MG Sports Cars

I prefer Spicer.

Whatever you want to do is fine by me.

Jim

Carl,
Both joints are by Spicer.

Steve

Steve:

I would go with those. Sealed is better, I think, due to the proximity of brake rotors. (read: no flinging of grease!)

$.02

Update: Toby is checking our parts cars. He thinks we DO have a 2.88 (Series III Jag XJ6), so there is hope there yet!

M

I will go with the sealed joint.
Will wait toe see about the dff from Max.

Steve

So far as the sticky transmission/4th gear goes, this is a TINY car with a big block. You have metric assloads worth of torque and you're not pushing anything with it.

Skip shift directly from 3 to 5th, the 455 should have no problem pulling the car out of the hole. I've driven everything from compact cars to half ton pickups to 70k pound dump trucks to OTR, 18 gear big rigs placarded for being overweight. They're all perfectly fine with skip shifting just so long as you don't bog the rpm down and lug the motor. And I really can't imagine you guys bogging this thing from a dead stop, much less when it's already rolling.

It's really unnecessary to use EVERY gear unless you're climbing a steep hill or trying to get a big load rolling. Or racing.

If you're having problems with the car being really jerky to throttle response in 1st gear you can usually smooth something like that out by starting from a dead stop in 2nd. The taller rear diff you guys are looking for would also be helpful in that respect.

Todd, you hit that nail squarely on the head. With the 455 in that car, you can start out in 5th if you want to. I did it when it was here last winter.

A picture of the Roadmaster has been published on page 18 of the February 2013 issue of Hot Rod Magazine.

It reads: "Jim Blackwood/Longmont, Colorado - The sickos British American Deviant Automotive Sportscar Society (BADASS) stuffed a Buick 455 into this MGB and called it the MGBGT V8"

They were close.

Any positive publicity is good publicity!!!!!





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/11/2012 10:01PM by mowog1.

Bill Davidson has sent out the latest update for our BADASS bank account. Thanks to everyone who donated and got us back in the black so to speak. Present balance after paying the insurance is $696.75

Bill & Bill:

Small item, BUT-- any chance you can get that account in a Credit Union and lose less on the service charge each month?

I just went through the same thing with MY bank last year-- Emily (a teacher) got me over to the Credit Union. Saves $7/mo on the service charges!

(Every little bit helps, etc. :-) )

$.02

M

Isn't the British American Deviant Automotive Sportscar Society a non-profit organization? As such, won't some banks waive the service charge?

holy crap, service charges are eating you ALIVE.


Small item, BUT-- any chance you can get that account in a Credit Union and lose less on the service charge each month?

getting into many credit unions is now redonkulously easy in the US. while a CU charter requires a 'limited possible membership pool' ( which in olden days was usually limited to the employees/families of company X or being a fireman or teacher or some such ), they've figured out that they can define their charter as "living or working in X county" and still be considered as legally having a 'limited population' from which they can draw.

practically speaking, this means that almost everyone is going to have a local CU for which they can qualify for membership simply by residing in their house or driving down the road and going to work.

when i was in Tx, Austin Telco CU permitted me to join simply by making a $5 donation to a specific national charity that they were affiliated with. i forget which charity that is and i no longer have the account so it's not really important.



the uninformed might think that a CU limits them in access options. actually, another possible BIG benefit of a credit union account is what is known as a "Credit Union Service Center".
[www.cuservicecenter.com]

i have accounts with three different credit unions. i can travel *anywhere in the country*, find a "service center" equipped CU and have access to all of my funds from all three of my accounts through a 4th party credit union. given that there are almost 5000 service centers nationwide now, i'm rarely far from one. here's a list of service centers in HI, there's "only" 73 access options on the islands:
[www.cuservicecenter.com]

i was probably worst off in Sebastian, Fla. in order to get to a service center i had to drive to Fort Pierce which was about an hour away.

credit unions also usually offer no-fee ATM transactions to foreign CU accounts.

RE: Differential.

Toby and I have a plan to get the (presumed) 2.88 diff scrounged on or before January 26th (weather permitting.) It is in a Series III XJ6 sedan that is buried 4 cars deep in the yard, so we have to do some parting out/throwing out to get access to it. (After which time, it, too, will likely get junked.)

THIS WILL BE THE ATTEMPT. If this fails to produce a good axle-- well, sorry, I tried. (I've phenagled my boss into helping me with this on HIS time and dime-- I can't ask much more than that!).

When I have axle out of parts car I will clean and assess and report. At that time, depending on where the Roadmaster is and whether I can get a crew assembled to do the swap, we'll work out whether the car needs to come HERE, the diff needs to be sent , or whatever. If the diff is unuseable as is, we can then discuss if it's worth bothering to have IT rebuilt (so as to get the lower ratio.) REM: current axle is 3.54. The 2.88 would drop a 3000 rpm cruise down to 2440. :-)

Tentatively, then, we're looking at some weekend likely in February IF (big "IF") the car was to come Here for the diff swap.

I've queried the "Events List" as well to learn when the car is scheduled to appear, and thus to work out when it might be available to have this work done without disrupting those scheduled events.

More as it occurs. :-/

Max

Max,
I can come help If you want.
We can do the swap here if that is better, or bring the car to you.
I will wait to do the u-joint until the diff is decided.
Now, assuming that you get a diff, should we do all four u-joints when we do the swap?

Steve

Steve:

With the advancing age (of the car, but maybe Me, too?) I do U-joints only as necessary. Needless pressing in and out just loses the interference fit.

NOW... if access is difficult in the Roadmaster and this IS THE TIME-- and the existing joints all look pretty old-- yeah, I can see doing all even if they still feel good. But I don't go for the "always swap both" idea that some tout. I think that just wears out the hard parts prematurely. :-p

M

UPDATE:

"Weather is NOT permitting"- freezing rain at the moment, and tomorrow's event has been postponed until NEXT Weekend. WE have moved a couple of the junk cars, so it shouldn't be too tough to get at the actual donor car.

M

We all appreciate your efforts Max. Try to persevere, we're not going anywhere.

Jim

Got it!

Toby and I towed 4 cars out of the way, dragged (literally!) the Jag into the shop and then had the back end out and stripped in a few hours.

It IS a 2.88 (as the tag says-- I didn't go nuts and count teeth... yet.) It felt good, turned smooth, had lots of (thick, but...) oil in it. It has been cleaned and rinsed and resoaked in some fresh oil to coat the bearings.

It will need new seals and gasket, but that seems minor. (Front seal was leaking-- I wouldn't trust the output shafts seals.)

So.... I'll contact "My Crew" and see if we can make this diff swap happen in the next month. :-)

Cheers,

Max

Okay, so Report:

a) The diff swap is done. It IS a 2.88 (Steve counted gears). It now features new seals & new output bearings (both inner and outer). Outer pinion bearing looked okay, so we chose to trust those.

b) While the rear subframe is removable pretty easily (except for some idiots who put the wiring Under and Through the subframe (that would be US :-p)) it was NOT easily disassembled! The long pins, bolts, rod ends, and other items were rusted up!! In fact, we never got out the passenger side long pin-- we just removed the diff from the other side and left that side together. Also, we left the rod ends in place, having no ability to get new ones on the weekend.

c) We cleaned and de-rusted (parts tumbler) all the bolts and anti-seized them before they went back together. The radius arm was nearly impossible to reattach and we had to use TWO ratcheting towstraps to get it to line up.

d) We did end up doing all four u-joints on the half-shafts. Many of the cups either wouldn't take grease or were pushing out rust, so as it was such a pain in the ass to get it this far apart we figured we better deal with them now.

e) All that aside, the above IS a "custom" item and I'm willing to accept a certain Difficulty Factor when dealing with it. MY biggest complaint on the weekend is the Brake Master Cylinder! WHY CAN'T THIS BE BLED LIKE A "normal" unit? Those in Townshend last time will remember the difficulties. Steve finally got brakes having it pressure bled. Well, despite only disconnecting the REARS, we, too, had NO BRAKES (to the Floor!) and had to rig up a pressure bleeding system so as to get some brakes back in the car. I found this not only stupid and hard to explain, but also ridiculous for a car that needs to be passed from one user to another. I'm open to explanations of why this BMC behaves this way and what can we do to change it?

f) We also tackled a few other simple items (this is all in the Logbook-- 4 pages!), including Carl's suggestion of overfilling the T5 as it normally would have been tilted in a Camaro and thus holding more fluid. (So, it now has about 2.7 Qts of ATF rather than just the 2 it "level" fills to.)

g) There are still some items that we didn't get to because they were "niggling" but not that imperative. (At one point all four of us were on the axle. But when we started, Steve handled the Diff, Tim tackled the loose steering column (Yay, Fixed!), and Carl made an attempt to get the drivs door to fit better. In the end, the two that stick out that one notices are the interior lights not working and the poor fit of the window glass. (Door fitment has a LOT to do with this.)

h) We DID fix the door lock so that the car can be secured. We also safety tethered the fan shroud so that it can't get knocked out and drag on the ground again (!), put a protective sleeve over the front brake hose where it was chafing against the a-arms, tack welded the loose front coil spring locators, and reattached the map pocket. (Neat location! I like that idea. :-) )


Last comments on the Rear Subframe Assy: The old rebound strap location had stess cracked (it's the upper rear mount for the subframe). We had to weld that up. We also noted that the hole locators on the main brackets, that bolt in the OE shock location, were only the washers thickness as well. We welded up those holes to provide more support behind the washers. Also, there were casting defects in the hub carrier (I think Pass side) that meant the a-frame bottomed out on THEM rather than the poly bushes! The result was-->once the shock was removed, the carrier was still locked in place (rather than flopping free)! We are curious to see what this does for the handling.

PIcs to follow in other posts. I will start driving the car today to get my own feel for it before Toby and I go to the BMTA on Thursday.

Oh, last note (also in logbook): car was serviced. Kingpins, diff, tranny, engine oil and filter. Checked coolant (great!) and obviously we ended up flushing the brake fluid. Did NOT do clutch. (We were into serious 11th hour stuff with those f-ing brakes!). Also lubed hub carriers. Did NOT check front wheel bearing grease. :-( (Plum forgot.)

Cheers,

Max




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2013 09:01AM by madmax.

Sometimes you just gotta....