MG Sports Cars

" I used 1/4 - 20 instead of 1/4-28 but that was all I had. "

Oh-oh.

We've become a "DPO"!

The seats were originally bolted into the factory captive nuts if memory serves me correctly.

Yes they were. But rust must have reached to this one.

Steve

Steve, the original bolts were 5/16" fine thread so if 1/4" bolts were used they will pull out. In which case just chasing the threads and using the correct bolt should work. Another option if it does not is a helicoil.

Hopefully Rob is making progress on the insurance, when is your brother coming in?

JB

Jim is mis-remembering-- OE bolt is 1/4-28. The floors are very rusty-- he's popped the capture nut. (The drivers side was worst I believe.) There only were the front capture nuts remaining on each side-- rears are already bolt-through.

Had a different thought:

Steve-- when are you heading up to Jim's? Is it worth getting you to divert over here so we can try for the dyno? We'll need to have some Q-Jet spares on hand to make it worthwhile. At this point, we'd be saving YOU money on gas mileage if we could at least get it dialed in! :-)

We'd also have to have a plan re: that distributor. Apparently asking it to run ported (despite that's how it's curved) means cranking in too much of the primary.

Can we come up with ANOTHER distributor, or vac can, or such so that we at least have some options? Ideally, I'd like one I could actually recurve and mess with...

Whaddaya think, Jim/ Steve?

M

Max, they probably were 5/16" in Jim's car. Remember, it was raced on dirt tracks......

I think mine had been tapped out to the larger size, plus some weld repair to the ones that cracked out. So... sorry for the mis-information. 1/4" bolts are too small to hold a seat down that is being used by Americans anyway.

I do think dyno tuning would be beneficial. That car should be getting an easy 15 mpg and the first place to look for mileage is with more base timing. But Max, let's just stick with manifold vacuum OK? It works fine so let's not try to make it run like a smaller engine. Like Jeff said, big blocks like manifold vacuum, and besides it will run cooler that way and have a stronger idle. If all we manage to do is get the base timing and idle mixture right that is a good start. Check with Carb-n-Fiber on the tuning parts, he should have some metering rods for the carb that you can try, and if you don't have any on hand, most hardware stores and hobby shops have some small rectangular brass tubing that might slip over the actuator rod on the vacuum can that can be cut to length to create a stop that will limit the vacuum advance.

JB

Jim/all - no reply from the insurance guy yet. WIll follow up with him sometime today. Not sure if the question about brother coming was for me? My brother lives in NC & as far as I know isn't headed to Houston (although he had thought about coming this way a month or two back; I may have mentioned that, don't recall).

I put a bolt all the way through the floor. It will hod just fine.
The car runs good and I could bring it up to Max for a dyno run if the insurance is done in time for me to make that trip and still meet my brother. He said he was coming aback the "middle of November". No set dates yet.
I think the car will run just fine with the present dist. I have been thinking of bumping a little more timing and will try that this week. I like to run as much advance as the engine, any engine, will take. That will help the MPG also.
The MPG I got was the worst kind of mileage. It was tuning and playing and all in town. I think it will get mid teens on the open road as it is.

Steve

Got an update today on the insurance -- no-go on personal insurance with variable list of drivers. Two issues for them:
1. They perceive a liability given the pool of potential drivers is much larger than the 5 or so we might have listed. Potential for someone else to drive it & mess up -- even if just in a parking lot or something is high in their judment (my iterpretation of what he said).
2. Their model calls for reviewing driving records of named drivers. It becomes administratively burdensome for them & costly at the collector car insurance rates to be doing that on a recurring basis.

Alternative is commercial insurance. Geoff (the agent) is doing some checking. Difficulty there is it is expensive for 1 vehicle. He is working with two companies -- his preferred of the two will take a few days to hear back from. The other is a company that writes one off policies for odd situations like ours -- but he said we'd need to get our wallets ready if we have to go that route.

If anyone else has ideas, it's probably worth starting to check into them. One thought I had is whether someone with a related business could add this vehicle on their existing commercial policy? Anyone in our group fit that category?

Rob

Clan, From a different perspective, what do "Driving Schools and Racing Schools " use. Just a thought . Good Luck, roverman.

Aviation insurance companies do this a lot with "club" airplanes. Is there an Aviation insurance group which also does cars which might understand this? On a take from what Art said, could you have a certain "Training Agreement" which would satisfy the insurance company; basically a blanket statement that said you have gone over the do's and don't.

That's an excellent suggestion Gary, do you know an aviation insurance agent you could ask?

JB

I am not sure. I will have to do a little looking.

Something else I was thinking; make it a non-for profit rental car company and make people have rental insurance.

Jim:

RE: dyno. Hey, you want manifold, I'd do it for ya-- if the damn thing was CURVED that way! It isn't. So, have to make a call here-- I can set it up for Max Power (that IS my middle name, btw. No lie!) just so we can see the numbers-- but it's unlikely to idle afterwards.

With the retarded timing, as Steve points out, it's NOT going to get the best gas mileage. And, truthfully, THAT sounds more important right now!

I can try modifying the weight gap for MORE curve (go up to 30" from 20") but it means @#$%& with the distributor. (And.. ahem... no going back without welding!) I'd rather NOT mess with Jeff's unit, thus why it would be nice to have another donor to @#$%& with First! (Not to mention I have NO spare springs for a BBB V8 distributor, unless Rover ones are similar...?)

The 10Deg Vac can won't get us the best gas mileage, but WILL get us good idle and WOT timing! (14 static, 24 idle (man), 34 WOT, 44 cruising). I understand setting up the stop on the travel, but with the time needed to screw with it and measure the tangential distance vs. radial degrees, why not just BUY a dang 10 deg can? :-)

And I'd rather have the OTHER distributor all ready for "plug and play" if we're going to be on the clock at the dyno. I can always put the Schlemmer unit back in afterwards, etc. And it's one or the other: that either needs more mechanical timing OR the shorter vac can (but it doesn't need both!).


RE: Jets. Carb'n Fibre put in "the biggest I had"-- and couldn't tell me what size that was! So, our starting point is unknown. :-( I'm guessing, by Steve's dented wallet, that we're probably pretty rich. :)

(STEVE: Pull plugs and confirm?)

If you want to do this, we have to mobilize quickly on parts. Dyno-time is all about having options to try.... Otherwise, it's just a baseline with bad news. (Seriously-- what does "300 hp, not enough timing, and we're @#$%& spewing fuel" do for us? Tells us three things we want to Fix... on the dyno!)

$.02

M

Gary, not a bad idea on the rental concept. We could do that easily enough with a very simple rental agreement. Do you think you could check it out?

Max, the distributor is identical to the 215 distributor except for the drive gear and perhaps the bob weights, springs, and vacuum can. So anything you have for a Rover might work as well. Swap gears and a Rover distributor is a direct swap into the engine. So take a Rover distributor, set it up the way you want it and try it. That way we can always swap back if it doesn't work out. You should have all the parts you need that way.

As I recall, secondary QJ jets are fixed, cast in place, and tuning is done by changing the secondary metering rods which is a simple operation involving one screw. Find someone the dyno operator knows who has a QJ tuning kit and you're good to go. On the primaries there are replaceable jets but the metering rods are replaceable too. I'll try to look at the book.

I sent Carb-n-fiber contact info for a Buick QJ guru so he could get the calibration correct. Don't know if he made the call... you can lead a horse...

JB

It would be a while Jim. We are working 11hr days right now 6 days a week trying to keep customers happy..

Gary

I believe I have a rover distributor you can have. I can drop it by Steve's.

ANPAC came back and said they can't write the policy as a personal policy. They are working on getting us a commercial policy estimate through Triton, Iowa First. I hope someone else is checking into the rental or aviation club model - I wouldn't know where to start on that. I have a feeling the rental car companies are self insured and they use the insurance they sell to renters as just another revenue stream but hopefully there'll be something that works that we can find out by researching that approach.

I know if it comes down to it, there is a process for posting a bond. I don't know the mechanics or details of it, but DUI offenders have been using this method for years in order to get insured and be able to drive. Hopefully somebody knows somebody who might know how that works.

JB