1973 MGB GT- A little rust 30/08

Also had a look at the front suspension while I was busy greasing the kingpins. A fair bit of it looks in decent condition so hopefully shouldnt be too much of pain to get the new lowered springs in.



Though unfortunately it looks as though one of the bushes at the bottom of the kingpin has had it :/ so thats something to add to the list



The bump stop isn't looking too clever either..



Though on the other side of the car, the bump stop has degraded in the opposite way They'll be a pain to replace as theres an aluminium spacer block to hold them to the large steel crossmember which has fused itself to said crossmember so I don't imagine the bolts will be coming out anytime soon..

Loving the direction those wheels are taking it, nice to see something other than minilites, like you say.

Looking good

Gold wheels on a MGB never looked wrong imo

Ah awesome, I can currently get two fingers between the wheel arch and the minilites on the back, though sometimes one side does feel a little closer to the arch than the other (great design..), unfortunately the gold wheels are gonna sit quite far in due to them being about et35 but ill sort that with some spacers

Those wheels look super on there. Get the tyres fitted! .

P.S I have a parcel shelf I keep hitting on my way into the garage . If you are going to the Blue Lias tomorrow LMK and I'll chuck it in the boot .

Rigghhtt,update time again

Recent jobs have been mostly little maintenance things, so after greasing the front suspension nipples the next thing on the list was to adjust the valve clearances as the car has been pretty tappety for a while now

They were last adjusted last summer so probably overdue a bit of attention

So we start here



Once the rocker cover is whipped off, the rockers are exposed



And cue first odd thing of the day, one of the rockers appears to be of a different design to the rest.. I'm still not entirely sure why this is, could be a factory thing, or the result of a lazy top end rebuild at some point, some investigation to be done there.

Next I numbered up the HT leads and took out the plugs, they were revealed to all be a pretty good brown colour, which amazed me as I've never been entirely confident about the mixture setting on the engine



I took them out as I'd read that the engine could be turned over using the fan with the plugs out.. Mine can't As I also don't have a socket big enough to fit onto the crank I had to resort to rocking the car in gear to get the rockers to the appropriate place to adjust them.

After a bit of faffing about, they were all done. A few of the rockers displayed some play on the rocker shaft so that makes me think that the rocker shaft could be a bit past its best

But my thoughts were interrupted by the discovery of a random screw sat on the deck just behind the rearmost rocker shaft cap



I have later discovered that this is a locating peg for keeping the rocker shaft from rotating, so its a bit worrying that it wasn't anywhere near its hole and probably hadn't been there for some time as of today it still isn't actually fitted as I was rushing a bit to get the rocker cover back on before heading to work, so that needs to go back in at some point

So after all the adjustments, had the tappety noise got any better?

No. I know the B series is supposed to be fairly loud on the valvetrain front but its still a bit too tappety. I have a feeling the worn rocker shaft is mainly at fault here, so not sure what to do about that at the moment as I can't really afford to be buying lots of engine bits right now

On a brighter note, the new alloys for the car are coming along nicely This has been taking a while as I've elected to paint the centre of the wheels gold and then to polish up the outer lip of the rims.

This has meant a long process of getting the original silver paint and impressively thick primer off the rims of the wheels using some 60grit sand paper. Once I got the paint off, the long process of sanding with progressively smoother paper began. After the 60, I went to 120, then 180 wet and dry, 240, 400, 800 and then 1200

Heres a couple of shots of the rim after 1200 grit i believe





And then I used some rubbing compound and Autosol to get the final finish







And some comparison shots with a wheel that I've done in gold but not started the lip of (they're all at different stages )







Pretty chuffed with how its come out so thats put me in a bit of a happier mood than the engine did haha, I have still got another 3 wheels to go though...

Right, I needed to take a break from sanding/ polishing again as its destroying my fingers

So I've been tackling various bits of electrical work that I've been meaning to do, yesterday was the turn of the lighting. There wasn't anything wrong with the lighting as such (apart from the one broken numberplate light and non working reverse lights.. both of which I didn't fix) but there were a few bits and bobs which I'd meant to do but hadn't due to lack of time and laziness

Firstly the metal frames that the headlight bowl bolts to were horribly rusty, I had bought replacements some time ago but hadn't got round to fitting them



They did require a few mods to fit though, firstly I had to make a little cut out at the bottom so I could fit the pilot lights into the headlights



And the tabs where the screw holes for the outer rim attaches had to be cut down a bit as the chrome embellishment ring couldn't quite clip on properly. Now the B already has sidelights down next to the indicators, so I wired the pilot lights in the headlights in parallel with them.



The lower sidelights are brighter due to being SMD type LED's but I'm just glad that the hole in the headlight has been filled, makes it look a bit better

After that, I carried on with cutting off the bumper overriders, I don't really like them and have been trying to get rid of them for some time but the nuts and bolts were fused together, however I finally defeated them with a mixture of a drill, a hacksaw and some molegrips (I don't have a grinder.. )



I then fitted my spotlight which I picked up a while back and wired it in with the full beams for the time being



Then I waited for night and went to give them a bit of a test The yellow of the spotlight isn't that visible when driving along but you can see it having an effect when parked up





So thats another couple of things off my list, might try and see if I can get the front valance or new rear exhaust box fitted this week, but with going home from uni soon I can't afford to get into too many big jobs as I need to be able to drive home

Oh and I also forgot that the carbs shall be coming off for a good clean and small service, the accelerator needs some urgent attention and I need to finish polishing and painting the new wheels!!

Looking good! Personally, I'd get a close match as possible and paint it. You've got the bumper breaking up any colour difference so go for it