Simple problems can sometimes be the worst to solve. Some of you know that
I have been trying to get my 77MGB down to DC from my parents' house in
Albany NY. I finally did last weekend. My dad, uncle and I did a full-up
body restoration in the '89 to '92 timeframe, but when I went off to grad
school and then joined the Air Force and got stationed in California, the
finishing touches never got done, and it sat under a cover for ~10 years.
So last summer after moving back to the East coast, I started putting
everything back together under the hood. My uncle is a great electrical
engineer, and he completely pulled apart the wiring harness and found ~60
cuts and instances of exposed wire under the outer harness wrap, which means
that it left the factory that way!!! He patched it all up, re-wrapped it
and put it back in the car, but he took ill before he could finish the job
(he's a WW II vet, and was older when the war started). So I was left with
a real rats nest. To make matters worse, the 77 engine and associated
goodies had been pulled out ad replaced with a '71 unit, so all the wiring
that went to the OPUS system and the ballast unit was left dangling and the
older starter didn't support a ballast resistor. So I set out to hook it
all up, convert to a pertronix ignition and wire in a diode-based ballast
coil. When I finished this nightmare, it wouldn't start. I tried
everything, and checked and rechecked my wiring. I couldn't find anything
obviously wrong. Since I needed an inspection sticker anyhow, I took it to
the family mechanic and asked him to poke around. Well, to make a long
story short, the gasoline was bad. I have a transparent fuel filter, and I
could tell that there was a little crud in there, but I didn't worry about
it. After all, isn't that what the filter is supposed to do???? Well, the
mechanic had the wisdom of the ages, took no chances and put in new fuel,
and it started on the first turn of the key!!!!
I had "wasted" all that time troubleshooting, and it never would have
occurred to me to empty the tank and put in new gas!!! It was a new tank,
so it had to be the crud in the steel fuel lines. And the gas had only been
in the tank 2 months.
It's like the joke about the retired engineer who is called in to fix a
design. He makes one pencil mark on the schematic and sends them a bill for
$50,000. His identification of the problematic part was right-on and solved
their problems, but the company was flabbergasted at the bill for $50K, so
they asked him to itemize it. The following is what he sent back to them:
Bill of Services:
one pencil mark: 50 cents.
Knowing where to put it: $49,999.50
So the car is here, and the conversion may begin!!!
James J.
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