A Mostly British Obsession
Update: Made an extension for the back, see bottom of post.
I had the rear deck panel pretty nicely completed…until I looked at pictures of a few other cars and thought “hm, the vertical bit at the rear of the panel looks a lot narrower on those cars. Hm.”
I spent way too long trying to salvage the original rear deck panel, which has been hit a million times. I’m working on its replacement. I’ll use the wire bead from the original inside of my new spares opening, which should be, er, “interesting” to make. An update when it’s done.
Nor 2016, for that matter. Above you can see the fairly horrible rear deck panel, which will look OK after filling and what-not, but, man, it’s in tough condition. I also discovered the fuel tank is leaking, and best of all, the rear suspension cross-member had to be moved half an inch forward so the spares emerged in the right place.
Believe it or not, between the last post and this one, I have spent all my “car time” getting the Morgan scuttle to fit a bit better (again) and then filling it so it wasn’t a complete disaster. A bit more about that inside, but here’s Reg the faithful MGB, and the XJS which was going to be a “quick sale” (and which I need to sell but have not found the time), and Goldie in her carport digs.
Just a brief note that the Morgan fired right up and sounded pretty nice actually. The one thing the darn thing hasn’t fought me on, so far. You can see I’ve painted the top frame, though I still need to dye the fabric webbing, which has sun-faded but is serviceable.
Lucas gets a bad rap, but they generally built their stuff to last fairly well…bullet connectors not withstanding. Let’s take a look at what the ignition/headlight combo and foot high beam dip switches look like, you know it will be fascinating. Or something.
Well, some of my cheesy temporary lights work, but only after chasing out a short in one of the small lamps. Sadly, it seems like some of the “original” electrical equipment is not actually operable; so far the list definitely includes the DB-10 control box for the rear lights, and possibly the combination light/ignition switch, which at best seems fairly flaky.
It was a struggle, but I finally have the scuttle in place, and while it needs a lot of work with file and filler, it’s looking OK. This entire car is going to be “OK”, I think, which is, er, OK.
The brake fix actually worked, so that’s something. Above is an exciting photo of the cylinder in the car, which now actually has “brakes” for skinny Morgan drums values of “brakes”.
The checklist for seeing if “she” starts is getting shorter: Get the scuttle on, with dash in-place, wired and plumbed; secure steering column and cross-scuttle support once the dash position is known; route choke cable; do a static coolant leak test (ie, put coolant in the system); add a fuel filter (I bought one for an MGB and forgot the MG uses a larger diameter fuel line); find and fix prodigious leak on diff; re-hang the exhaust…and once the dash is in place, turn the engine around to pump some fuel and see where that system leaks. And leak it will.
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