1973 MGB GT- A little rust 30/08

[joem83]

Jul 16, 2014 7:48:27 GMT adam73bgt said:

Ha I did have a look and at the videos too, the price and sound do make a compelling case Maybe I'll sit back a bit and see how the other chap on here goes with fitting the Jag V6 to his B..

Oooh, someones doing that conversion on here? *Goes off to look

*Comes back

Sorry I didnt realise it had been suggested already.
Well it fit's, but it really should have either throttle bodies or a custom central inlet to fit under a MGB GT V8 hood.





Also just read that the ST220 ST200 Manifold is very low profile

If you need to keep the intake compact the best thing would be to stick with injection and fit the st200 upper intake manifold. It is very compact. You would just need to make a spacer between the lower manifold. That will be much lower than carbs

[adam73bgt]

Aha good research that man! Yeah if I go V6, I'd probably look into a couple sets of triumph bike throttle bodies, they're not hideously expensive

[adam73bgt]

Have been taking this out for little drives over the past few days, mostly to remind myself that its a car and not a toolshed!

Despite being sat around it still barks into life relatively happily, the dependable workhorse it is

So despite the inclement weather I took it for a little drive to the RetroWarwick show yesterday where I got to park up next to some somewhat shinier MG's And got to catch up with some of the lovely people off this forum



Not that I'm bothered by that, mine was easily the coolest MG there haha the others did look good though, although the yellow ones ride height was comically high That said, I wouldn't have minded a bit of extra ride height going over the speed bumps up Warwick high street as I was trying to find my way in... That front splitter has been getting a bit of a bashing and has cracked in the middle :/

The tracking still isn't sorted which resulted in some 'interesting' driving characteristics in the rain, and understeer is very noticable and easy to provoke in the rain too which isn't much fun but the car got me there and back in one piece Definitely something that needs sorting though, if not to save me destroying my front tyres!

While I was there, I had a good look round a sebring arched BGT and the electric fan setup is something that I shall hopefully like to replicate on mine as the type of fan he had is very similar to mine



I shall have to get drawing, measuring and buying metal

I also picked up a spare boot floor in MDF from ChasR which has a couple of holes in it for speakers, so if I do decide to ditch the MX5 seats in favour of buckets, I'll have an option to retain my rear speakers if I so wish

So jobs for the gathering really centre around sorting the front end so the car is a bit more pleasant to drive, I've got a manifold adapter to allow me to hook up the vacuum gauge so just need some hose for that. I may also do a bit of carb tweaking as I'm sure the car isn't running at its full potential (smells rich) In a perfect world I'd also change the coolant hoses, coolant and fit the cooling fan but I've been putting it off already and the car keeps perfectly cool at the moment so I'm a bit loathe to change it before going on a mid to long distance journey. The wheels may get a bit of a spruce up too but my hands are already suffering from painting the Jag wheels so we'll see.

Otherwise I don't think I have many other plans to change the car much before the gathering, I'll just be happy to be there in it

[Rich]

Ditch the belt driven fan, seriously. It over-cools and it's noisy. It won't make any difference on a run- the movement of the car cools the radiator
as said, our MG has a Skyline A/C condenser fan and it keeps it adequately cool and I don't even have an auto fan controller, just a switch and 2 LEDS, one red, for off and one green, for on.

[adam73bgt]

Aug 11, 2014 9:53:56 GMT Rich said:

Ditch the belt driven fan, seriously. It over-cools and it's noisy. It won't make any difference on a run- the movement of the car cools the radiator
as said, our MG has a Skyline A/C condenser fan and it keeps it adequately cool and I don't even have an auto fan controller, just a switch and 2 LEDS, one red, for off and one green, for on.

Oh I definitely plan to I agree completely on the noise and overcooling Incidentally, the red sebring GT that had the above electric fan fitted, also had the 3 blade belt driven fan as well for reasons I couldn't quite understand...

I've still got the fan I bought off you a while back and the plan is still to fit it, I've just been very lazy in working out a way to mount it :/ I've even got the fan controller, all the electric gubbins to go with it, full hose set, coolant, new thermostat.... Just very lazy

How is your MG? will it be at the gathering or will you be in the XG30 instead? (I actually saw one on the road the other day, same colour and everything driving past my flat )

[Rich]

Aug 11, 2014 10:35:32 GMT adam73bgt said:

How is your MG? will it be at the gathering or will you be in the XG30 instead? (I actually saw one on the road the other day, same colour and everything driving past my flat )

Been good as gold, just passed the mot the other week and the insurance has gone down another £40-odd quid on it to about £170 a year (lol!)
Should both be at the gathering, Zoe will take the mg up and I'll be driving up in the Hyundai more or less straight from the Great Dorset Steam Fair.

[adam73bgt]

Aug 11, 2014 15:04:01 GMT Rich said:

Aug 11, 2014 10:35:32 GMT adam73bgt said:

How is your MG? will it be at the gathering or will you be in the XG30 instead? (I actually saw one on the road the other day, same colour and everything driving past my flat )

Been good as gold, just passed the mot the other week and the insurance has gone down another £40-odd quid on it to about £170 a year (lol!)
Should both be at the gathering, Zoe will take the mg up and I'll be driving up in the Hyundai more or less straight from the Great Dorset Steam Fair.

Good to hear! My insurance isn't quite that cheap but I did manage a £300 drop last time I insured it

I wish I could say my MG has been as good as gold but after trying to start it last weekend as I do every now and then, I got nothing..

Thinking it was a reappearance of previous battery issues I've had, I had a look at the battery cables to find the earth cable was still tight and the positive cable was nowhere near to earthing on the bodywork thanks to the battery clamp I put in.

There was quite a bit of crystalline(?) build up on the battery terminals and even a little bit building up where the metal body of the cut off switch on the positive terminal had just been in contact with the plastic casing of the battery which I thought a bit odd..

Took out the battery yesterday to give it a charge over night and the battery charger wouldn't even touch it, which usually happens when the battery voltage is especially low so something must have been draining it.

The plan now is to try and move the B such that I can give it a jump start with the Jag (which doesn't discriminate against charging flat batteries ) and hopefully that'll get it going, otherwise I may have to chuck a new battery in it or take the Jag to the gathering :/ I'm loathe to put a new battery in as this one can't be more than a couple years old

Update to come later

[ChasR]

Surely your old one must be under warranty? .

See you at the Gathering chap .

[adam73bgt]

Aug 29, 2014 17:17:28 GMT ChasR said:

Surely your old one must be under warranty? .

See you at the Gathering chap .

This is true, lord knows where the receipt currently is though..

Aye shall see you there, whatever I happen to arrive in

[adam73bgt]

Well I managed to get the MG started thanks to a jump from the Jag



left it running for a few minutes to get the battery to charge up a bit, turned it off and tried to restart and it couldn't do it so the battery must be really flat, the voltmeter was reading a healthy 14.5 volts so was definitely charging. I think ultimately I'm gonna be at the gathering in the Jag as I can't be bothered with jump starting the B all the time

Also pushing the B out of the parking space did highlight how either the handbrake might be slightly seized on or how the front toe is massively out as it was damn nearly impossible to move! I'm hoping on renting a unit in the not too distant future so there will be a lot of work happening to the B soon!

[adam73bgt]

So.

I'm tired of having an ornamental MGB GT and I'm getting it back up and running

A new battery has been bought and all the little jobs that I have to do on the car shall be done. In the meantime, I've parked ideas of engine conversions for the time being and have got a little bedtime reading sorted..



I shall be on the look for well priced MGB engine bits as and when they come up and so far I've nabbed this intake manifold for HS6's



I shall get some cheap HS6's off of a TR7 or something and give them a bit of a rebuild. I'll also have a look at the casting number on my cylinder head to see if I've got the big intake valve head or not, then I'll either begin work on my current head or get a secondhand one to do so I can still use the car in the meantime

Updates may be a bit slow as always, but there will be some in the near future

[georgeb]

Look forward to see how far you go with the original donkey. I liked the V6 idea, but it's nice to see a bit of old school tuning as well.

[frosty]

Supercharger?!?! Solid blocks the old 4 pots and they do still sound quite nice with a good induction and exhaust!!! I've never read that book. Does it have some good tuning tips?!?!

[adam73bgt]

I'd like to see what I can make the old boat anchor do as to be fair to it, its always run pretty well and the engine has quite a lot of character to it which you don't often get with newer engines.

The book is pretty damn good as far as I can tell, Pete Burgess seems to be widely regarded as 'the guy' when it comes to tuning the MGB engine so I'm fairly confident its all good stuff in the book Theres also a few guides on how to do some of the initial headwork yourself, which would save me money and is something that I would be quite interested in learning more about

With regards to supercharging, at first I'll keep it N/A but I am thinking about supercharging. The supercharger kit and most other setups I've seen have the blower on the carb side of the engine sucking through a single carb. I'd be intruiged to see if one could put the blower on the other side of the block and blow through the carbs instead. Then there'd be the possibility of running an intercooler at the front and you wouldn't have fuel in the charger. Not sure if that would actually result in any gains at all but I need to read up on supercharging as a seperate thing really

[Seth]

I'll just leave this here.  Yes it is a B series.  (Some inner wing modifications may be necessary....)

[adam73bgt]

Between the MGA twin cam engine(?) and the SU HS8(?) carbs.. Is that a supercharger or a small motorbike engine??

[varelse]

Looks more like an industrial ducting system!

[The Jackeria]

That supercharger is something else... wonder what the power output gain is compared to the weight of that thing.

[frosty]

That thing is a piece of kit! Not quite a light weight streamline mod but does look cool!

Are there any turbo conversions for the B series engine? A turbo/supercharger combo would be quite something!

[adam73bgt]

Oct 1, 2014 21:42:13 GMT frosty said:

Are there any turbo conversions for the B series engine? A turbo/supercharger combo would be quite something!

Having had a read around one of the MG forums, there seem to be a couple of people who have done turbo B conversions but they always seem to create some debate when they appear