MG Car Club of South Australia
OUR LITTLE “ EMMY “ ( MGB )
Final part of the two part story from...Chris and Sue Thomson
Final part two of the article from the
November issue
N
ow to under the bonnet…I earlier
mentiond that the motor tended to
run a bit hot. It also did a fair bit of ping-
ing, when under load—climbing Wil-
lunga Hill for example. I tried to retune
it by moving the distributor left and right
a few degrees—it just coughed and
spluttered when I turned it one way,
and was gutless when I turned it the
other.
So I took the dizzy out and after a bit of
probing and disassembly, found that
the advance plate wasn’t mounting on
the centre locator properly. It was all
loose and sloppy…stop that you dirty
little!!!!....Purchased and replaced the
distributor, tuned the motor—to this
day—happy little Emmy!!.
Replaced the SU carby jets, engine
was still missing a bit, didn,t think it was
the dizzy anymore, turned out to be
another wise moment on my part!!. My
head is getting bigger by the min-
ute……even happier little Emmy!!
Note—I tried to buy a carby synchro-
nizer from Bruce, but he didn’t have
any in at the time, so I did the best I
could tuning the carbys, by adjusting
the jets until the engine ran
smoothly. I think that in the end
it has all worked out ok, be-
cause the car now seems to
have a lot more horses, and it
doesn,t get hot anymore and
miss.. Took it for a drive last
week, up to Mount Barker, wa-
ter temperature got to around
70 degrees, ran quiet, smooth,
good acceleration etc—I,m a
happy chappy!!.
One day soon, I think that I
should take the car to a reputable me-
chanic and get him to go over it, to
make sure that it,s all as it should be..
Still under the bonnet…. Took the car-
bys off, took them to pieces, cleaned
them up, cleaned filters, new heat
shield, put them back again all nice and
shiny…
Rocker cover, took off, repainted cham-
pion red, replaced damaged stickers,
new seals, reassembled.
Clutch cylinders, top and bottom, re-
moved, cleaned,- replaced worn seals
and hose, refitted, bled.
I did have trouble bleeding the clutch
cylinders. If you ever have to do it, you
will find that until the bottom cylinder is
completely devoid of any residual air,
you wont get a response at all from the
clutch pedal. I found that, because I
was trying to do it on my own, when
trying to bleed air out of the bottom cyl-
inder, under the car, I was at the same
time, emptying the top cylinder of fluid.
( It doesn’t hold that much fluid). This
happened because I wasn’t closing the
bottom bleed valve off at the right time,
which allowed air to sneak back into the
bottom cylinder, and not topping up the
top cylinder often enough. I remedied
34