Well, I have my Wonderful Car now. Two of them, in fact.
For those just joining us, sometime about a year ago I waxed my
eloquence (using finest carnauba, no less) over the prospect of
getting a Wonderful Car. I expressed a number of criteria that
this car should have, with heritage, looks, character, handling,
and performance (in roughly that order) being the first five out of
a list that changed depending on what interesting candidate I
was looking at at the moment.
Odd that heritage should come first, you may think, but not so.
I'd owned several high-performance cars in the past, from high-tech
to hot-rod; I never owned our SVO Mustang and the '63 Falcon
Sprint at the same time, so I never got to see how much faster one
was than the other (at least off the line; there was no question which
would be faster over a stretch of road that included more than one
corner). Fast is fun, but it's not everything; I learned this when test-
driving an all-wheel-drive turbo Japanese-American coupe several
months ago, one rated at 6.something from 0-60, yet which was less
entertaining to drive -- less engaging of the emotions, the senses,
the soul -- than our '63 Volvo 122S. I prefer cars that respond to
the steering wheel within, oh, ten seconds of the input would be nice.
But heritage, now. To me, there has always seemed something
alluring, something tangible and measurable, about cars that had
won one of the world's Great Races. Any F1 race qualified, as did
the 24 Heures du Mans. Yet I'd owned those two Fords, and they
somehow didn't touch that part of my spirit. A Cobra would, as
would a GT40, but I didn't have the good fortune to pick up a Snake
when they were just old British sports cars (well, that and at 11 years
old in 1967, my allowance was stretched to provide the plastic 1/24-
scale 289 that I assembled that year.) No, there's some substantive
difference between M.G.s and TRs -- as much as I love them -- and
cars such as Lotus, ALFA Romeo, Ferrari, Mercedes (pre-1955, at
any rate), Maserati, Bugatti, Bentley, and Jaguar.
I test drove several new and not-so-new sports and sporty cars. Got
to drive a TVR Grantura Mk III, and I could be seduced by TVRs at
some time in the future; they certainly have the handling, and if you
like the odd looks, they're quite handsome in a way that's simultaneously
lithe and brutish. I went for several drives -- top up and later top down --
in Chris Kantarjiev's 1967 TR4A, and I have to say that the differences
between TRs and M.G.s are insignificant compared to the joys that both
provide, in such similar ways. Clearly, for me, as I once wrote to this
list -- though both from and to different addresses, many years ago --
"sports car" is the second half of a single word, the first half of which
is "British." The rattles, the way the body flexes but the tires stick,
the way the steering feels, the way the car takes a set in a corner in
direct defiance of what most people think of as common sense -- it's
the same, or so close to the same that the differences evaporate.
And then I drove a small Italian coupe, one with an impeccable pedigree.
How impeccable? Part of the badge reflects the marque's first Grand Prix
championship, in 1925. Fangio won his first World Championship in one
of these cars. In fact, I believe the first Grand Prix race to use the
postwar
Formula One regulations was won by Alberto Ascari in one of these cars.
It is, of course, an ALFA Romeo -- for me, a 1967 Giulia GT 1300 Junior.
Twin Weber carbs, dual overhead cams, and an exhaust note that is
sweeter than Hrothgar's mead give it technical interest; a solid, rattle-free
coupe body with a small back seat make it a usable car for our family as
well as a link to Nuvolari's victory over the assembled might of the Third
Reich at the one ruling 'Ring, the Dragon, in the waning years before the
second World War. (And yes, of course I think of that every time I wail
past a Mercedes at an on-ramp. Half the motor, but twice the car...)
And in the interim, what was my MGB doing? It was undergoing a
transformation. I had located a 1964 MGB for restoration, which was
little more than a pile of parts loosely held together by iron oxide and
barn-spider nests by the time I stepped in. But the title was clean,
and there was just enough to start with -- if I used most of my solid
1971 MGB as the donor. Well, we'd see what we could do.
My '71 B had lost a valve last autumn; Chris and I took the head off
and found that the shop had installed the old-fashioned long-collet
valves but used short-collet keepers, and one of the keepers had
collapsed. So I decided not to compromise. The head came back
from the Dimebank Garage looking like something out of a magazine
advertisement (and costing more!): Rimflo valves in all eight spots.
Exhaust-valve bosses ground away to improve flow. Combustion
chambers polished, valve pockets relieved to increase flow. Ports
cleaned up -- not really polished or enlarged much, just the rough
surface removed. Valve guides bullet-nosed (tapered as they come
down from the roof of the port) and the intakes sealed with Teflon
rings. New rocker shaft and new bushings in the stock rockers (I
had to give myself something to improve later if I get more power-
hungry!). I had already reshaped the exhaust ports slightly, raising
the roof to give the gases a straighter shot out, and I had done the
Vizard trick of putting a step between the manifolds to impede
reverse flow, though the Rimflo valves would do more for that.
We installed this on the block out of my race car, an 18V with
the valve relief cutouts in the deck already. I'd installed new pistons
a year ago, and the rings had seated perfectly by now -- NO oil
consumption whatsoever in over 2000 miles. The Piper Blueprint
285 cam had been lumpy at idle, but sounded great, like the
paddock at Sears Point -- or Watkins Glen, for those of you from
the other coast. New bearings, a new oil pump, and fresh parts
from the race rebuild gave it perfect oil pressure, and with the new
rocker shaft and bushings the gauge doesn't fluctuate at all now.
I still had my cutting-out problem at high speeds in top gear. It
was as though the car was running out of gas over 4000 RPM; we
reasoned that it was the fuel pump, so Chris and I were going to
tune the pump to make it provide more gas. I was getting ready to
go to his house, and made a short trip to the store to get some
provisions for the weekend.
Then a miracle happened.
The car wouldn't start. The smell of gasoline from under the bonnet led
me to believe it was flooding; indeed it was, but on the right-hand side
of the motor. (Those of you with Triumphs will say "so what?", but on
MGBs the carbs are on the left-hand side.)
The way I'd used the tub of the '71 in the '64's restoration meant carrying
over the evaporative loss tubing from gas tank and carbs to the filter unit.
Raw gas was dumping out the vent hole at the bottom of the adsorption
canister. Oh, joy. I pulled the vent tube coming from the carbs, ran the
fuel pump, and sure enough gas dumped out of that vent and not out
of the canister. I took the float bowl covers off the SUs, fiddled with the
valves a bit, put them back on -- and the gas still flowed like Guiness
at a bartender's wake.
There was only one choice: Install the 45.
Some time before, I'd purchased a 45DCOE from the Fat Chance Garage,
having given my engine's specifications to MJB. He set it up with what
he figured would be ballpark jets for my motor's power and airflow, and
delivered it here on a trip to the Bay Area earlier this year. It had sat in
my garage waiting for some future date, when I had planned to turn the
MGB into a vintage race car.
It was the work of less than an hour to pull the HS4s and install the 45.
The hardest part was cutting the stock hard-line for the SUs, which had
the intakes on the front carb, so that the flex hose I had could fit the
barbed fitting at the rear of the single DCOE. I attached the fuel filter
as well, having learned that Webers are touchy about crud in the jets.
Thank goodness for the air tank, I was able to blow the line clean of
swarf from the hacksaw and later grit from the Dremel when I cleaned
up the jagged edges of the cut (AFTER blowing away the gas and the
Brakleen so that any stray sparks from the grinding wouldn't turn any
residual gas into an Anglo-Roman candle).
Kim took time from her garage-sale duties (we were preparing to move)
to help me get the throttle travel adjusted properly, so that with my foot
all the way to the floor the carbs would be all the way open. A little
more work got me a quick-and-dirty throttle return spring, not quite
right but at least a little more effective than the single spring on the
throttle body. I let the fuel pump tick to fill the bowl -- whoops, a small
leak at the banjo. A little Permatex solved that. Tickticktick... tick...
tick... It's full again, no leaks. I pumped the pedal four times to prime
the intake tract, turned over the key, and started the car...
IT IDLED AT ABOUT 2500 RPM, WHICH MADE IT PRETTY LOUD. I
started with the two idle screws, realized they were the idle jets and not
the
idle stop, then dialed the idle back down to about 1100 -- where it wanted
to run smoothly with the cam. Then it was road-test time.
I returned from a quick blast around the block to see Kim waiting for me.
"Do you need any more help?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. "I want you to get in the Z, drive down to a stoplight with
me, and when the light turns green, stand on the gas. I want to know
how much faster the M.G. is than the Datsun."
"I figured from the grin on your face that it worked," she said.
So I've really got the best of all possible worlds, now. The M.G. is a
British
sports car but with an Italian carburetor and exhaust (the ANSA setup
sounds even better with the Weber feeding it). The internal engine mods
have made it incredibly responsive; the book (the Abingdon Special Tuning
guide) says I should be putting out about 130 bhp with this setup, though
I have less compression and more cam/valves than the factory's Stage 6,
roughly what I've got (I don't have the neat carburetor support stays that
they show in the book, but I'm still using the factory exhaust manifold).
It's a GREAT vintage race motor; throttle response is instant, and the
motor pulls strongly through 6000 RPM in top gear and 6500 in the
indirects. (With my tires, 6000 RPM in 4th works out to only 102 mph;
I'm still running the 22.5" high A008RS 185-60s. With taller tires or
taller gearing, I can well imagine turning 130 mph down the Hunaudieres
as the works cars did 30 years ago.)
Power off the turns is exquisite. It highlights the weaknesses in my shocks
and brakes; the car is SO responsive on and off the throttle that the
pitching
can unsettle it slightly in a turn. There's so much on tap now that you
really
want to use the wheel to scrub speed in a corner; lifting makes the whole
car wobble more than is comfortable now. And I think I want to go through
the whole braking system this summer, before I take it out on track; if
nothing
else, losing the fear of having the system need pumping up will save me a
couple of seconds at the ends of the long straights at Sears, for instance.
Yet it's still an M.G., and that means Safety Fast. Going into a turn too
hot (which is now MUCH easier to do) still means coming out too slowly
rather than backwards; and when you get it really right -- when you have
enough speed going into a corner and you pick the right line through it
and you hammer the gas coming out, the car hooks up and tries to squeeze
you out through the gap between the door and the body and the G-forces
try to pull your head over onto your shoulder and the engine sings
like the last movement of the Fifth Symphony, and then it's time to shift,
and the seat thumps you in the back no matter how fast you were going
already and you fly through the trees, over the grey tarmac and up to the
next braking zone. And you get to do it again. And again.
Maybe the best way to characterize my two Wonderful Cars is in terms
of classic screen heroes. The ALFA is poised, graceful, fluid; merging
onto the freeway the other day, at a good clip above the traffic, I slipped
seamlessly across four lanes into the #1 without ruffling the feathers
of my passengers or unsettling the suspension. I could hear music and
a voice singing: "Heaven... I'm in heaven... and my heart's so full that I
can hardly speak." Of course -- the ALFA is like Fred Astaire at his
best: small, graceful, elegant, yet spirited, completely perfect in
execution.
Never puts a foot wrong, even in a pirouette (and yes, I *have* had that
experience already...)
Later, I came off a high-speed interchange in the MGB, saw an opening,
and thought about moving for it -- only to find myself *there*, where my
eyes had looked. The car leapt to it, the tires thrusting me there and
catching me on arrival, not merely with authority but as though it were
the direct, physical result of an act of sheer will. And again, I heard
voices: Basil Rathbone (the traffic), sword poised, sneering "Do you
know any prayers, my friend?" And Errol Flynn, on his back at bay,
suddenly springing to life and engaging Rathbone's blade: "I'll say one
for *you*!"
A 1964 MGB, in full factory Stage 6 Le Mans trim, is indeed a Wonderful
Car, in every possible sense of the word.
--Scott "God for Harry! England and St. George!" Fisher
|