MG Sports Cars

Bill, surely you're not saying it'll be with me for 3 weeks while I wait for them to get here? ;-) Actually Edith's birthday cake helped quite a bit... I ate most of it.

Well, it'll be nice to get the right wheels and tires on the car. That will probably help me stay motivated to work on it and to find inexpensive ways around what still needs to be done. Heck, it's already motivated me to find a way to hook up power to my shop oven without spending any more. Sometimes a fresh look at things is all you need to see a clear path. Once I realized that the only thing the sub panel really needed to power right now is the oven, I was able to grab a 60 amp breaker slated for a future improvement, slap it in the main panel, and voila! The oven works!

I've been sandblasting the headers and they are coming out good. The coarse blasting sand is taking off the old coating pretty well, feathering the edges where it doesn't, and leaving a good surface for adhesion of the new coating. But it takes time. I've also been grinding down the welds where I can reach them. So far I have one small hole that needs welded up. Not bad for 25 year old headers, but naturally it's in the collector's center seam between the tubes. I think I can reach it with the mig but there couldn't be a much harder spot to repair. I may try that this afternoon or tomorrow if I get the chance. I also realized that I don't necessarily have to have the new front tires right away. I have some 225/45-17's that I could use short term. They are old and hard and a little small but have adequate tread. But then, maybe I'll get tires for my birthday! And even if not it'll give me a decent chance to look and see if a 265 might be a better choice than the 245s I've been planning to use. I hate to give up any width and the old size was 265/50-14 but they'd be a little taller. Which might end up looking OK.

In a way it's a lot like when I bought the transmission. I may be a little miserable for the next few months but that will pass and I'll be glad I did it.

JB

About 3 decades ago Dan B made a deal with Harry Johnston for some LBC parts, and though I always knew Harry to be more than fair, he got Dan to agree to sand blast an old porch glider that his wife's family had given them. You know the type, sheet metal, floral pattern in the back and seat. wraparound arms and straps to hold it up, 30 gazzillion coats of white paint, and of course, rust.

About 3 years and several tons of sand later, Dan brought it back saying he'd done the very best he could, and really he had. But when at the end of the day you see about one square foot cleared its sorta tough going.

That's about the way I'm feeling with these headers right now. On the good side, I did at least find out why the coating failed. Somebody left rust on the headers when they were coated the first time. I'll not bother naming names because it was 25 years ago and things change, but I can see obvious proof of just how important it is to get to bare metal. The sand I'm using is coarser than recommended and that's a good thing because I'm rapidly turning it to dust. But I'm closing in on the last spots on one header and am pretty far along on the other one too. And I still have more fresh sand. I'm not sure how long it'll take to finish because at this point I'm turning the sand to dust so fast the dust sucker can't keep up so I get a few seconds where I can see and then it all goes cloudy. The coating is darned close to the same color as the bare steel, so I've taken to making stripes on it with a red fat tip sharpie. Many many load/unload cycles. Tried black but just didn't get enough contrast. The red seems to be working, I'll know more on the next unload. Put a new window in the blaster and that helped quite a bit. So anyway the work continues.

JB

"Wow" brings back memories of sand blasting my TR6 frame, and all the parts. I ended up having sand everywhere and blowing sand dust out of my nose even with a mask on. I think it was the dirtyest jobs of a rebuild.

The frame was on saw horses, had plastic stapled to the ceiling all around the frame to the floor. Probably spent 40 hours or more to clean it up. What a pain in the A. Used a little box(full of sand) that was strapped to my back to carry around. Blast, vacuum up, fill blaster box, blast, vacuum up, fill blaster box, over and over untill is was dust. New sand and repeat.

You will be glad when its done a big mile stone to pass. This will soon pass, then you can move on to the more fun list to do's

Calvin

Jim

I'm sure you know the hazards of using sand to blast with - silicosis if you breathe any of the dust. If you are going to use sand be sure to use a good respirator. Better to use a non silica media like some of the ground smelting slag (Black Beauty)

Thanks guys. I'm thinking another day or two and I'll have it pretty well knocked out. Now it's lots of short blasts separated by walking away to do other things so the dust can settle enough to be able to see. I'm not using the old open hopper blaster, except to supply the sand. You are very right about the dangers of silicosis. Luckily I have a blast cabinet with a dust sucker connected to it that vents outside. That maintains negative pressure in the cabinet so no dust gets out. No sneezing and no dust in the nose. What an improvement from the old days!

JB

In anticipation of the new wheels coming in I've been doing a little math on the weights. Based on dimensions only, and with the old Centerline wheels weighing in at 11.9 lbs each, the newer larger and wider wheels should come in somewhere close to 21.2 lbs rear and 16.3 lbs front. This isn't as bad as it might seem because the new tires are lighter than might be expected. On the front, depending on the tire I end up with I'll have a +1 or +3 lb increase in unsprung weight at 41 or 43 lbs, 41 most likely. When I do the brake upgrade I expect to drop at least 7 pounds at each front corner, so in the end I think unsprung weight will be below stock, maybe significantly so. More on this later.

Does anyone have the weight of the stock wire wheel and tire, or the stock steel wheel and tire? I may have a caliper and rotor I can weigh, at least the rotor. Not sure about the caliper.

On the rear it's a different story entirely. I pick up about 10 lbs with each wheel if my calculations match the new wheels. The new tires are about 1/4 lb lighter. But I drop considerably more than that with the inboard brakes and independent suspension. I don't remember now what it comes out at, I'd have to look back through this thread to find it. But based entirely on my faulty memory, it seems to me there was something like a 40 lb per side improvement which would translate to a 30 lb decrease even with the heavier wheels.

I think I'm gonna like this.

JB

Jim

If it's any help the weights on my 17" ZR1 clones are 20# for the 11" and 18# for the 9.5"

Harry and Pat's glider did look good though after it was finished. I can't remember what I got out of the deal from Harry...maybe the Konis, but he made up for it on the TR6 and OD.

Bet it made yer eyes cross after awhile, didn't it?

Thankfully I'm about to finish up. Put some fresh sand in tomorrow, hit a few spots, give it all a final blast and paint it. Move on to baking.

I discovered one more little trick that really helped. I had a 2.3" port in the back of the cabinet that was sealed up with a plug so I opened that up and ran a chunk of PVC pipe about 4 ft long and an elbow into it with the pipe pointing straight up. That gave me more airflow through the cabinet without any dust getting out. It didn't get rid of all the fog but it helped tremendously and got rid of a lot more of the dust.

I'll tell you what. After all this I can understand the rust. These are pretty long headers. 38 inches in the primary tubes. It's a little tricky getting around them in the cabinet and some spots are definitely difficult. If the guy was using the same size cabinet I doubt he came out on the price. Of course it's still way easier to do the job right than it is to do it over, but I can understand.

JB

Anything truly worth doing is worth doing twice. If it isn't you'd better be asking yourself if it is worth doing the first time. Often the wiser course is to pay someone else to do the job for you.

But having said that, there is much to be gained by the experience of trying something new. I personally take great pride in being capable of doing the job right and to my own satisfaction the first time around, regardless of the technological challenges and most times my confidence is proven right. I've been doing this type of work long enough now that I almost always am aware of the blind corners before it becomes too late. But, and this is a very big butt, I am never afraid to back up and disassemble if I discover something that I don't like. This is where doing it twice comes in, and as I always keep that thought in mind, I may begrudge the extra labor but I never feel it is unexpected. That is a major plus in a project like these headers.

So. After all of the work required to remove the old coating, including necessary upgrades to the blaster cabinet brought about by weakness in the system revealed by the heavy use, and setting up the oven,I finally was able to coat and bake the headers. YAY! Except that this water based ceramic coating isn't the easiest stuff to master and the coating was a bit heavy on the first one. When It came out of the oven it looked like a boiled egg after you crack it and roll it all around the tabletop. That was followed by a couple days of shaving the new coating off with an old carbon steel butcher knife, a couple more days of yet more upgrades to the blast cabinet, and now finally I am blasting off the last vestiges of the new coating. Should finish that up in another day or so and then there are flaws in the other header which need blasted and re-coated which were caused by mis-handling. It's pretty delicate stuff until it is baked.

If ever there was a job that merited the adage above this was it. Am I glad I did it? Yep. The headers will look much better, I have a new skill, and besides, I could never have afforded the initial cleanup to remove the old coating if I had hired it out. Many, many, many hours of shop time were required to get the old ceramic off. Plus later if any touch-up is needed I can do that quite easily. Would I consider coating headers for someone else? Maybe. It's pretty labor intensive, but for new pipes wouldn't be too bad. I think a lot depends on whether I build the vibratory polisher as that is yet another labor intensive part of the job. Once the pipes meet my satisfaction we'll see about that. It WOULD be handy to have the machine, and not just for polishing headers.

Meanwhile, my new wheels are supposed to come in today. Can't wait. But I have to I guess. Photos soon!

JB

That's really looking good Jim. I look forward to seeing the car up and running. I came along late to the group and you towed the Roadmaster up to Wisconsin the first year I made the meet and then the engine died soon after that.

It's coming together really nice!

Thanks guys. This time I expect to be pretty much done with upgrades except maybe some stuff like the dashboard and A/C. It'll be time to start putting the miles on again.

Weighed the wheels, 20.5 rear, 3/4 of a lb lighter than expected. Front is 18.1, 2.2 lbs heavier than expected but that was before going to the high pad design which had to add some weight. Those are some really stout center spiders, they look really strong. Plus there is room for any brake package I could want. Here are a couple shots of the wheels and tires. That measuring stick is 12" long. The tire shown with the front wheel is actually a little smaller than what I have in mind for it. That's a 225/45-17 and I expect to go with the 255/45-17, but these will work for now.





Here's an elevated shot of the front. Sorta looks like it means business, don't it?



JB

Now I know what you're thinking: There's no way that much rubber is going to fit under an MGB. Right?





I'd have jacked the tire up higher but the coil-over was wanting to lift the body.

JB



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/2011 04:34PM by BlownMGB-V8.

It looks great Jim! Did you do some rocker work too? Don't recall you mentioning it but looks like new metal in the last pic.

Take some pictures of the whole car on the ground. I want to see what it looks like with the flared rocker panels and the big tires.

Jim, this is the best I can do right now, still waiting on new front tires and other things. Car still looks a little high as I couldn't roll it to let the suspension settle.

Rob, that's all old metalwork, nothing new there. New paint isn't on the schedule for another couple years, although it does need it.

The rockers date back to the early 80's but were upgraded with perforated stainless to help cool the mufflers about 15 years back. But bodywork is not my strong suit. There are plenty of flaws.

JB

I've met with some success on the header re-coating process and now have 1 header with a good coating of cermachrome ceramic, ready for the polishing step. I'm in the process of stripping the other one again for re-coat and after initial work with blade and blaster have opted to try a chemical strip. Using first oven cleaner and then liquid draino (lye) the coating is slowly being eaten away. I'll see how it looks in the morning.

Anyway, I also have a pair of tires for the front on their way but they are back ordered. Hopefully they will ship soon. I went with the 255/45-17s. Not sure exactly how they will fit, but it's going to be close on the inside. I can justify temporary spacers on these though to move them out if I need to, because the planned brake upgrade will be using slip on rotors which should move the flange out about 1/4" anyway. A little fine tuning could be necessary, maybe a bump in the fenderwell or a spacer under the bump stop. I'll have a lot better idea once the tires are mounted. That will also let me know what the car's stance will look like and help me decide how much I need to "bend" the car.

That probably struck you as a funny statement. It should. But allow me to explain. This car has had a rough history. It was a dirt track racer in southern W.Va. (a very rough neighborhood in case you didn't know) and then, after the usual rust attacks, permanently became an experimental vehicle. Along the way a sill replacement was done, but without benefit of the mandatory temporary bracing, the result of which is a sag wherein the center of the car is somewhat higher than the ends. This causes all manner of problems, the most obvious of which are gaps at the windshield and poor door alignment, but it also causes the radiator support to sit lower than it should. The proper repair involves yet another sill replacement which, if you've noticed the rockers, is a bit more of a custom job than the standard repair. So I've come up with a possible solution, but one which is not without risk. I propose to "bend" the car straight. This is to be done by using the 2 post lift as a very large hydraulic press. The idea is to position a beam through the door openings, chain it to the floor on both sides, position blocking to apply force to the selected area of the sill being bent, and then bump the lift up to force the sill down. Will it work? I haven't a clue. But if it does I'll be able to close the gaps and align the doors. And what's the worst that can happen? (OK, maybe I shouldn't even be asking that question. Maybe I should go ahead and order replacement panels. Maybe it's a good thing I have a spare car sitting in the shed.)

I don't know at what point I will attempt this insanity. Sooner than later if I don't like the stance of the car on it's new tires. Or I may wait until I've driven it a bit. We'll see.

JB

Sitting on it's own wheels again finally. The car sits a little high right now, it still has 60 psi in the tires and the suspension needs adjusted down, but that's pretty easy with the coil-overs in the rear and the air bags in the front. Front air bag pressure is at 90 psi which is 10-20 psi high.



After the car is back on the road I will probably look into replacing the rear coil-overs with air shocks in order to get air suspension all the way around, but the real trick will be if I can get the same air pressures front and rear. That's doubtful but possible. We'll see. It would be nice to be able to raise and lower the entire car at the touch of a button.



Still sand blasting the second header. If anyone ever tells you this is easy, smack 'em for me! So maybe by a week from now I'll be ready to polish those and I hear that job is real labor intensive. Just the sort of thing I was looking forward to. Incidentally, Techline does have a header coating they say is almost as good which doesn't require polishing or baking. (I think baking it would still be a good idea.) I might consider putting some of that on the MG-Roadmaster's headers sometime.

Looking forward... Driveshaft, shifter, A/C compressor, accessory drive, double condensers, fuel rails, air inlet/throttle body, intercooler plumbing, along with various and sundry small details. This might take awhile.

JB