My latest
Project
After scaring
myself to death with the Robin Hood I decided to sell it and try something more
in keeping with my driving skills. I made some enquiries about a Cooper ‘S’ but
the prices they were demanding seemed silly (the highest price was £13,000)
even for a 1965 (!) model – 36 years old….
I decided to look
elsewhere.
The thought of a
sports car still appealed to me so I trawled through a variety of web pages (my
wife refused to let me buy a
I found a local
one at the right price which had been rebuilt from a complete stripdown – with
photos for proof. I bought it even though my mate JB asked if it was usual for
them to smoke so much!
I think that I got
through at least two gallons of oil in the first weekend. I even tried using
Holts Piston Seal – all to no avail.
I then stripped
down the engine (in-situ of course) pulled off the head, put valve stem oil
seals in and tried again. Slightly less smoke – only a gallon of oil in the
weekend.
Finally decided to
pull the pistons out. Pull was the wrong word; they simply flew out! The block
had been bored +30thou and the pistons were +30thou BUT the rings on the
pistons were the originals…… What the hell is going on?
Answer, buy a set
of rings +30thou, slip a set of shells in while I’m still in the mood and have
a phosphor bronze thrust bearing made because the largest produced oversize is
+60thou (that’s 0.030 for each bearing and the gap I had was a standard with a
gap of 0.10)
This completely
sorted the smoking problem out but my oil pressure started to drop as the
temperature increased. Everyone said “fit an oil cooler” but I wasn’t even
thrashing the poor little thing. Everything came to a head when I drove 50
miles into
NEW ENGINE said I
(after discovering how much a complete rebuild would be) My bank manager (wife)
said that it might be better to get hold of a good second-hand engine that we
knew about and could see/hear running. Considering that she wanted to buy the
thing for me I reckoned it would be a good idea.
I found a good
engine and gearbox at the MG Centre in Bromsgrove. I spoke with a very helpful
guy (Graham Pearce) and we agreed on a price for a very good engine and
gearbox. Delivery was arranged for a weekend and I patiently waited. The
Saturday delivery came and went – but no engine. I rang Graham on Monday
morning to be told that the engine was collected by a transport company on
Friday together with consignment number so he gave me a telephone number of the
transport company. Couldn’t get hold of them-phone constantly engaged. To cut a
very long story short, the firm that collected the engine went into liquidation
at
The engine/gearbox still resides on the floor of my garage and it still has to be installed BUT in the meantime I bought a little Mini Mayfair as a runabout and this has proved extremely popular with my family – far more popular than an MG in fact. I will be updating my website asap now that I have managed to get my FTP program working and have subscribed to a broadband connection (can recommend it)
So now I have a 'new' engine and gearbox in the car. Started first time BUT the clutch was seized. Tried everything I knew to release it. Rev car up and let clutch out with handbrake full on - NOTHING. Jack up rear axle of car, rev engine in first gear then get very brave friend to suddenly drop jack - NOTHING. In the back of your mind you always know the answer but simply refuse to acknowledge it... Remove engine yet again and free off clutch. Replace noisy thrust bearing while you're at it and put it all back together.
Car runs BUT gearbox is whining and the synchromesh in 2nd gear is suspect. I thought that this replacement gearbox was going to be better than my old gearbox which had suspect synchro. in 2nd and DIDN'T whine. Having already sold my old engine and gearbox to a guy from Lincolnshire for a mere £50 (what a bargain) it would seem that my purchase wasn't exactly what I thought. The MG Centre in Bromsgrove were sympathetic and offered me a replacement rebuilt gearbox for £150 +VAT plus my old box plus the one I got from them BUT it meant delivering all this stuff and removing the whole lot again. Considering that this installation had already cost me over £550 I was getting a bit sick of it.
I've decided to run the thing with all the noises involved. If push comes to shove then I will have to buy a replacement gearbox in the future (hopefully by the time I am retired). I treated myself to an oil cooler (recommended by everyone) and some air horns ( I didn't realise how pathetic the original horns were).
I will try to keep this site updated more frequently now that my car is back on the road.
I have now bought a Gold Seal gearbox from the North-East for £20. Fitted it after Xmas 2003 and ran it for about 200 miles. One day I discovered that oil was simply peeing out of the box just where the gasket between the box and bell-housing should be...
Take engine out again to discover that all five bolts holding the bell-housing on were finger tight (I will check everything next time I buy something second-hand. Moss sent me the gasket (42p !!!!!!!) wanged the thing in then spent the usual two days putting the engine in together with all the ancillary bits that seem to take forever.
Gearbox now works, with no noise, sometimes jumps out of 1st gear if it's not shoved in hard enough to start with.
P.S. I still have the Mini Mayfair as a runabout - it really is rather fun AND Mini drivers wave to you all the time!
Update: Sold the Mini to my friend JB and he now wants us to rally it. Fitted stage one kit (manifold, exhaust, new jet and lots of new swear words fitting the manifold) full roll-cage and tried to remove the rubber suspension cones - nightmare. Will work on this later when the weather is better.
In the meantime I also resigned my job - couldn't stand it any more. It has taken me 33 years to realise what I didn't really like about teaching!
Here is a picture
of me in the Midget.
