Well. I'm not exactly sure what happened last year but it's been over a year since an update on the B. It is still here and I am still committed to it, it just found itself back down the pecking order while a few other cars and bikes took over.
For anyone who may not have seen my other threads, a quick summary would be as thus:
The Honda Legend Coupe got sold and is now living in the US
My fully working, low mileage Suzuki GSX600F got sold and replaced by an imported Kawasaki KZ400 with a seized engine which has been a full strip down and rebuild project that is still ongoing
The Legend was replaced by a Chrysler Crossfire, which took me to the Nurburgring but has also been subject to a full suspension rebuild and is currently off the road to finish that, while also having some rust related bodywork issues that need addressing..
And lastly, a bog standard Nissan Almera has joined the fleet as a cheap runabout while I decide the fate of the Crossfire
So what work actually happened on the MG in 2022? Well way back in April I rolled it outside to get a bit of mojo going, hung the wings and bonnet loosely in place to remind me why I still have it
I'd painted the inner wings with POR15 previously, and while I followed the instructions, I did use a bit of the excess paint on areas I hadn't fully prepared and noticed it starting to peel, which put me in a bit of a mood with the car
The only other thing of note I did last year was to use two barrels of the RAYS wheels to give an impression of how they'll look with the sort of width lips I want to fit
This excites me, but with everything else going on I've not had the spare cash to splurge on a set of lips just yet. Which considering the main reason for this update, is going to sound a bit hypocritical
The main things that have held up the MG project, aside from my general procrastination, are things I haven't done before and I generally assume I can't do them, until I've done them, if that makes sense? To be specific I mean bodywork, and building an engine.
I had my first go at MIG welding at the RR Weekender last year thanks to the R-Tech welding taster sessions, and although that was in an idealised environment, it didn't seem as hard as I'd been building it up in my head to be. So once the weather is a bit better, I'm certainly going to get some bits of metal together and have a go with my welder.
Engine wise, I have my B series in bits. Over the years I've toyed with many engine ideas but I had settled on building a "racy" B series as while I'm not chasing ultimate numbers, I think an older engine with a higher state of tune will have a bit more character than a modern engine in standard form, even if it's a bit harder to live with.
That was until I was browsing ebay and spotted another engine for sale, not a B series but one I had read about being swapped into B's. I'd not long bought the Almera and didn't really need to be spending on an engine but the more I thought about it, I talked myself into making an offer which got accepted!
This weekend was collection time, and it's been a bit of a caper!
Firstly, in the midlands we had snow on Thursday, cleared up quite nicely by the afternoon, was pretty much gone by the evening. Happy days.
Friday I wake up to worse snow than Thursday morning, the roads are worse and as I'm driving to work on snow/slush over a bed of frozen slush/ice I'm thinking should I be doing this, let alone thinking of driving down to Sussex to get an engine.
I went so far as to message the seller asking if we could re-arrange but by late morning, the snow was turning to slush and water pretty quickly, so ended up sticking with the plan.
Get a call just as I'm leaving work from the van hire place I'm using, to say that I can't have the small van I've hired as it's been involved in an "incident", the only alternatives being a flat bed or a luton
as I don't have many other options I choose the flat bed.
By the time I collect it in the mid to late afternoon, the roads are damp to drying, which was a pretty mad contrast from how the morning started! The flat bed, is much larger than the van I wanted/needed...
But it will do the job. Saturday, my girlfriend and I set off for Sussex, roads were fine, the flat bed drinks quite a lot of diesel but I had to live with that. Standard traffic around Heathrow, plus witnessed a Transit blow it's engine in quite spectacular fashion but made it to the engine seller.
Had a bit of a chat about the engine, caught a glimpse of a tidy Cortina he had, then set about loading the engine and a pretty extensive array of spare parts into the flat bed. Just about got out of the driveway without knocking down his gateposts and we were away.
Stopped on the M1 for some lunch (a rather disappointing BK burger in my case) and to check on the load, as you can see, we certainly weren't lacking capacity
You might also be able to tell what the engine is..
By this point I was having to step on it a bit, as with further M25 traffic delays, we were getting a little tight on time to drop off the parts, and get the van back in time.
Getting home saw a bit of car Tetris happening to be able to get the bits into the garage. Gf got her 207 parked out of the way, I then had to jump start the Crossfire with it's flat battery and get it out on the road, shuffled the Almera back a bit from the driveway entrance, then just about managed to reverse the flat bed onto my drive, with only centimetres to spare.
Was quite chuffed with that
But no time to rest as getting the engine off was the main headache. My poor neglected engine crane didn't want to lift, I should have really looked into this before collection day, but chucked some oil in it and it was good to go.
Everything chucked in the garage, flat bed off the drive, Crossfire back on the drive, flat bed back to the hire place with half an hour to spare and a lift home with the gf. A successful day
So what have I bought?
This is a BL/Rover O series engine. The SOHC successor to the B series which at one time was slated to be fitted in the MGB but in the end the car carried on with the B series until the end of the models' life. The lineage to the B series means that in some ways it can be easier to fit into an MGB than other engines, while offering a modest increase in capacity to 2.0 litres and an alloy head without siamese ports (although still not crossflow).
This particular engine has had mods done in preparation for fitting to an MGB. The oil filter has an adaptor to put it in a useful position. The whole engine has been rebuilt, with a bit of porting work done and a Piper 285 cam installed, the coolant sensor hole has been retapped to allow fitment of the standard B gauge sender, similar work has been done to allow the use of the standard oil pressure gauge also.
An intake manifold for twin Weber style carbs has been fabricated, which I'm very much into. Plus a trigger wheel and coil pack have been fitted with running on Megajolt in mind, which I'm also keen on.
Crucially, a Sherpa engine backplate is supplied to allow the fitment of the MGB gearbox and the spigot bearing in the crank has been changed to suit also.
Spares wise, I've got a spare block, spare head, distributors, starter motors, alternators amongst a myriad of other stuff. A partially fabricated tubular exhaust manifold is also there.
While it's not going to be the most powerful thing in the world, and I know I could have bought an MX5 engine, or a Zetec or a Duratec or a K Series or a T series etc. etc. I think this is going to be a very cool left field engine swap, that is going to sound very fruity through twin 40 webers/dellortos and I'm very much looking forward to this
I do still need to sort out what I'm doing with the Crossfire/Almera, finish the bike, and sell off a load of my B series stuff, but I've got more of a mental image of where I'm going with the MGB and more impetus to see it through, so hopefully this won't be my one update for 2023
