MG Sports Cars

Jim,

Going back to the pictures on pages 18 and 19 there are Jaguar "kent" alloy wheels fitted on the front of the car. From what I can see in the pictures the front it using standard MG suspension. As the Jaguar wheels are five stud are you using MGC hubs. If so dies that mean that the MGC and Jaguars use the same stud size and spacing?

Thanks,

David

David, I'm not sure about the MGC pattern, but the front hubs on this car are GM items, not MGC. Jaguar and Chevy did use the same pattern. If you go back and follow the build history you'll find that the modified front end was donated by Aurthur Mitchell from Chicago (page 5 has photos) and was modified for his Cobra kit before he decided to install a Fast Cars front suspension.

Thanks for answering that Bill. Quite correct.

I wanted to let everyone know that the heads have shipped from TA and should be here in a few days. I'll plan on bringing them with me to the winter meeting at Ted's place, (Fast Cars in Michigan).

Jim

THEY'RE HERE!!!! THEY'RE HERE!!!!









And man aren't they purty? Big ol' monstrous ports too. That sure is going to be a fine looking engine with all that aluminum up on top. And I'll tell you what, if we don't pretzelize this car we'll definitely be putting an end to worries about the strength of the body. I have a couple more photos to post.

Jim

Nice label on the side.



Here are the studs we had to have to go with the heads. These are pretty fancy too, what with the necked down shanks. I guess we could have gotten bolts but there wasn't that much difference in the price, and this way we can rest easy that we won't have to worry about the head gaskets at all. Should be a nice plus if and when we let it go to a new life also.



This booster plate is highly recommended by all of the Buick performance guys and fits the entire Buick line. It not only provides a hard wear surface for the oil pump gears, but it helps prevent flex of the gear cavities under pressure. We are taking reasonable steps to insure an adequate oil supply to the bearings without getting crazy about it. This is one of those steps. At a cost of $21 it seems reasonable.

But, now we are out of money.

Jim



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/2009 01:22PM by BlownMGB-V8.

Wow! That is very "purdy" . It's so purdy that it can set right up on the kitchen granite counter top. I wonder if your wife was home when the photo was taken. That would have been the only time I could have done it :-)

She did squawk a little when she got back.....

I pulled the iron heads and intake off the 455 today, threaded in the new studs, and set the new aluminum heads in place along with the Poston alloy intake. Looks pretty good:






These last two photos show the difference in the exhaust ports. As you can see, we have probably about 2" of extra space and less of a downward angle. So the next task will be to set it in the car and see if we can get tube bends with a tight enough radius to clear the inner wing. If we can do that then we just might be able to build some RV8 style headers to do the job.



And don't worry guys, the heads will still be coming up to the get together, as they're not bolted down. It looks so good I think we might bead blast the front cover just to show more aluminum. Which brings up a question:

Do you guys paint your aluminum engine parts? If so what do you prefer to use? I find that just shooting them with clear sort of makes them look as if they've peen painted with gray paint.

Jim

Wow. That's starting to look REALLY good.

Paint aluminum? "No, I prefer the woodgrain look..." What a silly question!

Sounds as thought the Ways and Means Committee needs to get hopping again.

As we had originally planned on contacting Buick for some assistance....I wonder if there is any bailout maoney available to us?!

:)

That really looks good Jim. I agree, the front cover in natural aluminum along with some detail on the pulleys would really make it look sharp. How much weight are we talking about now with the aluminum heads and intake? Like you said, except for some of the aftermarket aluminum BB Chevys, we're probably going to set a nice mark for pounds per cubic inch in the motor. If we can get some good photos of our project collected into a managable folio it would be nice, then we could present that to prospective donors so that they could see what we've accomplished. I'll try to go back through the ones posted here and get those together, but we probably will still need a few more up to date shots and details. I'll put together an album on one of the photo sites so everyone can take a look.

Quote:

I'll put together an album on one of the photo sites so everyone can take a look.

That sort of album is exactly what our message board's "Project Journal" section is for...

Curtis, what I have in mind is a presentation (Power Point) that we can give to potential donors. I would reference this board as well as the Project Journal or Roadmaster article as well. Short and to the point without all the technical detail that we gearheads like, but enough to let them know that the project is for real and worthy of their support.

Here's the link to the draft Power Point slides I've created. This should be a good basis for a nice presentation to a prospective donor. [picasaweb.google.com]#

The slides I see on Picasa are only 406 by 304 pixel jpgs, and clicking on them doesn't enlarge them.

If they were in our Project Journal section, they'd appear 600 pixels wide. With our forum software, if the actual image files are larger than 600 wide (e.g. 700 pixels wide) then clicking on them would link automatically to the full-size version.

I love what you guys are doing. It really helps a lot.

I was hoping someone who was at Ted's would report back here but I guess the cold weather has everybody's fingers frozen. We had a mildly stressful return trip what with the rampant black ice and a misfire that developed 80 miles from the end. Hopefully that isn't anything serious, I see the InTech motors had coil-on-plug issues. Hopefully I'll know in a few hours. I'm used to snow. Roads that look normal but turn you sideways for no good reason, not so much, and we had quite a few miles of those to cover. 50-60 mph on that kind of a surface gets you a little tense, but we actually had more of a close call on the way up when emergency vehicles on the side caused traffic to stop and the Mercury behind us wasn't paying real good attention. But no harm done.

I guess there were about 30 people there, mostly the core group of dedicated conversion enthusiasts, at least those who could brave the weather and the distance and the schedule conflicts. Attendance was down a bit. Others can fill y'all in on stuff not Roadmaster related, so I'll concentrate on that. The first thing Steve DeGroat and I did was bring in the new aluminum heads and set them on the bench, where they quickly drew a crowd and much admiration. Steve and I had hoisted the engine into the new GT before packing the heads away, and took a photo and I carried that diskette around in my jacket pocket all weekend and then it disappeared. I think it may be in the floor of the truck and I'll look for it when I go out to plow the snow off the driveway later. What it shows is that we will have to do the steering column mods as anticipated but we gained an unexpected advantage on the exhaust. We knew we would pick up a couple inches per side on the width but what we didn't consider was that the ports are also nearly an inch higher than stock. This very neatly puts us above that bottom curve in the inner wing. I may have a surprise in the works on the headers but won't know about that until later.

We also weighed the bare heads, and they came out at about 27 lbs. I have the exact number but that's within a pound. I'll try to remember to weigh a bare 430 head for comparison. The ports are quite large and straight but would benefit from some light porting to remove edges and such. Just for fun we bolted one of them to Pete's plastic LS block but the cylinder spacing was way off.

As before, we had our winter meeting after breakfast at the Big Boy restaurant in Wayland the next morning, where matters discussed largely centered on the budget. Regrettably our Secretary had to return home and was not in attendance so we have no minutes and I certainly cannot remember what all we talked about, but discussion largely centered on the budget, t-shirts, and web development. We had donations of $140 at Ted's and it didn't occur to me at the time but perhaps we can get some feedback here.

Do you think we should pass the hat at the conclusion of business in our semi-annual meetings?

It seems this might be a good way to raise some funds, but I don't want to do anything to discourage attendance. At any rate, we didn't have an exact figure due to delays in banking but we presently have something under $200 in the treasury. We need to buy coil-over units for the rear, flywheel, clutch, pressure plate, starter, carb, distributor, and header parts. The flywheel is going to be the big expense, $300 from TA plus shipping for a 38 lb steel unit, but some of the other parts are nearly as much. I also sold the aluminum 8.8" IRS axle housing Pete donated, (well, in truth he gave it to me but since I decided not to use it I felt I should pass it on) and the extra set of 300 heads from Jack Morris in Chatanooga, though the money isn't in hand yet. I had given $75 for the one good head but then I sold them as a pair so I will take my costs out of the proceeds and remit the rest to the treasury. Between those two sales we should have around another hundred to work with, maybe a little more. And I will continue with other sales as I can. I appreciate that Rob wanted to help with this but I think the logistics are a problem. Now if he was to come up here with a trailer... ;-)

I think that's about it. Y'all feel free to add to my report.

Jim

More good news!
I talked to Dale Spooner (Motion Machine) today, and he's done so much for the project already, I was a little hesitant to ask him to do more. But I felt I really had to since he's been our go-to guy on the machine work. His response when I asked if he could do the TA heads? "Well of course." Now there is a guy who is truly dedicated to the project. Considering he's already donated upwards of $1800 worth of labor and parts, a sizeable part of which went into the heads we are selling, nobody could really expect him to do more, but he did anyway. Now there is a shining example we can be proud of, and I for one am pretty tickled to be able to say, "He's one of us."

Well after that nothing would do but I had to go out and get some work done on the car. I've made all of the cuts for the body mods, made an "adjustment" here and there, and will try to get the seams welded up tomorrow. Then the engine will go back in for a final test fit before cleanup. That will be our first real chance to see what we're looking at on the exhaust.

Jim

Guys, this is an essential part for the Jag IRS. Jaguar wants $69 and change plus shipping for it. One of the ones on the IRS for the Roadmaster had been cut up with a torch and completely destroyed, as opposed to the unit I'm using for my roadster which was complete and fully assembled. I loaned one for the meet last summer, but I'm afraid I cannot buy one for the project, and I don't think it is wise to spend treasury money on it either. Can't one of you guys who has Jag connections come up with one for us? Until that happens, this car is going nowhere, no matter what other work we do. Here's a photo:


Just the washer.

Thanks for your help,

Jim

I have some progress to report. The iron heads off the 455 just sold on ebay for $522. I would say that the buyer got a pretty nice bargain, but at the same time we will be getting operating funds that we have to have to make progress. I don't think Dale will be too disappointed, though we really were hoping they would go over $600. In addition to transferring that money into our account once the purchase is paid for, I will transfer the funds at the same time that came in from the 300 heads and the diff housing. After deducting the money that I have in those parts it leaves $91. That should put us somewhere around $700-750 in the treasury, Steve can report on that at his convenience sometime after the deposits are made if he likes.

I have contacted QA1 about coil-over units. It sounds like we can get what we are looking for but I have to take some more accurate measurements and work out the geometry to get the correct spring rates working with them, and then we will have Ted Lathrop order the units using those specs. They will be very similar to the #8552 units he stocks but will need different mounts so I will probably call him also in the next week or so to figure out the details.I can get pricing at that time. We will have to buy valves, springs, retainers and keepers for the TA heads. By the time we've done that we'll be short on funds again, but I promise I'll find time to look through our spares and see if we can't auction off a few more things to help out. For one, we have a brand new steering rack which we won't be using, I'm sure we can get a few bucks for that.

Jim

First test fit of the alloy head 455 in the blue GT: