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MG MGB Technical - Few questions

I crawled under the car today to find a noise and found more than I bargained for. I'd appreciate a couple opinions on the first three items on this page:

http://home.pacbell.net/stevesim/mg_maint.htm

Thanks!
Steve Simmons

Steve-
1-don't know. 2-You can do it in place, unless the bearing behind the seal is bad. 3- Yes. 4- same thing happened to me. I guess new rear line was due anyway.
5 and 6. Great picture story! Quite the scoring on the drive shaft. This is good evidence of how much side shifting the body does while cornering. Now I know why Steve S. of Virginia likes the Panhard rod!
Tom
Thomas Lennon

--and where did you find a crescent wrench that stays that tight?!
Thomas Lennon

The secret to keeping an adjustable wrench stored conveniently under your car is this: Clamp it to the nut on the seatbelt bolt. From inside the car, tighten the bolt. This will cause the wrench to be pressed against the transmission crossbrace, holding it in place by friction. Now, whenever you need a wrench under the car, just loosen the passenger seatbelt, and there will be one waiting for you on the ground! The really sad thing is that after I took the picture I put the car away in the garage and forgot to remove the wrench. It's still there. :/
Steve Simmons

Steve - the black wire should be the ground for the fuel pump and should connect to a lug on the coil housing (round black portion of the pump). The question I have is with that ground wire loose, how is the pump operating? By the way, that particular picture is a great illustration of the problem with Lucas electrics - SPO (that is beond dumb previous owners, all the way to stupid). Good luck - Dave
David DuBois

There is a ground wire attached between the pump and body not viewable in the picture. Maybe that's just an extra ground wire from... something?
Steve Simmons

Not only are you probably the best 'MG underside picture taker'(talk about CLEAR pics!), you must also be a 'cool dude' (judging by your attitude to it all...)

Cheers
Mark

They are great photos, Steve, and it is a pleasure to be able to "see" what you problems are, rather than to read a sometimes sketchy, sometimes well crafted verbal description of them.

I think Dave has the wiring sorted out for you.

As for the others?

Yes, it looks as tho the seal for the pinion shaft on your Differential is leaking. The trail of oil spun off of the cover ring is the dead give away as you have guessed.

Those bushings in any of the suspension links don't last forever, and you are probably looking at one that has softened either from age, oil, or shearing of the rubber from constant flexure. You should probably replace both sides.

As for the flattened brake pipe. I think if I still had the receipt from the towing service, I would take the car to a good mechanic, get an opinion from him of how he thinks it happened given the transport, have him replace that section of line, and then present the bill along with the mechanic's comments and your photo(s) of the damage to the transport company. Beyond this remedy, you probably need the counsel of one of our BBS lawyers, if you think you want to be bothered with it.

Perhaps you need a shorter seat belt bolt down in the trans tunnel?? Even with the cresent wrench out of there, it still looks a bit close to that driveshaft. (JMO) That extra length of bolt may become a source of other noises.

Good luck, Steve!

Bob Muenchausen

the noise from the rear end on right hand turns: check your front spring hanger bolt holes to ensure they've not "wallowed out"
Tony Barnhill

"the best 'MG underside picture taker'" That's a title I can live with! :) It's probably just my stubborn refusal to take bad pictures. As for my attitude towards it, without huge amounts of patience my car would never have come this far! Besides, my motto for both work and play has always been, "If you can't have fun then what's the point?".

Bob, next time under the car, and after I remove the bloody wrench that's STILL there, that bolt will be gone and I may even shorten the other one for kicks. As for compensation from the towing company, it was a cash deal, no receipt. I probably wouldn't bother anyway since it looks like a simple job to replace (other than the fact that I never bleed brakes right).
Steve Simmons

David,
You just made an interesting comment. I am working on getting my 68 B, I just purchased, running. I just re-installed the gas tank, and tried to start it. The fuel pump didn't work. I pulled the wires to the fuel pump and checked for voltage. Got voltage. However, the black wire is connected to the pump housing and the white color wire (?) is connected to the pump coil (inside near the battery tray). I thought at first the battery was too low for the fuel pump to pump so I am chargeing it now. The question is, if the fuel pump is wired backwards, what would happen?

Ed
Edward Bullard

It would suck. Get it? Sorry, I believe the pump would simply not run were it to be wired backwards. I don't think it would be harmed though.
Steve Simmons

Steve
I agree with the other postings, excellent photos. What camera and software are you using?
Ian Holliday

Hi Steve,
That explains the bulge in the gas tank :) Looking at your picture again, the wire that is going to the pump coil, is it the ground wire? It sort of had a orange appearance to it. Does it have a lug on the end connecting to the pump? If the orange wire is the ground, then my pump was hooked up backwards and that would explain everything. Anyhow, let me know if the orange wire is ground.

Thanks,
Ed
Edward Bullard

Edward, A standard in electrical wiring is that black is always the ground. It is that way in your car as well. It's a good idea to never veer from that rule so yo unever accidently connect a live wire where you didn't mean to! Btw, that orange wire is actually white. Must have been a reflection from the rust!

Ian, those photos were taken with a Nikon Coolpix 5000 camera. It was set to force flash, Matrix metering, ISO 100, f2.8 although you could probably get similar results in automatic mode. I don't use any special software. In fact I threw away the CD that came with the camera. You don't need any of that stuff. I use Photoshop's excellant "save for web" feature to reduce file size with minimal loss of quality. The trick to a good picture is to back away from the subject as far as possible so the flash won't be too powerful, and avoid any objects in the foreground which the flash can reflect off of, ruining the exposure on the subject.
Steve Simmons

Ed, I don't think it makes a difference if your pump is wired backwards, I recently changed my 67 from positive to negative ground, no modification was necessary to the fuel pump (or wipers, blower, lights, or anything else except tach & generator!

Bud
Bud G

You sound like a very good photographer, period!, Steve. Keep up the good work and save these files as they can all be used over and over for illustration. I have been saving photos for years now and I find them very useful, whether I shoot them or someone else has gotten a hard shot to come out good. It is too bad we don't have an MG Cars Enthusiasts FTP site, Hint, hint!

In the meantime, catalog them anyway you can, they may be just the thing to help someone figure things out visually. Some folks work best visually, and some do just fine verbally, but we might as well have every opportunity available to us to make the most of our MG experience!
Bob Muenchausen

It would be nice if there were a way to attach images to posts in this BBS. That would solve the problem, and we wouldn't have to create web pages like I did when we need to show something.

My poor little server is gonna hate me for this, but if you're interested in photography I have a small photo gallery of my favorite shots here:

http://www.twosims.com/hobby/photo/gallery.htm

If it's exceptionally slow and you don't want to wait for the images to load, try again later. It's a home-based server and can't handle a lot of people at once.
Steve Simmons

Steve - The "extra" ground wire could be the original ground that quit working when someone replaced the rear license plate mounting bracket, the ground for the fuel pump and the rear lights comes from one of the studs that mounts the bracket on the back of the car.

Ed & Bud - Whether or not the pump will run when it is hooked up backward depends on how old it is. The older pumps used a capacitor for spark supression while the neweer pumps use a diode. The older pumps don't care which way they are hooked up, the newer pumps do and can be damaged (diode burned up) when hooked up backwards
Chears - Dave
David DuBois

Steve,
Yes, you sure have the right attitude for an MG owner. I got a real chuckle from that picture of the wrench still on the bolt. I thought that I was the only one to do something like that!
Talk about embarrassing monents- I replaced my old fuel pump and fuel tank. But, prior to the tank installation, the Moss tech's suggested that I clean, etch and seal the new tank. Well, I've always been an "over-do'er" and I sealed it real tight, even the out-put tube to the pump. Nobody mentioned to be carefull about that, I hadn't a clue that would happen. Which caused the pump to overheat, I guess, and break apart internally.
I called Moss, Harry Haigh, and told them what I did. He immediately sent me out another pump and tank, which I rec'd the next day. I boxed up the sealed tank and the burned-out, new pump and sent them back to Moss. Two weeks later I rec'd a check from Moss for not only the tank & pump but also for all the postage.
Ya, it exposed me as the 'amature mechanic' that I am. Luckily we have a company like Moss and people like Harry Haigh to help us 'Rookies' out.
William Powell

Steve,

You are too modest, really superb photos on your server.

Cliff

Cliff Maddox

Steve,
you look like you must be a videographer! Welcome to the club! I started out as a cinematographer, then an Educational Media Specialist and forced to learn to be a videographer in both education and corporate america. You have a great eye, and I really enjoyed your photos. Looks like you get to go to some pretty exotic places - lucky devil! ;-)
Bob Muenchausen

The wrench cracks me up. I seem to do this sort of thing all the time. Last week I left a plastic-handled screwdriver-type electric probe somewhere on top of my V8's motor, closed the hood, did some errands, came back and there was a blackened melted plastic mess all over one of my headers. I finally got it off but it was disgusting. Can't they engineer a buzzer for this, like when you leave your keys in the ignition?!?
David

Yes Bob, I work in TV and film. Still photography is a hobby, digital photography in particular. Glad you liked the photo gallery. Watch for updates soon as I'll be off to Jamaica and Spain next month!
Steve Simmons

Must be one of those "Metric Crescent Wrenches"
( * )

I talked a friend of mine into buying an adjustable wrench with a red handle instead of plain metal one time. I claimed that the ones with the red handles were metric, while the plain metal was American sizing. I said he should watch for a yellow one because they are Whitworth and are hard to find! LoL!
Steve Simmons

"I pulled the wires to the fuel pump and checked for voltage. Got voltage"

If you are checking for voltage with a voltmeter you must always check it under load i.e. connected as a voltmeter will show 12v even when there is a very high resistance bad connection in the circuit which will stop the pump (or whatever) operating.

You can also damage the wiring if you reverse a pump with diode suppresion.
Paul Hunt

This thread was discussed between 03/06/2002 and 07/06/2002

MG MGB Technical index

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