Well, I'd been having too much fun vrooming around lately, so the Gremlins
of LBC's decided to hit me with a dose of humility. Cruisin' home from work,
about a mile from my house when I hear "CLUNK-rattle-rattle-scrape-scrape".
Pull over, look under, Ansa exhaust is dragging the road. It was held on
with repro's of the OEM hangers, which have two steel pieces bonded to each
side of a rubber rectangle, presumably to reduce vibration. The rubber and
steel have parted ways.
The reason why repro parts fail so often is that LBC's are held together
by habit, and the repro parts haven't been around long enough to have any.
No problem, since the engine swap I've been traveling with full tools in
the boot. So I reach in and grab some needlenoses and one of my trusty
British Leyland Special Tuning Competition Exhaust Hangers (see ascii line
art below), and in a minute am set to limp home for a proper fix.
Jump in the LJT and cruise down to the parts place, where of course they
have nothing but generic stuff for hanging 3" diameter exhaust. Buy a couple
anyway, Just In Case. Get home, where the exhaust has finally cooled enough
to touch. Look at generic hangers, look at 1.5" LEP (little exhaust pipe),
decide this stuff isn't going on there. Get bright idea: Crazy Glue, holds
a ton, lets try it. An hour later repro hangers are repaired and exhaust
is rehung. Don't know how long it'll survive the vibration, but it got me
in to work today.
On the agenda for July 4th weekend: tour local boneyards looking for a
1275 Midget with a 10 row oil cooler I can use. Gerry (Gerry Brinkman?
11:1 compression; must be) clued me that this is what he has. And since
the body never changed after that, the mounting holes are there and it fits
perfectly.
A couple of guys I wrenched with when I was a teenager now run their Dad's
boneyard, which has a dozen Midgets and MGBs sitting around in various
states of decay. Will try to remember to write down VINs in case anyone
in NE needs obscure parts (or a pre-68 VIN plate to transplant your donor
car to).
timd@ptltd.com (Tim Dziechowski - Phoenix Technologies - Cambridge, Mass)
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British Leyland Special Tuning Competition Exhaust Hanger
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