Talk Morgan Forums Thread Like Summary - New toy - update (if you can be bothered!)

Thought I’d spend a few mins documenting this although it may not be that interesting to many here. My ‘new to me’ MGB GT is progressing well but has hit a little stumbling block. Here’s the story so far…




As bought the MG came with bucket seats, red harnesses, Weber carb, fancy exhaust and manifold, CD changer, central locking, silly Le Mans type fuel filler cover. Most of this has now been removed and standard items reinstalled. The ‘tat’ has been sold and raised a tidy sum. The seats were awful and the included refurbished standard leather items are much more comfortable. I couldn’t get on with the Weber carb but again the car came with 2 sets of incomplete SUs so the HS4s have been rebuilt and installed. I’ve done about 200 miles in it since and it’s coming along nicely but there’s still more jobs to do going forward.

On the way back from its 3rd show yesterday cruising at 65 it developed a misfire, quite severe and lasted about 10-15 seconds before it cleared up. Few miles later the same thing happened again, clearing after a short time. Haven’t investigated yet but I’m thinking sticking valve in the float chambers.

Next on my list is to get rid of the central locking as I’ve found it sometimes actuates if the door is closed with too much force - potentially locking the keys inside the car! Then the task of finding a wind deflector for the webasto sunroof! Hens teeth!

I’m enjoying reacquainting myself with a car I know so well.

Rolling road went very well, carbs nicely balanced and timing reset. Mixture optimised and gained a massive 5.9 BHP!

The BV8 cast manifolds had a very thin flange on the downpipes. There were three studs on each manifold and when "overtightened" would break the casting. I believe that towards the end of production, the flanges were thickened. I fitted a pair of Janspeed stainless manifolds to mine at the rebuild. It needed half an inch of panel bashing to the inner wings for clearance. Before that I repaired both the cast manifold flanges with JB Weld and amazingly it lasted until the rebuild, about 12 months, without letting go.

I looked at an rv8 recently as I was offered it at a very good price. Good looking curves.
But in the end the seating position and the inaccessibility of the rust areas put me off.
Lots for sale so they're due a price drop I think.
Nick