Cheap and Simple M.G.B. Modifications for Speed & Handling.

Mine was yellow, a bit more faded than this one.

Ian Cooper

When I bought a 1971 MGB roadster in about 1978, I was an eighteen year old kid. Lots of guys liked sports cars back then. There were a lot more of them, and even as fourteen and fifteen year-old kids, naturally we dreamed of the day we would turn 16 and get our beginner’s license.

Over the course of the seven or eight years I drove the car, I blew the engine, burned out a clutch, scored brake rotors when the brake pads wore down to the metal and I was a hundred and forty miles from home. I had all sorts of adventures in that car.

The car was modified to some degree by the time I was done with it.

The original motor had an air pump for pollution control. On someone’s suggestion, a guy with an M.G.B. G.T., I removed the air pump, the separate pulley belt for it and then used five-eighths national coarse pipe plugs to fill the holes in the head.

Purists hate to see you do that sort of thing. I wanted to race. It was my big dream in life. I read Road & Track, Rob Walker’s F-1 coverage and all the road tests—we read tests of cars we could never hope to own, but guys of a certain age drool over a red Countach.

By the time I was done, the car had an aluminum hood. Once you’ve taken the motor out once or twice, you quickly realize that the sealed and bonded ends of the oil cooler hoses are a pain in the butt because the hoses go through flared or rubber-ringed holes in the radiator cross-piece. You had to take it out sometimes In the M.G. it's easily removable with a few bolts. The solution to this was to cut the metal part of the pipes, and then substitute Aeroquip hoses. The oil pressure in that car was good, fifty to seventy pounds per square inch depending on engine speed. Not knowing all that much about such things, I used double hose clamps. I used a fairly big clamp which meant that it had a fairly big screw to tighten it. I could use a fairly big screwdriver to tighten it properly.

Another modification happened by accident. I was in Delhi, working at the News-Record, and the car had charging problems. The alternator was shot. I needed it for work, M.G. parts were expensive. A guy at the Canadian Tire store in Delhi suggested changing it for a Chrysler alternator. I thought he was nuts until he took me out in the parking lot and showed me how he had done it to his red Triumph Spitfire. It took a piece of flat-bar, a couple of holes, used the same belt, and now produced seventy amps where the little M.G. unit would do thirty-five.

On that car I put Hooker tube headers. I had a Supersprint free-flow exhaust. When you look at the ads in magazines, (online nowadays), they make claims. Guaranteed increase in horsepower, anything from ten to thirty-five percent. It’s probably best to assume lower numbers. You’ll talk about it and your friends will try and shoot you down. It’s best not to make extravagant claims. The combination sounded good and the engine probably did rev higher and produce more power. The engine blew one day at over a hundred miles an hour, and that’s how I ended up with an engine from a 1968 M.G.B. that I pulled out of a back yard on Pine Street and we towed home on the end of a rope.

What I did next, before sticking that old motor in my car, was to pay a guy just down off Vidal Street to rebuild the block properly. Then I did a little porting and polishing on the cylinder head.

I had never done it before and I’ve never done it since. I didn’t go too insane. Going mad in there will create thin spots. Coolant flows through the heads and uneven thicknesses in port walls leads to uneven cooling and heating cycles. This will result in hairline fracture and eventual failure. I just tried to match up the profiles where the exhaust ports met the manifold. I smoothed it up, not to a mirror-like shine, but matte. I did a similar process on the intakes, which were round—the exhaust ports were little rectangular holes inside the larger round tube of the header.

When doing the cylinder head, we milled her down about 0.030”, something rational like that. That was three passes of ten thou each.

I took the heavy and boxy old M.G. air cleaners off and made my own. There are small, flat but cylindrical filter elements. I took two round plates of sixteenth hard aluminum. The outer plate needs a couple of holes for the bolts, and the inner plate had the hole to match the carb plus the same two holes for bolts.

The other thing with the M.G. or any small car is weight. On a roadster, the roof comes right off along with a little folding frame-work—the stays. You can leave that at home. The bumpers were easy to remove. That saved some weight. The air pump weighed a few pounds. When the rug was shot, I took it out. A rotten old rug weighed something. I switched from two six-volt batteries to one twelve-volt. I got rid of the original three-blade wipers and used a two-blade system from the ’68. 

The triple wiper system was in response to improved safety regulations of the era, something to do with having ‘a minimum of 100 square inches of swept area’ or whatever it was back then.

The M.G. was a fun car for a young guy. You could look up under the dashboard and find the four bolts. You could remove the windshield. I took the front fenders off. I propped her up on an angle of forty-five degrees once to do some work to the chassis, which had some rot when I got it.

I took the engine and transmission out, changed the clutch plate and then put it back in the car again. I was alone, just me, a set of chain-falls and the car.

Throw in a little bit of aggression, and that was a pretty quick little car for its time, its place, and its budget.

END

Note. By removing ten percent of the weight of a car, you get ten percent more power for free. It will accelerate ten percent faster, go ten percent faster, and use ten percent less fuel. Not only that, but the tires have to pull ten percent less vehicle through a turn, as well as under braking. Also, by extension, the spings are now ten percent harder (relatively speaking) and the shocks ten percent more capable of damping out major wheel movements. Braking distance will be reduced by ten percent. This is not an extravagant claim but the result of simple physics.

A Dream of Racing.

Kammann. (Wiki.)

by Ian Cooper

Racing has always fascinated me. I was going around all the used car lots, pressing my nose to a lot of glass and checking out a lot of sheet metal, and I was barely fourteen or fifteen. Back then there were some cool cars in town. One of the local shop teachers used to park a silver Jaguar XKE, the V-12 coupe version, right beside the school and I always took a good look at it going by.

There were a few cars hidden away in barns and garages that I never knew about, but I knew where every cool car in town sort of lived or parked. My first car cost $50.00, a 1969 Austin Mini that I yanked out of a back lot on the end of a rope, my old man towing it home in his old Volvo. By the time we were done, I’d gone through three Minis. My old man drove about four Volvos over thirty years, ending a couple of years before he passed on. We had to take his driver’s license away from him because he just wasn’t safe any more.

Racing is serious business, where high technology and research drives names and brands into the winner’s circle. Driving is one of the few things I ever thought I did well. In this Toyota Le Mans video, there are no straw-chewing cowboys. These are scientists and yes, they hope to sell cars based on their racing success. 

But even just being there brings its own prestige.

There is a moment when the car becomes a part of you and you a part of it, and you are no longer man and machine, but one with the machine. It becomes an extension of your body. By having hands on the wheel, feet on the pedals, your ass strapped in tight, you have extended your perceptions.

You hardly need to look at the instruments. You don’t really need to look at the speedometer at the end of the straight because you can feel it and hear it and see it and even taste and smell it. It's scary as shit if you do look at the speedometer. Death is inches away and you know that very well. It rumbles through your guts and  tugs on your inner ears when you pull gee forces in a banked turn, go over the top of a sharp rise or slam down into a valley and then begin pulling out, like an airplane in a swoop and dive attack. The only thing that matters is the road ahead and what lies beyond.

You know exactly how fast you can accelerate, because you are doing it. There is a kind of intensity in that moment that other athletes will recognize by the description.

It is a kind of focus, a Zen-like moment when nothing else matters.

It is doing your own thing in the ultimate sense of the word. Hell, I know it’s an old piss-pot, and I know some half-decent guy in a car that is only slightly better could and should be able to go through the turn or corner faster than I just did. That’s not the point. Maybe the point is that it’s the only such exercise that I get, the only real physical adventure that I can sort of afford or allow myself.

It is the pursuit of something intangible. The adrenalin probably doesn’t hurt either. It is the feeling of having risked something, and getting away with it. Maybe that’s it, but I think it is addictive too.

It’s strange, I even feel the same way when I’m riding my bicycle and thing are going well—not too much pain and the breathing is good and I feel good and it is a machine after all. I’m just the one making the power, another level of management I suppose. You have to manage your mind and your body or it isn’t going to work. There are parallels with other aspects of life.

In every act there is meaning. I really believe that.

I don’t even know where the dream started, possibly because of my buddy Bob with his motocross racing magazines—he was into motocross pretty strong there for a while. He, at least, actually went out and did something about it, but then he got married and the kids started popping out. I guess he did the right thing. 

He was no longer a spoiled young guy with a bit too much money but a father now, and so he had to quit.

That is the way of all dreams, isn’t it? Reality sets in at some point. Even I had to grow up at some point. 

No, it’s true. I settled for something less—people often do.

When I was a young lad I wanted so badly to go to this Jim Russell racing school. Back then it was only $1,400.00, but now it’s more like $4,300.00 for the introductory three-day course. The cars have a six-foot four height limit, so that kind of lets me off the hook! But honestly, I’d have to be nuts to even dream of it. At my age, maybe someday…I might do it as some kind of a bucket list thing. The trouble is that I would probably still want to go fast and win. Everyone has an ego, don’t they? And it would probably just cause friction with the younger and more professional aspirants. The real winners usually started pretty young.

Those opportunities come to so few...

Man, would them young people ever like to beat me! (‘Cause if you can’t, you’re pretty lame, right?)

Enough said, ladies and gentlemen.

What I would like is a free photo from inside the car, (almost any car) doing about a hundred and eighty miles an hour, Mulsanne Straight, Le Mans, with a couple of cars ahead in the picture. Road and Track used to have some good pictures and articles and I subscribed to the magazine for a few years there.

All I could find is the night lap in the Audi with telemetry on Youtube.

Here’s an extensive article on Le Mans from Speedhunters.

END

Night Cruise.

1974 Triumph Spitfire.

The Rainmaster had a little scoot around town and local environs tonight. Oh, I don’t take it all that seriously.

I’ve always enjoyed driving at night. 

Some of my fondest memories are of very long rides. My friends Geoff, and Doug, and I went to Mosport back in about 1977 or so in Geoff’s Datsun 610 sedan with aluminum Cragar slot rims and 60-series tires. (The 1600-cc engine, totally stock.) 

We watched a Formula One race. We camped on the ground, and I had never been up that way before. My impression of was of lots of sandy hills, winding back roads and forest. Lots and lots of forest. We drove all night to get here. We talked all the way, and of course there was the whole notion of racing, rallying, being a professional race driver and all the things young guys dream about. Tall as I am, I sat in the passenger side and Doug was in the back.

That was a good race, and you can read about it here. At that time, Walter Wolf Racing was a Canadian team, and doing well in the championship, with a top driver, Jody Schechter at the wheel. Gilles Villeneuve was in that race. I won’t say I was pissed off or anything, but I was probably there to see Niki Lauda, whom I absolutely adored in a manly sort of a way—one driver to another.

I took all that shit very seriously, and drove accordingly, and I had the speeding tickets to prove it after a while. Then again, I learned how to drive at a hundred miles an hour on gravel and you never know when that might come in handy.

You sort of learn how to drive without using your brake lights, and quickly turn off before the red lights get you—a little heel-and-toeing there ladies and gentlemen, let the compression stop you down, and maybe a little bit of handbrake just at the last minute.

***

This time of year it gets pretty dark by about six o’clock, and I went out for a cruise. I’ve lived around here for a long time, and if I go through a certain set of streets, a nice set of turns in any given neighbourhood, after a while a kind of rhythm sets up. I’ve done it all before, having practiced those turns many times, and often going a lot faster.

It’s like a weird sort of mechanized dance, as I clutch, shift, brake, add power, clutch, shift, accelerate, hold it…brake and let off on the gas. I know all my marks. When I straighten the wheel, the car comes out in a certain place, with no further inputs. It’s as straight as a die, looking forward to my next set of braking points, (and I’ll often touch the brake and let off, touch and let off as I burn off momentum after winding her out,) and here comes the next turning in point, the next apex, and so on.

It’s kind of soothing, with the radio on low in the background. This time of year the sensation of speed is sometimes magnified by leaves falling into the headlights’ glare, especially on narrow roads with a long fence, guardrails, brush and trees close to the road. Bits of fog low over the road are great.

The yellow lines start to go by increasingly fast and the low burble of the exhaust note builds. It’s even better in a low-slung roadster with the top down, in dry weather at least. I haven’t done that in a while. Maybe someday, and just for the record that car in the picture isn’t mine.

I’m shifting around 3,500, up to 4,500 maybe. Honestly, I’m short shifting, and not stomping the pedal right to the mat. I have some sense, especially at night, in rain and mist, overcast skies, no streetlights, no lines on some roads. Leaves and gravel all over the place. You never know when a deer will jump out in front of you or a car with no headlights will come out of some driveway. You've really got to watch the puddles, they'll grab your wheels and throw you off on one side pretty quickly when the wheel spins up...

Shit happens. No doubt about that. You definitely want to be paying attention.

I suppose I’ve spent some of the loneliest nights of my life in a car, coming back from someplace or other. 

There are times when I don’t want to come home, just stay in my car and keep driving.

You have to go home at some point.

The whole feel of the town is different at night. All people are strangers after you get a half a block from home. It’s been years since I saw a buddy’s car and recognized it by what kind of a car it was.

On balance, I’ve spent some pretty good nights, and some pretty good days in a car.

A little more power would be nice, some driving lamps maybe, but four half-decent cylinders and a good gearbox are all I really need.

Brakes and tires are important too.

END

Here's Led Zeppelin: Ten Years Gone.