MGA Guru Is GOING MOBILE January 16

The MGA With An Attitude
MGA Guru Is GOING MOBILE - (January 16 - January 31, 2025)

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Thursday - January 16, 2025:
Found the source of the data transfer hang up. In the newer part of the club web site, where people were creating new web pages using WordPress, there were a couple of very large data files that I do not recognize, like 1.7-GB and 3.6-GB. This may be about the right size to contain the entire club web site in a single pdf or print file. By coincidence, that 1.7-GB file is about equal to the data size for my entire MGAguru web site, which is huge. All very confusing, so I will just skip those files in the data backup for now. I know the current website committee folks do not believe in data backup anyway.

Friday - January 17, 2025:
The guys were into a little more work on Tina today. First was to install a bracket to fix the exhaust pipe under the floor pan so the pipe wouldn't hammer on the floor when driving. Don't know if they finished or not. Not sure if the electric oil pressure gauge was reading properly, so we wanted to use an analog pressure gauge to get a true reading for reference. Found a Smiths single function analog oil gauge in the attic, and one of the guys claims to have a connector pipe for it at home,and will bring it next time.

We made some progress on the Sirocco race engine, filing ring gaps to suit and installing pistons. When the party broke up we made a side trip to a paint store to pick up another 5-gllon can of lacquer thinner for cleaning stuff. Seems we do that every two years or so. Then back to the WiFi spot to finish restoration (download) of data from server to my hard drive. That must be back to nominal late night.

Saturday - January 18, 2025:
First priority today was to deliver the 5-gallon can of lacquer thinner to Tech Central in Bonita Springs, which we did about 10-am, normal starting time for any activities there. Jerry was under the weather with the remains of a cold that didn't want to go away, going to sleep in a bit more, so we sat down to do some computer work while we were waiting. When he came down later he was grabbing a heat gun to try thawing out an errant ice maker, which he needs for his water test business. With one ice maker broken and the other one frozen, it was suddenly a high priority. I guess he got it thawed out and working, but then there were a couple of"honey-do" jobs pending, so no garage work today. Back to the WiFi spot for late lunch, catching up some email and BBS chores, and updating the trip log for the past few days.

Sunday - January 19, 2025:
Uploaded a copy of "Clarke Spares & Restorations MGA Parts Catalog" to this web site. It is in the MG Tech section under Books, More Catalogs & Parts Lists, and there is a printable PDF copy. This used to be available from the Clarke Spares web site. Since Todd Clarke is now deceased, the business has been closed, all assets transferred to British Miles, and the Clarke Spares website has recently been deleted. This catalog is no longer valid, but it still makes a good technical reference, especially for the CSR part numbers.

Monday - January 20, 2025:
A little work on Tina the wannabe race car, beginning with finish sorting out of carburetor linkages and return springs. Still reluctant to cold start with full choke, but a short sniff of ether fired it up immediately. Tachometer paralyzed on 2000 RPM, turned out to be a disconnected wire, easily fixed, and reinstall the dash panel. While warming up it just quit. Yeah, out of gas, so send someone off to fetch 5-gallons of premium pump fuel, and may return to this after lunch.
My first formal introduction to the fire safety bottle, about to be installed in Tina. The red fire extinguisher bottle is filled with dry chemical powder, not pressurized, but can be weighed to verify amount of content. The pull cable is attached to a lever which pushes a sharp pin to puncture a CO2 cartridge. When punctured, the high pressure liquid CO2 immediately escapes, into the low pressure powder cylinder, expanding to large volume of gas in the process, which quick;y expels the dry powder through a pipe into the engine bay to smother a fire. And there goes another $240 out of pocket to refill and re-certify the dry chemical powder bottle and replace the CO2 cartridge. Cleaning up the powder mess and engine bay and repairing any mechanical or electrical damage is additional. We think installation will be a job for tomorrow.

The racing Rabbit, the one with engine still in it, had an issue with low oil pressure warning light, which would come on at low engine speed when it shouldn't. The problem was that the switch was located in the cylinder head near the valve drive parts which were limited to lower oil flow, so the oil pressure would drop dramatically at low engine speed. The solution is to relocate the switch to the oil filter assembly where it would see the same high pressure as the dash mounted oil pressure gauge. Then the switch would not trigger the warning light until oil pressure drops after shut-down, or of course any time oil pressure might be lost when running. After reconnection, fire up the engine to verify that the low pressure switch and warning light work as intended. -- I took a little available time to organize some tools (a never ending job). There were some new hex drive bits that appeared to be on a nice plastic storage fixture. Alas,it was really a retail security anti-theft device where the sockets could not be pulled off with fingers, so spend some time with vice and screwdriver to tear the sockets loose, toss them in a tool drawer, and pitch the cute plastic fixture into the nearest dust bin.

While trying to start the Rabbit, it would barely crank over, no start. Discover my lithium battery jumper box, fully charged, is not up to the task, so put another one of those on the shopping list. Pull out my trusty battery tester which is perfect and never fails, to verify that the crusty battery is indeed very bad. Voltage goes from 12 volts to 4 volts when cranking, and the tester shows at best 135 cranking amps capacity. Out with the old and in with a new battery, making the Rabbit very happy. Put a charger on the old battery for over night, and we will test it again tomorrow to verify that it will still test bad.

Tuesday - January 21, 2025:
Back at Tech Central, nobody tinkering with Tina, but we did spend some time with the racing Rabbit. The "bad" battery had been on the charger over night, set on" 25 amp boost". Supposed to be an automatic shut-off charger, but looks like it didn't (hut off). the battery was hot, and was gas off-gassing visible vapor which of course smelled like battery acid, not good, apparently boiling water out of the battery. Unplug the charger before disconnecting the charger clamps. Using the same small battery tester, the apparently cooked old battery showed capable of nearly 500 amps cranking capacity, like it might be a slightly used battery in pretty good serviceable condition. Say what? Seems weird. Set it aside to cool and maybe test it again later to see if it might regress.
Next up was to see if we could install a new rubber gaiter on the Sirocco steering rack (to replace the burned one). This is an odd arrangement I have never see before (learn something new every day). There is a large rubber grommet (sold separately) to go into the small end of he boot where it should fit on the tie rod. After some fuss we did finally get the grommet and boot mated. Then found the inboard end of the boot is much larger than the mating tube on the rack housing. Seems to be a few different iterations of the steering rack and suspension design, so this must be the wrong boot for this application. This then turned into a "Jerry problem" to find the right parts, and set this aside for another day.

Then a fun little head scratching project. The Sirocco race engine has been endowed with ARP head studs which are not straight as the original; studs. These studs are necked down in the middle to the root diameter of the end threads (for weight reduction I suppose). The head gasket has clearance holes that must be large enough to pass over the threads on the studs. This leaves the holes in the gasket much larger than the shanks of the studs, so the gasket can move around to be misaligned with the cylinder bores and combustion chambers. Bummer. Did the folks at ARP not know about this? At the front and rear corners of the head and block there are two holes where oil can drain down from the head to return to the sump. no bolts here, but the holes are slightly counterbored to leave a narrow step in the bore, about an inch and a half into the block and about an inch into the head. Don't know the original intention, but these holes look ideal to accept a tubular alignment pin. Someone brought in a piece of aluminum tubing about the right size. Seems like it should want steel tube, but soft aluminum will do for now. The hole at rear of block would just accept the tubing, while the hole at front was a tad smaller and wouldn't fit. Both holes in the head were the same smaller bore as well. Simple solution, chuck a piece of the tube in the drill press to spin it while filing down the OD a bit to fit into the holes, polish it with sand paper, and cut it to appropriate length. A bit of a fiddle, but didn't take long.
Three photos below show the bare block without a head gasket.

Photos below show the block with a head gasket. Good place to stop for the day when Jerry had to run off for business.

We took the spare time to tour around a few more prospective WiFi spots. We were getting somewhat out of our way by the four stop before we found another good one. Sitting now in the southwest corner of Naples to try it out as we bring you these latest photos and notes.