Last Friday, I'd never pulled an engine.
This Monday, I've pulled two.
As many of you have heard, we've been planning to put my
E Production MGB roadster together to take the Capri Club
school on December 2 at Sears Point. That project took a
huge step forward this weekend, when with the help of
Andy Banta, Sam Sjogren, Larry Colen, Akkana Peck, and
my wife Kim, we got -- well, too much done to list in a
short phrase or two.
Recalling from our last adventure, my EP car was purchased
as a roller -- meaning chassis and suspension with no drive
train parts. I've tentatively located a good school/first
season race motor (enough power to scare me but not so much
that I'll have to buy a new one for a couple of months), but
while I wait for the cash to build up, Andy Banta offered to
let me use his race motor for the Capri Club school.
Saturday morning, Andy arrived at my house and we began
disconnecting the parts car's engine and transmission. It
turns out that at the enduro on the 11th, the synchros in
second gear went away (hmmm, maybe from using detergent oil?)
so we needed the transmission from my parts car to fill up
the space between the clutch and the driveshaft. Andy kept
up a colorful stream of invective at the condition of my
parts car while I worked to get the front brakes off the
race car; he finally got hung up on one of the forward U-joint
bolts about the time that Larry arrived on his motorcycle.
Andy and I had some shopping to do, so we left Larry to start
detaching the engine while we went out to spend next month's
rent on tools and supplies. By the time we returned, Larry
had managed to get everything but the heater control cable
off the car. After breaking a pair of cheap wire cutters
trying to remove that cable, I settled for doing things the
right way and unbolted it from the heater valve. The engine
was now held in only by gravity, inertia, and some 80 pounds
of grease.
We hooked the come-along over the big ceiling beam (after finding
out that the convenient beam was buckling in a frightening way
when we tried to lift the engine) and, using my tow car -- a
1977 Pontiac Catalina station wagon -- as the motive power, pushed
the parts B back and forth to get the engine free. Eventually,
after what was probably not more than an hour, we got the motor
and transmission detached and removed, and lowered it to the
garage floor. Andy got to try out his new metal-cutting band saw
on the one sticky bolt in the U joint; the band saw vied with
Larry's Wonderful Tool, an electric ratchet made by Skil, as the
Best Technological Innovation of the 20th Century. (And yes,
there was much talk about Larry's tool being 3/8" drive and
9/16" deep. To understand team Fizzball, imagine a group of
14-year-olds with really big allowances and no one to tell them
not to get their fingers stuck in the belt sander. Or given the
rest of Fizzball's antics, it might be another extremity that
gets stuck in the belt sander.)
The real winner of the Niftiest Tool award for the weekend,
as far as I'm concerned, was the cherry picker (engine hoist)
at Andy's house. It still took time to disconnect all the
engine stuff (though we had learned to remove the starter
before pulling the engine; it cost us close to half an hour
to remove the starter from the parts B, because it was in a
harder-than-usual position to get to due to the engine being
hung up on it at the passenger's footbox), but the actual
engine removal took a little over ten minutes -- but that's
getting ahead of myself.
Sunday morning I got to Andy's house with my race car on the
back of my tow car -- the first drive for that combination,
and it works really well (except for the tow car's loose
suspension piece, as yet unidentified, that causes it to
oscillate on right-hand turns). The power brakes on the big
Pontiac slow the package down somewhat better than the brakes
on Andy's pickup truck, and of course the ride is superb.
The full-size station wagon with towing equipment is probably
the best kind of car that GM makes, and even at 94,000 miles
it's still comfortable, quiet, and smooth. Now, if I had
the Quadrajet (with its fist-sized secondaries) off of Audrey,
I'd have some passing power. The 350 in the Pontiac (which
looks an awful lot like a Chevy 350 that's had the orange
paint taken off and blue paint put on in its place) has a
single 2-barrel carburetor, and when you do a forced kickdown
it really suffers from the breathing impairment at the top end.
Hello, Holley customer support?
Andy and I installed his mostly-rebuilt SUs on his new acquisition,
the '67 MGB-GT Special Edition. Since the new carbs didn't
have the 1/8" of play in the throttle shafts that the old ones
did, we anticipated improved drivability. I turned the adjusting
nuts too rich just to start the car, then set about dialing the
fuel mixture as the engine warmed up. Inside 20 minutes or so
the idle was smooth and perfect at about 900 RPM (the book says
500 RPM but I've never known an MGB that would idle comfortably
much below a grand), throttle response was sharp, and the rough,
spalshy, hunting exhaust note at tickover that we'd lived with
before had become a smooth, throaty purr that turned into a sharp
acceleration during the road test.
We rolled my black race car into Andy's garage and, after appropriate
documentation courtesy of the Polaroid camera, we set about removing
the engine from Andy's race car. As I said, the cherry picker made
short work of that task compared to wrestling it out with the come-
along. We cleaned most of the crud off my parts-car's transmission,
noting the major leak at the rear seal, and slid it into place on the
back of Andy's race motor.
That was as far as we had time for that trip; I still had to get my
trailer home and detached from the station wagon so that I could drive
it to work and park it in my underground parking, so we cleaned up
the garage, put Andy's cars back in a reasonable configuration,
and made a list of things I still need to get before the car will
run (wiring, clutch slave off parts car, brake calipers to rebuild,
etc.)
Anyone who wants to be part of this game (you know who you are) --
don't feel slighted because we didn't invite you this weekend.
Thanks to Sam, Larry, and Akkana, we had enough hands to do the
job (and frankly would have been shy on floor space if we'd had
more feet to go with additional hands).
Applications, however, are gratefully being accepted for the
Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving. We should have the wires
installed by then, and most likely it will be motor and rear end
installation and -- if we're lucky -- the first road test of the
car. Yes, we're only a few days from that point now. (And if
you think I'll let a little point like illegality for the street
keep me from test-driving this car at the earliest opportunity,
you don't know me vewy well...)
The next time it goes on the trailer, I'll DRIVE it on!
--Scott "But officer, it had headlights when I left home" Fisher
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