1973 MGB GT- A little rust 30/08

Well it's been a couple weeks, have been trying to sort a few jobs on the daily instead so MG stuff has just been little bits here and there. Spacers turned up for the carb so thats all fitted to the manifold and tucked away







Did a bit of uninteresting stuff, sorting out some of the many bags of rusty, oily fixings and brackets I'd kept from when I'd stripped the car down, cleaning up some bits. Also dug out my front crossmember polybushes and found that I had two sets for some reason!





The lipped polybush is the upper bush for any B owners who may be wondering, took me a while of searching on the internet to find the right answer!

While looking through old parts I found these old Maserati air horns



I did a quick search in this thread and I apparently bought these in late 2014! but haven't done anything with them since. Looked like an ideal thing to tinker with in these long lockdown evenings. My main focus has been on the compressor to begin with, I've never had them working in the time I've had them so thought a stripdown, investigate and clean was on the cards







With the trumpets and hoses removed, unscrewing the ports from the top of the compressor and removing the oil filler port, allowed me to unclip the top cover and reveal a little metal plate on top of what looks like a solenoid. The wires go to the two spade connectors on the cap which I believe controls whether the horns sound simultaneously or in a triplet.



Going down to the next level of the compressor shows the gear that the solenoid controls, the gear wheel itself is plastic and looked in OK condition. Going down past this level reveals the compressor element of the compressor...







To me it looks a bit like a miniature rotary engine, theres an eccentric shaft, a (circular) rotor with sliding sections that act like apex seals and inlet and exhaust ports for the air. On removing the rotor, the sliding seals were stuck in the place with old oil, so a bit of cleaning with brake cleaner was required, they now slide freely in the rotor. The spring and odd bit of material in the section to the side of the rotor housing are I think in the "intake" for the compressor, and the material is there to soak up the oil that is fed in from the top, some oil can then be drawn in with the intake air. I'm still not quite sure how you determine it has been filled up with enough oil though..



Going down another level from the rotor housing required the removal of two long screws from the bottom of the compressor body, which then revealed the electric motor that powers the compressor.





The commutator needed a bit of a clean





Tapping off the bottom cover of the compressor highlighted the fact that the brushes were stuck in place, a bit of a clean later and they now move in and out freely



I had originally planned to leave the exterior as it was, as I think the blue hammerite type finish was largely original. However from looking at the bottom cap where the paint had been chipping off, it seemed like it wasn't particularly well adhered, so wasn't too much of a task to scrape/sand the paint off (apart from on the steel main body of the motor housing) and get the bits primed ready for a freshen up





After perusing my extensive aerosol paint collection, I settled on a can of grey that I had left over from when I painted some side skirts for my Toyota Corolla T Sport, tidies them up nicely.

I had hoped today would just be a case of putting all the bits back together but I hit a snag in that the wire had come away from one of the power terminals on the motor housing.





Been trying to solder it back together, not sure if my soldering iron is a bit weak or it's something about the particular metals here but it wasn't having it! So a bit of head scratching to be done there

It's just a little electric 25W hobby type one, I suspect the issue is that it isn't man enough to get the heat into the terminal bolt to get it to take the solder

With those sort of jobs I find one of those micro blow torches to be very good

Thats a good idea eternaloptimist ! I've had a go at doing that which has been semi successful. Managed to get the ring terminal soldered onto the existing wire and got it to go over the terminal as well, only issue currently is that the wire routing has changed a bit so that it goes exactly where the long screws that hold the end cap on, want to go...

I think part of the issue is that that wire appears to be solid which is making it tricky to bend where I want it to, I'm fairly tempted to remove it and replace it with a more flexible bit of wire.

In any case, I have ordered a gas powered soldering iron as well with some various attachments as whatever I do on this, I'll need a bit more oomph than my current iron has! Thanks for the recommendations guys





While I wait for that to turn up though, found some more bits for the cleaning and painting treatment.



Couple of engine mount brackets which I've now finished off in satin black and the smaller blanking plate came from the bulkhead I believe so I've painted that with some Mallard Green aerosol which I've had kicking about for years.

Also this evening I did manage to uncover the gearbox mounting brackets which look delightful... so they're next on the list! I'm also going to get my head around the gearbox crossmember and mounting. Many B owners seem to curse it as being one of the harder jobs on these cars but I'm going to see if I can find an easier way to do it...

Great effort.its coming along really well. It will be a good looking car when it's done!

Might need a bit of vaseline on that one!

Or a ring compressor

We are talking about bushes right?

being serious I prefer red rubber grease on rubber bits and tend to use copperslip on poly parts

Haha I was thinking this would be prime for innuendo

Well I did get the bushes in but that isn't a fun job at all.. I ended up putting the bushes in boiling hot water (I did let it get a bit cooler before I fished them out though!) then used some washing up liquid as lube ( I can't vouch for its efficacy outside of installing bushes..) and managed to pull/push the bushed through using a bit of string wrapped around the bush and brute force.

I only had some twine type string which wasn't strong enough really, but it worked well enough, once you get the lip through the hole (...) you can poke the rest through using a screwdriver fairly easily



Just waiting for the new pin to arrive then I'll loosely mock it up on the gearbox/crossmember. It'll probably have to come off again when fitting to the car but it keeps it out of the way for now, and I'd prefer the 'box to be sat on the crossmember than the bottom of the o/d unit.

I'll tackle the air horn compressor again next, I'm almost beginning to run out of jobs to do.. I know there is bodywork to sort in terms of rust and in fitting the Sebring kit but I've been putting that off. Whenever lockdown ends I can look to get some machining work sorted on the engine, but for the moment I'm being kept busy trying to repair the daily driver

Well you deserve a medal for that but thank you very much. I too occasionally look back at my earlier efforts and cringe but hey it's all part of the learning curve haha (though I will say, the Dulux rollered on roof paint has held up well over the past 8 years!)

I'm certainly looking forward to being able to drive it again