She's Off!

My other car crapped out so I had to put the MG back together. Got the top put back on and the steering wheel installed. Took her our for a spin and she's already running better than before. All I need to do now is cover the rear ledge with carpet and all the interior will need is a stereo.

New Carpet installed

Got the new carpet installed finally. Doing the finishing touches to get it properly fit. It looks a little cheesy but considering it cost me $20 I'm happy. I also put in the new seats and a battery disconnect switch while I had everything torn apart.

Battery Cut-Out Switch

I bought a cutout switch on eBay and should get in sometime this week. I figure since I have the "carpet" out and everything I'll put that in before laying in the new carpet. One more step to prevent the inevitable explosion I'm sure to produce. More pics to follow once it gets in.

Floorpans

I've repaired the floors by placing fiberglass and bondo over the holes. Once the bondo dries I'll paint the floorpans with an underbody coating to protect it from further rusting. In 5-10 years or so I'll actually cut them out and put in new floorpans but until then this should work fine. Got new seats on eBay that should get here next week and I can finally put in the new carpet and seats and maybe drive it again. Yay!

New Seats

Just finished paying for some new used seats off eBay. I hope to replace my old ratty ones after I repair a few rust problems in my floorpans. The only somewhat downfall is that they're tan whereas my previous seats were black. My new carpet however is a gray though so it should work out when I'm done.

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...

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.