Saturday, September 13, 2008

So, after nearly a month of daily driving she finally cut out on me. First cold morning of the season and my clutch has apparently failed. I was shoving the gearshift into each gear all the way to work and I've parked her in the garage until further notice to get the parts.

After massive troubleshooting I originally thought the slave cylinder was bad. So I ordered a rebuild kit, and commenced to rebuilding. After many days, I concluded the slave cylinder was good. After a bit more work and finally LOOKING at the seals on the master cylinder I've decided it's bad. See the pattern? Ordered the rebuild and replaced almost everything in the master cylinder for $7. Oh yeah, like that better than $160. Turns out it bleeds a hell of a lot better when the master cylinder is good. So, clutch it back online.

While I was waiting for clutch parts I took the valve cover off and adjusted the valves. I also screwed with the carburetors since I'd never properly adjusted them which resulted in an idle speed of 1300. With the valves adjusted and the carbs now setup it sounds like it's running alot better. Unfortunately, my carbs are so out of tune I can't get it to idle more than 5 seconds. Alot of tuning ahead of me.

I'll post pictures of my shiney slave cylinder as soon as I get my camera charged up...

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Now, this was started as an afterthought. I wanted to do this as I went along but I've already accomplished alot.

After getting the car and moving up to CT I began restoring her based on the advice the the folks over at MGExperience. They helped out by providing a wonderful checklist on how to restore a car to driving condition. Needless to say I skipped a few steps. Here's what I've done.
  1. Bled the Brakes
  2. Repaired Brake Leak
  3. Repaired Passenger Brake Caliper (it was jammed, blunt force calibration, all good)
  4. Cleaned Carburetors and replaced gaskets, needles, jets, and topped off dashpots with oil
  5. Removed, cleaned, and refurbed heater
  6. Removed radio and replaced cigar lighter
  7. Replaced ignition coil, wires and plugs
  8. Repaired Fuel pump (dismantled and reassembled)
  9. Started up engine, timed and moderately cleaned it up.
  10. Tuned Carbs
  11. Corrected tach, fuel gage, and temp gage
At this point she became drivable and I began to use it as a daily driver. I cleaned up the dash, top, and gauges. Pretty much decided I was just doing cosmetics at this point. Left to do was:
  1. Radio
  2. Carpet
  3. Paint
  4. Gaskets
Not necessarily in that order, but that's what I had to do....little did I know.