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.

No click, no start: trouble-shooting starter problems.

Ford Tempo: Found On Road Dead. (F.O.R.D.)

Ian Cooper

The other day I tried to start my car. I’ve had problems with the ignition switch before.

There was no click, no crank.

Some will suggest it is not getting fuel or spark. That’s nonsense insofar as we know. The problem is that the solenoid is not kicking in, allowing current to spin the starter and engage the Bendix, cranking the motor and giving it a chance to start.

The key to saving money on car repairs is critical thinking. The first time the starter didn’t ‘click,’ I was in front of a business. There was a bit of a slope. When I let the car roll back and popped the clutch with the key in the ‘run’ position, she fired right up.

This shoots down all theories regarding fuel and spark in my opinion.

It may very well be the starter motor. A used starter motor for this car will cost $40.00 plus 13 % Harmonized Sales Tax here in Ontario.

We can still get information, and information is key here. On a previous occasion, I noticed that the dashboard cluster had gone dead. A few days later, the car wouldn’t start. I can’t remember if it clicked or not. As soon as I lifted the hood, I saw a big blue ball of corrosion on the positive battery terminal.

This time, that was the first thing I checked when I got the car safely home. I didn’t dare shut it off while doing errands, and it’s not very wise to leave the engine running when refueling at a gas station. You’re only going to get away with that so many times. The car has a little over an eighth of a tank in it.

I cleaned some corrosion off both battery connectors and post, reinstalled and there was no change. 

The solenoid did not click when the key was turned.

By this time, after driving the car a good twenty kilometres with some accessories going, the battery might be dead. It doesn’t seem very likely, as there just wasn’t that much corrosion. Driving it that far should have charged it, and there were no red lights in the dashboard to indicate otherwise.

One way to test the starter is by shorting across the terminals on the solenoid. I did this over the course of a couple of years and a couple of starter motors on my 1995 Ford Windstar. There were many occasions when 'Big Bluey,' a massive old screwdriver, started up the van and got my backside safely home after a no-start.

Ultimately, we found that the battery wires, the harness was rotten inside the rubber insulation. The solution was to get a new set of wires made up at Universal Auto Electric here in town. It cost sixty or seventy bucks. 

I took them home and installed them myself. She fired up and the problem was cured.

The small car I’m driving now might be a bit more difficult to test, but if I can get my hand in there and find the proper tool (slightly curved to go around the centre stud, properly insulated, wearing gloves, not leaning on the car with exposed flesh, etc.), testing the solenoid, trying to start it that way, is a definite must before spending money. 

The other thing is to push-start the car, drive around for a half hour or so and then bring it home. If it is indeed a dead battery, this will give you enough charge to at least get a click out of the solenoid. 

The trouble with that theory is that the car was starting, cranking slowly to be sure, but the temperatures up until quite recently were in the minus twenty and minus thirty degree Celsius mark. Unless it’s a bad cell or two, (suddenly), in my opinion it would click but not crank, or click but die quickly under cranking.

On my first vehicle, an Austin Mini, we had the engine and tranny out in order to replace the remote gear shifter assembly. On that car it was a casting bolted to the side of the (transverse) engine. There were rods inside rather than the more modern cables. With a bunch of fifteen and sixteen year-olds working on it, (none of us knew very much either), the body ground—a braided copper cable running from the engine to chassis had never been properly tightened. I replaced the starter, the battery, tried all kinds of things, and yet every so often the problem came up again. The Mini was a light car. It was pretty easy to get someone to give it a little push, and that saved me a couple of times. One day I was doing an oil change, or some kind of work under the car.

Mine was green; a rotten wire harness after ten or twelve years.

I saw the braided cable there and for whatever reason, gave it a tug. The bolted end of it swiveled and I knew it shouldn’t do that. Long story short, I tightened it up, and never had the problem again.

So far, looking on the internet, I have not been able to find where that should be on my car, or no doubt I would reach down there and give it a pull.

There is also a ‘crankshaft position sensor’ on my car. The part’s not that expensive, I saw one online for $23.00. There is a way to test it with a multi-meter.

If you do bring the car to an auto mechanic, they’ll read the trouble codes from your car’s computer and take it from there.

Because of previous problems with the ignition switch, a faulty switch is also a possibility.

The weather is getting better but working on the car in the parking lot of an apartment building isn’t that nice, and there is still melting snow out there.

I’ll fiddle around with it on the weekend and, most likely, pick up a used starter on Monday.

The car has 269,000 kilometres on it and this is the most likely culprit—but it’s not the only possible culprit. It can be frustrating to spend money and change bits that don't need changing. I've been on disability for twenty years, and these little money mistakes can be quite painful.

This information is important. One time I took a 1986 Ford Tempo to a mechanic. I told him it was overheating and like a fool suggested it might be the water pump. Two days later, I picked up the car. 

I got ten kilometres down the road. There was as strong smell of burning sugar inside the car, and there was thick blue smoke coming out the back end. The temperature gauge, which not all vehicles have, was way up into the red. It was a cold day, and this happened in a very short time.

I turned around and took it back. I think I might have even yelled at the guy, threw my keys at him and did some really stupid shit like that. I was two hundred miles from home and kind of took that one a little personal.

It turned out to be the thermostat, an eleven-buck part. I could have changed it myself in three minutes. It was frozen in the closed position. As the engine warms up, it's supposed to open and allow coolant to flow through the block.

That incident cost me more than the $362.00 in repairs that it took to get the car home. The aluminum cylinder head had overheated and that resulted in hairline cracks all around the combustion chambers, etc. A cylinder head from a wrecker’s cost $80.00, and it was labourious and time consuming to change it. The gasket kit was more like $140.00, as I recall. I broke my fourteen millimetre socket more than once and had to go and buy another one. The whole thing was a big pain in the butt. That car was in the bone-yard within six months.

Much of that was my own fault. This is why clear thinking is important when dealing with a crappy, older car, one that needs other repairs, and probably won’t be around a year from now.

It’s a question of doing some cost-benefit analysis.

Forty bucks I can handle, doing the work I can handle. Throwing hundreds of dollars at it in pure speculation is not an option.

END

Changing a starter on a 2002 Neon. Comparable with most vehicles.

A plethora of grounds on the 2002 Neon.

The starter relay and there is also a fuse. (Apparently.)



Note: the ignition switch has not been replaced. I had to whack on it exactly twice, and it's been fine ever since. Because it has not been changed out, it is still a consideration in the present circumstance. So far I haven't tried a boost, but you never know. When someone comes to give me a lift to the scrapyard, we'll give that a try.

On Atheism and Virtue.

Ian Cooper

When Atheism becomes nothing more than an attack platform, an excuse to indulge in bigotry and prejudice against those who disagree, that is when I find it the least interesting.

All you have to do is read the comment section on any story regarding atheism, evolution, creationism, or something merely Biblical, or whatever the subject is. It’s easy to find plenty of examples. There are bigots on both sides of the issue, as well as the merely immature.

I don’t care if people are stupid to believe this or that. I don’t necessarily think they are inherently evil because they think different thoughts. And I think that works both ways—I can look at an atheist from the point of view of a religionist, and guess what?

They really are godless. One might think that is the point.

We are entirely Godless, and yet we wish to discuss certain moral issues.

We would like to discuss those issues with the rest of the world, and atheism is not evolution. It is not science in schools, it is not an attack on gun rights or the right to free speech. Atheism is not communism, nor is it an attack on the nuclear family, marriage or the children and their cute little kittens.

It is a method of making systematic inquiries into questions of a moral character, one which leaves supernatural causes out of the equation.

Atheism has broken the monopoly on morality formerly held by religion.

Look. It does me no good to read an anti-Semite’s views on the Jewish religion within the context of a discussion of atheism. Even Voltaire was a bigot, albeit one who claimed to be a philosopher.

To me that is not its purpose.

The purpose of atheism is, and should be, in my opinion, a method of both learning about, and teaching morality, which might be described as inculcating positive virtues in an individual, as well as within the greater social context.

There are many virtues. Virtually all human virtues are survival traits, but that is evolution, and others prefer to express that in terms of supernatural revelation. Fur surely that is what God is, if in fact there is a God. He exists outside of all of nature. This is the realm of speculation, which is by its very nature immeasurable.

Science is a system of investigation based on the collection of evidence through observation and experiment. Without something to measure and something to measure it with, it’s not much good.

We can still assign certain values to things.

Thrift is a virtue. Industriousness is a virtue. Respecting others is a virtue. These virtues are not the exclusive province of any one religion or world view.

They are in fact common to all human beings at some level. They’re often even expressed in terms of being handed down from above, when in fact they probably arose from mutual agreement over time within the social and cultural context.

Religion is myth, legend and fancy codified into a belief system.

People can and do teach themselves to believe anything they want—literally anything.

Tolerance is a virtue. Like any skill, it must be practiced, and over time the individual gets better at it.

It’s really hard to do, isn’t it? We know that even from within our own group, the people who actually agree with us most of the time.

Human beings are not perfect creatures, and of course we all fall down from time to time—when our tolerance fails us, when our patience fails us, when we ourselves are anxious and under threat.

If nothing else, this might be useful information, as it is helpful in seeing it from the other guy’s point of view once in a while.

Toning down that rhetoric might be the first step in toning down that perceived threat, no matter which side one might choose to be on.

That’s because anger stems from fear.

Anger leads to harsh words, and from there things quickly spiral out of control.

END