New life

Well its 2013 now and a lot has happened.

in 2010 i started getting upset about the slow progress on the MG, so i turned my attention back to my MR2. I entered the Toyota Sprint Series in 2011, and was planning on competing again in 2012, but we decided to move to America.

I sold the MR2 in fall 2012 and finally got my visa and moved to New Jersey just before christmas.

The MG was kept in the UK, but may have just sold to someone that i hope can have as much fun with the car as i did. i regret that we never managed to take it on any holidays, but money and time do these things to you.

I genuinely get very chocked up thinking that it has sold.I am writing this with a lump in my throat, as i was planning on shipping the car over once i had the space.... but alas, it is not to be. I am glad that it is happening away from me, as i dont think i would have sold it myself.

Running her in

The more I drive her, the better she is feeling... the steering is lightening up a lot and its actually getting good fun to drive around in. I really need to wire in the overdrive, as going over about 60 feels like I'm ragging the nuts off it.

Today I had a go at sorting out the door locks.. the passenger side problems were due to whoever fitted the mechanism back plate, not giving enough clearance for the parts to move enough. So I cut bigger holes, took the mechanism apart and cleaned it all up. The drivers side was pretty much just lack of lubrication and some over-spray on the mechanism. So that's all cleaned up, the only problem now being the lock wiggles about a bit, so it can be difficult to lock and unlock.

I tried fixing the speedometer the other day, but with no luck, it looks like its just totally off balance and all the internal springs are too slack. I cleaned it up the best I could, but now I think that there might be a problem at the gearbox end as it all wound its self up when i went into reverse, and now the drive doesn't spin.

First failure

Picture of Nelly outside the owners club.

The fan ate the radiator. its wasnt on tight or square enough... new rad and fan. no more needs to be said. not fun.

It drives pretty nice, we just need an interior.

I need to fit a new brake light switch, as the other isn't returning every time, so the lights are staying on.

Its legal

I went up to Peterborough yesterday and got the car reclassified as a Historic Vehicle and got its tax then and there. So the car is 100% road legal... that's not to say its 100% road worthy, it still only has one seat bolted down, and no interior, and you can watch the ground fly by through the battery holders under the back seat.

But i took it to the glass recycling for its first chore, and then to the petrol station to fill up the tank.

Its almost legal

Well, whilst i was away on holiday, Matt had the few remaining problems sorted and its passed its MOT... :)

I had the insurance sorted a while ago so all it needs now is TAX... obviously its Tax Exempt, but i still need a tax disc. Problem... the DVLA in their wisdom decided to not reclassify the vehicle as Historic, so i need go to the DVLA station in Peterborough to get it all sorted out... what a pain. Well at least i still need to put the other seat in etc.

MOT

Well, obviously it failed the MOT.. but the good news is that pretty much all the problems are things that I did, or can be fixed easily.

When I get back from Scotland I will post a proper list of the failure points. But Matt might see if we can get anything done whilst I'm away.

Its a shame that I could not get the car started earlier in the week so that I could have chance to work on the failure items... but that's life.

good news

Ok... well i had to give up. i bought a new condenser, points and rotor arm. but still no joy. I called the RAC who shouldn't really look at a car with no MOT or Tax. Well the guy was convinced it was the points, so we played around with them, tried to fit the new one, but it was miss-shaped, so he cleaned up the old points really well. we fitted the new condenser and rotor arm. Then the main problem was the engine being flooded, so we took the plugs out to clean and i turned the engine over a little. Then we took the caps off the dash pots, nailed the throttle and gave it a whizz. BINGO!

So basically it was a combination of contaminated points and heavily flooded engine.

I think I'm going to have to get some kind of better ignition once I have the MOT, like magnetic or optical.

So its at the MOT centre... but we are leaving for Scotland tomorrow night... so its VERY unlikely that we will be taking the MG B :( boo