look when merging left anyway. But still, a mirror would be nice...

The options seemed to be: find an original, or NOS mirror. Or try the mirror that was used from '74 on.

I went with the latter approach. I ordered a repro mirror from VB (the original "Tex" mirrors are available from Moss at about twice the price). Since my first mirrors were pricy "Tex" (the original manufacturer), I didn't put a lot of stock in the brand name, and went with the cheaper approach.

This weekend I switched over. The door hole spacing is supposedly the same (1 1/2", but the new mirror base holes were actually a tad closer than the original mirrors, so I had to carefully rat-tail file the holes before I could get the new base installed.

But once on - wow, they work. It's very nice to have a door mirror again. Now - should I do the right side or not?

Last spring I was in a bit of a rush to get the car "finished" so I could get to French Lick on time. Then I had so much fun driving it, I didn't want to take it off the road to get all the details complete. So they piled up in one big "to-do during the winter" list. But I didn't plan on it being so, well, cold, in the winter, so much of the list got delayed till early spring.

So here's the list:
1) Flush the coolant system. The first 1,000 miles took the crud from the block and put it in solution in my coolant. That had to go.

2) Add a radiator drain. Cooling system work is a pain when your only draining option is removing the lower hose. What a mess. Do this before you install a new radiator if at all possible.

3) Replace my carb linkage clamp bolts, carb throttle plates, and convert adjusting screws to spring-locked vs lock-nuts. This all came out of J. Twist's observations at FL.

4) Replace the windshield. When we showed up at the Carthage show, we found a crack in it that just grew, of course, over the remainder of the season. Thank goodness it never got bigger than the 8 1/2 x 11 show entry placards!

5) It's easiest to deal with a windscreen when the dash is out, and I wanted to take another shot at recovering mine, anyway...

6) I had two different colors of LED lights in my dash gauges...

7) My speedometer never worked right all season...

8) Did the windshield crack because my top was too tight? Anyway, even if it didn't, it was too hard to latch, so sort that out.

9) After I got the car together, I found the trip odometer reset cable - so it was now time to install it.

10) I had a very small oil mist leak at the oil pressure flex hose where it connects to the junction to the capillary tube.

11) I was running without throttle or choke return springs - the ones between the heat shield and the throttle and choke linkage. That got mentioned periodically by people looking at my car. It never seemed to be a problem, but what the heck, I put it on the list.

12) The very bottom of my PS seat-back upholstery was torn, where the assembler stressed the threads to much, apparently, when slipping the cover on. Mostly out of sight, but still....

Some of these items were quick and easy. Some were just part and parcel of disassembling the dash and reinstalling it. And then there was the extra work that either I brought on myself, or the car's age did...

An example of the former - I had the windshield glass in, and the frame reassembled, and was installing the body seal in the lower rail. When I noticed that the window glazing wasn't fully seated in the rail groove. So I took my hook tool and pushed it in. And thought I could get it even a little bit farther in - and my hook tool went to far, nicked the edge of the glass, and craaaack.

That cost me another $160 or so for the cheap windshield glass and shipping from VB. And got me even more practice at installing windshields.

So I get the 2nd attempt assembled, and install the frame on the car, learning even more tricks on doing that. So I get it done, and go to clean all the assembly glop off of it, and brush against the center rod. And this is where I got nailed by the car's age. The aluminum threads at the top piece that the rod screws into decided that 43 years of loyal service was enough, so they gave up. And the rod fell out. The part needed a heli-coil insert, which requires that the existing threads be drilled out. Which can't be done to an assembled frame unless you removed the aluminum part. Which has to be done by drilling out rivets while not drilling too far and cracking the glass again. Since I didn't want to risk that happening, I went the removal/disassembly route.

Which meant I had to take the dash off again. I'm getting real experienced at getting the dash out, in addition to R&Ring windscreens. The trick on the dash is to not mess with the attachment nut above the oil pressure gauge (the remaining 5 are plenty), and use a nylock with a washer superglued to it at the spot above the temp gauge.

I mentioned windscreen installation tricks. Most people know the c-clamp on the pillar leg - under the fender, against the pillar leg cover. Very handy. Another trick is to hook up a ratchet strap to the pillar to move it where it needs to go. When I first put the frame on the car, for some reason the PS was in the right position, but both times the DS was too far forward. So I used the hole where the tonueau cover snap goes at the bottom of the pillar, made a loop out of coat hanger wire, hooked a ratchet strap to that loop, hooked the other end to the door striker, and pulled the windscreen back where it needed to go. Using the top snap hole at the top of the pillar allows you to attach a ratchet strap there to pull the pillar back to increase the rake to match the quarter light. Also very handy.

Finally, at least part of my speedometer problem was probably the LED gauge light I was using. I finally figured out that the bulb, which is significantly longer than the original incandescent bulb, would/could/did interfere with the speedometer needle. Pushed in far enough, it would prevent the needle from moving. And perhaps pushed in just far enough, it would interfere with it's movement. Anyway, after sending my speedometer back to West Valley, and figuring out the LED interference problem, I've now got a working speedometer, complete with trip odometer reset cable. Very sweet.

The upholstery tear had me worried, but was an easy fix. When I pointed it out to the shop that did the work, they didn't offer to fix it, but they did tell me that super glue is great at gluing vinyl. My seats have leather seating surfaces, but like most covers, are vinyl elsewhere. A few drops of super glue, and I was able to hide the unsightly tear. It was certainly easier to fix it myself than to deal with the logistics of having the shop do it.

I had my hopes up on the dash re-recovery. A Moss rep had responded to my forum post on my original dash recover, mentioning that they had worked with the supplier to improve the quality of the fit. Since I had the dash out anyway, and Moss had covers on sale, I figured let's do this again.

The result this time was marginally better, but still not perfect. I did find out that part of my original fit problem was that the left heater control that came with the car wasn't the right part. It was likely for a metal dash car - the stem that knob fits on wasn't long enough. My buddy Bill had the correct part in his collection, so I swapped in a new part and that fixed some of my problem. But the new pad was generally a disappointment - the fit around the right heater knob, which was ok on my original, was bad, as well as the fit around pretty much everything in that area. And the glove box fit was marginally worse, as well. Oh well, at least it looks ok.

Of course, there's always something. When reassembling the dash, the threads on the choke cable housing, that the big clamping nut threads to on the back of the dash, gave way. When I tightened the nut, it just slipped on the threads. The nut is steel, the threads some sort of pot metal or aluminum. So, a new cable was ordered from VB. Interestingly enough, this new cable has a steel locking piece - the little part that enables the cable to lock when you twist it. My original cable had a plastic part, that I had to replace with a steel part that I cut out of a 3/16" bolt. Apparently there's no need to do that anymore.

Finally, the top. Most of my problem was in the header seal - it wasn't solidly in the groove. I got a new seal and a new channel, slipped the seal into the channel, poked holes with an awl from the back side, and using countersunk #8 * 3/4" screws, at every other screw location, inserted screws through the seal and through the channel holes. Then I took that assembly to the header rail, and screwed it to the header, such that the screw heads passed through the outer face of the seal, and are hidden under it (much like the way that the windscreen pillar seals are attached). Now the seal is positively screwed to the header. The top now attaches with reasonable effort, and once I had it on and latched, I went back and trimmed the seal to fit.

Now to go driving...

We went to the "Brits in the Ozarks" show this past weekend - Sep 12-13. It's put on by the British Iron Touring Club of Northwest Arkansas, and they put on a great show.

They use the Springdale Holiday Inn as the 'official' hotel. They get a good rate, and the facility is excellent. They have a Friday night parking lot party, that got moved in to the hotel due to rain. Hospitality suite with beer, soft drinks and munchies.

The show is at a nice park in Fayetteville - you're on the grass, lots of big trees (shade), which wasn't a big factor this year. The rain stopped for the show, but the weather was unseasonably cool - low 50's in the AM, warming to 70 in the PM. Very nice. The park has a pavilion, with restrooms, a serving area where lunch (burgers and dogs) was available, and weather protection is available, if needed.

The classes are arrayed around the pavilion. Over 100 cars, all the usual suspects. MGs, Triumphs, Jags, Lotus. 8 Morgans. Some Minis. 3 Sunbeams. Some really unusual cars.

As usual, the B chrome bumpers were the biggest class - 13 of us.

I took pictures - you can see what I got at https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=2C454FEC68F93BC4!1328&authkey=!AKslnP2-KHbn4JQ&ithint=folder%2cJPG . Unfortunately, my batteries all died, but I did get the B's, Midgets, T's and A's. A few Triumphs.

Check out the supercharged Midget with the Bugeye front end. Very nice.

A nice dinner that evening at the hotel. Kas Kastner of Triumph racing fame was the guest speaker - he's got some great stories from the old days, and of course he owned/raced MG's too, so he wove those stories in as well.

A nice thing about this show - for years they've contributed the proceeds to the ALS Association - so they were there before the ice buckets! And they tied that in to members and participants that have had ALS, and the local association. Very nice.

They also give out a "Blind Eye" award, that goes to the spouse who best tolerates the hobby, and turns a 'blind eye' to the participants LBC excesses. Very funny.

This show hands out 1st and 2nd place awards in the various classes. The awards were donated by Haggerty - laser engraved boxes holding wooden-barreled pens, engraved with the class and award. We were very fortunate, our car was awarded 1st place in its class - quite an honor given the rest of the cars in the class.

We had a blast. First time to drive the car in the rain and cool/cold weather. The heater worked great! So did the wipers!

The car ran great going over. On the way back, I counted 8 times, spaced along the 100 miles, where I felt "a disturbance" from the engine. Sort of like a miss. Almost like some unburned fuel going out the exhaust, hitting the exhaust manifold and going off - like a weak backfire. Very intermittent. Odd, I'll have to check the plugs and the mixture.

The Greater Ozark British Motor Club, in southwestern Missouri (Springfield, Joplin, etc.) holds a car show every year (this is #15) in Carthage, MO. Carthage is about 150 miles from Tulsa, and the Tulsa MG club I'm in - the Green Country MG Register (GCMGR), traditionally participates.

And since I've finally got a car, I can too!

I'd known about this show, since it's been on the GCMGR event calendar, but the GOBMC people also advertised with flyers dropped in the seats of the cars at the NAMGBR show. It turns out that's a common way of advertising shows - you go to one, and find out about a bunch of others.

Car prep for this show was minimal. The repairs after getting back from NAMGBR were quick and easy. I put off work that wasn't critical, since the car was running fine. I did adjust the tie rod ends by 1 turn to center up the steering wheel a bit. So now instead of 5 degrees to the left, it's 1-2 degrees to the right. Another adjustment or two and it should be right on.

For this trip, we went all in on the MGB - Pam rode with me, vs trailing in the Cadillac. We both took overnight duffels/soft bags, along with 2 folding chairs, a bucket of car cleaning stuff, and a 'just in case' tool box. No spares - I wouldn't know what to bring. A golf umbrella finished off our luggage load, easily fitting in the trunk along with a fire extinguisher and my flat tire kit (this stuff fits because I don't carry a spare).

We left about 7:00 pm on Friday, trying to get to the host hotel parking lot party before everyone left (it was advertised to go till 9). To save time we took I-44. The car ran great, but with the top down 65 mph was about as fast as I wanted to go. We did hit 75 at times passing trucks, and I'm sure cruised along at 70 plenty, too.

Although you wouldn't know it from the speedometer - those speeds are from tachometer calculations. The speedo would show 90, 95, 100 mph, whatever. Got to get that thing looked at.

We got to the hotel a little after 9, after missing our turn a couple of times. I dropped Pam off at the office, and went to find a parking spot - not an easy thing, since this is seemingly the only hotel in Carthage, and it was packed with British car people and cars.

I found a spot pretty near where the party was still going on, and as I pulled in someone looked over the car and commented something along the lines of "congratulations, you made a trip without losing your boot lid octagon". That was Dan Craig, the president of GOBMC, who was apparently familiar with my NAMGBR experience. I felt right at home...

Pam and I had beers with Bill Heath and Dan Craig, both MGBEr's, and their wives, and others from GOBMC. A very friendly bunch. Then it was off to Arby's, since the food tent at the party had shut down (just missed it), and we hadn't had dinner, then to bed.

Next morning we had breakfast at the hotel, hooked up with the other Tulsa people, then went off to the show about 9 am.

The show is held on the Carthage town square. It's very efficient - they direct you to a line, get you your registration materials if you don't already have them, get your picture taken, and direct you to your class area - ours was "Chrome Bumper B's", of course.

Once parked, we went over the car with detail and glass cleaner and micro fiber cloths, basically removing dead bugs from everywhere. The trunk got emptied, bonnet and deck lid opened (a lot of people won't vote for your car if your bonnet is closed), and we went off to see cars and meet people and explore Carthage.

Voting was either very easy or very difficult. Some classes were easy - there were only one two cars, and the best one stood out. Others were darn near impossible. Lots of B's, both chrome and rubber bumpers, and several A's and T's of various sorts, very similar in condition. Jags and Triumphs were well represented, too. 106 cars and motorcycles in total.

I took pictures of all the cars - see them at: https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=2C454FEC68F93BC4&id=2C454FEC68F93BC4%211201

We had lunch at a diner on the square. The show/voting ended at 2. We then went on the 'driving event', which took us out to "Red Oak II", an art colony/historic building collection outside of Carthage, with some interesting welded sculpture - see a couple of pics.

Then back to the hotel for a shower and some rest. Did I mention it was HOT? Well, it was, and apparently, pretty much always is, for this show.

The awards dinner was that night in a nice hall. GOBMC is very gracious - club members actually serve the guests - we just sat down and they brought us our dinner - fried chicken, beef, etc.. Very good.

After dinner, the awards were handed out. Our car got first place for the chrome bumper B's, which was quite a compliment - there were some VERY nice cars there, and our class was by far the largest - 12 cars.

Then the dancing commenced - they had a nice live band, and Pam and I love to swing dance, so we did. And we were the ONLY ones dancing. But didn't care. At all. When the band quit, we did too. We just can't pass up a live band. They did a great "Route 66", among others.

Next morning was the drive away brunch at a members restored 19th century home. Very beautiful. Again, GOBMC served their guests. Great people and great hospitality. A great show to attend.

The return trip we stayed on back roads, which added about an hour to the trip. Much of the route was along Rt 66, which made it interesting.

An uneventful trip back - the car ran great.

After 6 years of effort, it was time to take the car on the road.

It was a bit of a rush in the last few weeks to get the car road ready. Tulsa, OK, to French Lick, IN, is about 700 miles. With the gotchas that are inevitable in this kind of project, I was left with about a week of road-testing time, that had to be fit in with the rest of my life. I was able to put about 150 miles on the car before we had to take off.

But that 150 miles was better than nothing. It showed me that if you reverse the brake caliper retaining springs, the pads can rotate into the hubs, making a very scary noise - the fix is to have the long 'arms' of the springs toward the middle of the caliper.

I also found that if you buy a rebuilt caliper, you may need the guarantee that comes with it. My drivers side caliper had a leak, likely due to a missing seal for the caliper split fluid channel. O'Reilly's swapped it out, no question, and it took just a few minutes to get it on the car. Unpainted, of course - no time available to make it pretty.

Finally, I've struggled with the fuel system - the pump still cycles once every couple of seconds when the engine isn't running, and my rear carb shot fuel out of the overflow pipe - which cost me almost a week when I had to pull them off and send them back to the rebuilder.

But eventually, the date to leave came, so I crossed my fingers and off we went.

From the very first discussion of this trip, my wife's plan was to follow me in her Cadillac. She just wasn't into giving up her creature comforts if she had a choice. But it also enabled her to continue the trip after the show with a visit to her mother's, while I headed home. So we had a bit of security, knowing we had another car available on the trip.

Day 1 - Saturday, June 14th, 2014: 380 miles from Tulsa to Poplar Bluff, MO. I navigated with Google Maps on my iPhone (hooked to my JVC stereo), set to avoid highways. Basically, we followed old Route 66 to Springfield, then US 60 to PB. Google doesn't consider US 60 a highway, but it could and probably should. But with the overdrive (thank goodness!) the car was able to keep up with traffic, no problem. Well, one problem. I hadn't permanently attached my octagon boot-lid emblem, I was waiting until I was done polishing the lid, and not quite happy with it yet. It couldn't wait, and decided to fly off the car somewhere in northeastern Oklahoma. Bummer.

Day 2: 300 miles from PB to French Lick. A nice, uneventful trip. Beautiful scenery. Lots of comments from people along the way. My favorites: passing through a small town, there's a kid on the sidewalk directing traffic to a store that's having a sale - except he doesn't say anything to me about the sale, he just yells "Cool car!". And when stopped in traffic, when I let a Hells Angel biker turn left in front of me, and he says as he goes by "That's a really nice car". This car gets more comments in one trip than the cumulative total of comments I've gotten on my other cars in 40 years of driving!

On to the NAMGBR 2014 convention/show. What a great experience - wonderful people, very well organized. Great activities. We went to the reception Sunday night, and got invited to dinner by the Canadian contingent. I mentioned my octagon problem, and it turns out that one of the Canadians lost his off his GT hatch somewhere in western New York. So we split the ridiculous Moss overnight charge, and ordered 2.

Monday the wife and I toured the West Baden Spring Hotel - highly recommended, it's an amazing structure. Monday night we caravanned to the Spring Mill State Park lodge for dinner, wonderful meal, and then went to the drive-in theatre with about 20 other MG and watched the new X-men movie, after a great pre-movie visit.

Tuesday I was up early to get in line to have John Twist check my timing and carb mixture. I think the car is running fine, but you don't miss a chance for the master to lay his hands on it!

Tuesday night was the MGB Experience get together at a local bar. We met some wonderful people, chief among them Mark V. and his wife - you know they're great because they have 2 MGBs!

Wednesday was the car show, wow. Every type and flavor of MGB, along with C's, F's, Austin Healeys, Jags, etc.. My first car show - what a trip.

Wednesday night was the dinner. Great crowd. And awards announced - our #106 got second place in the 1970-72, recessed grille class. Talk about unexpected - I thought I was just lucky to get the car here, much less get a nice trophy.

I took the long way home - Thursday drove 200 miles south to Nashville, to see my mom and dad and brother and show the car off. Then 220 miles on Friday to my sisters and brother-in-law in Memphis. Then 400+ miles on Saturday back to Tulsa. Trouble free.

Almost. 2 miles from home, I hear some hardware hit the road, then the left front suspension sags a bit. I pull over and stick my head under the car - the rear a-arm pivot is disconnected from the cross-member. Rats. So I called AAA and they got me the last 2 miles home. (The fix was easy, and no damage was done).

All-in-all a great experience. Next year's convention is in Niagara Falls, which may be a bit too far, but in 2015 it's the "All MG" year, in Louisville, which can't be missed.

One of the fun aspects of these journals is the ability to look back in time. That's really valuable when you're doing something that's akin to growing a tree - the final product may truly be magnificent (or not), but each incremental step is just that - almost imperceptible in the grand scheme. But entirely necessary. So, if you don't think you're making progress, just get the old journal out and see how far you've come.

But of course, once you're (essentially) done, it's worth comparing the 'before' and 'after'. This is especially valuable if you know the 'after' isn't perfect. Heh, at least it's better than it was!

So I dug into my old picture files for some 'before' shots, and tried to take matching 'after' shots.