This is a rant I posted to the ng alt.peeves, complaining
about how I never seem to know just how good "good enough"
is. I tend to go a little bit overboard on projects,
especilly those involving LBCs. I posted it last
Sunday night. As I feared, apart from spending money,
I didn't get any work done on the B over the week.
So, rather than going dancing in Portland all weekend, I'm
going to stay home and try to get her at least to the
point of firing up the motor...
When you are building a race car "good enough" is fairly
easy to figure out. It is as good as you can get until you
hit the limit of the rules, your budget, time or physics.
When working on a transporation appliance, good enough is
usually pretty close to factory stock. The project that I'm
working on is somewhere between the two and it is incredibly
peevesome to have to keep reining in the perfectionist in me
who wants to build the ultimate MGB-GT and merely do a job
that is good enough.
"But", you may ask, "why not build the ultimate MGB-GT?".
To do the job, as I would like I estimate would cost about
$10-15,000. This would give me a car that is both street
and race legal (race legal, not competitive mind you, or
at least nearly race legal), nice body work, nice interior,
reliable and fun to drive. Of course my estimate of
$10-15,000 means that it would really probably cost between
$15,000 and $20,000. Since this would effectively be a new
car, compared to the sports cars on the market today, it
would not be a bad deal. There are a couple of reasons not
to do the job the way that I'd like.
The first reason is the Jaguar E-type coupe that some
friends recently bought. By the time I was done building
the ultimate MGB, I could build a pretty darn nice E-type.
Most of the cost is not in the base hardware, but in the
labor and the Trick Racing Shit to make the car fast, safe
and reliable. Mind you, even the best job I could do on
the MG and keep it remotely recognizable as an MG, it would
not be nearly as fast as an E-type. That inline six has a
torque curve as long as the jaguar's bonnet, and any motor
that would do that for the B would make it as nose heavy as
Jimmy Durante.
There is an even more immediate reason for not doing an
ultimate restoration on the B. I don't have the money.
I do, however, have enough money to put the motor back together,
fix the things that went wrong while the car has been a
driveway queen, and get the car back on the road. So, faced
with the choice of driving a slightly ratty, though better
than it used to be, MG, or watching the future ultimate MGB to
be rust in my driveway, I decided that I want to drive it. Now.
This is a project that has already engendered enough peeves
for a small fleet of cars. My roll cage welder lost his lease
three days before he was going to start work on my cage, and
it was several months before he was settled in his new place
and ready to start. We had to compromise the strength and safety
of the roll cage to meet the SCCA rules. When I went to get
a logbook for the cage, I ran afoul of a rule that was not
actually in the rule book, and the stink I raised over this
issue actually got the rulebook changed the next year. My
trailer was stolen. My wife left me and took the van that I'd
use to tow the car, if I had a trailer. Once things settled
down enough that I could actually get back to work on the
car, every time I was about to start work on it again, the
company I worked for would go out of business, or I'd leave
the country for several months or some other similar crisis
would arrive.
It is now about three years since that day at Thunder Hill
when my engine made the expensive noise of #3 piston transforming
itself into a collection of pieces of abstract art in the bottom
of my oil pan, and I'm almost ready to actually put the engine
back together again. My first, ludicrously optimistic plan was
to buy the parts that I was missing on Friday the second of July
and by the end of the long weekend I'd have the car back on the
road. Once I have all the parts laid out in front of me, it's
a matter of about a days work to reassemble them into an engine.
There was the matter of a place to work. My garage was not in
engine assembly mode. Tools were scattered hither and yon.
There were boxes of parts left over from swapping engines in
my Rx-7. In short the place was a mess. Then there was the
room underneath the garage. All my parts were down there, in
various boxes, on various shelves, under piles of other parts.
Cleaning up both rooms so that not only could I assemble my engine,
but find the parts that I needed to do so, was not a trivial task.
First I had to take all the boxes and bags filled with my ex-wife's
shit and pitch them into the back of the shed (easier than hauling
them away), then I had to go through my boxes of MGB parts, Mazda
Parts, Dodge Van parts, spridget parts, honda wagon parts, motorcycle
parts, bicycle parts and the odd bit of random stuff that just
got stashed down there for the sake of expediance.
Then, when I went to push the MG from the corner of the driveway I
had been storing it, I found that the brakeshoes had decided to
make a long term commitement to the brake drum. Unfortunately,
the hydraulic systems and the brake fluid also decided to have
a divorce, and I found myself needing to replace or rebuild my
entire hydraulic system, in addition to my engine. Then there
were the small jobs that somehow grew all out of proportion. It
should have only taken about 15 minutes to set up a decent radio
in the garage so that I could listen to KPIG while I worked. The
reception was frustratingly close to good, except when I'd walk
around in the garage and affect the refraction path of the
electromagnetic radiation representing Robet Earl Keen's voice.
Several hours and about twice as many dollars as I'd meant to spend,
I had an FM antenna set up, and very good reception.
Which brings us back to the peeve of "good enough". For years,
I've worked on cars listening to a crummy little K-mart radio that
was given to me about 25 years ago. That was no longer quite good
enough (age does take it's toll you know), and I could not be
content with merely as good, or even better than it had been. I had
to make it "right". This whole project has been filled with little
incidents like that. A little rust on the outside of the block does
not affect the performance or reliability, yet I spent hours cleaning
it up and painting it, although I did not take it someplace to get it
painted with automotive enamel, but contented myself with rattlecan
engine paint. I was not content with the "stock" oil pump, but had
to track down the directions for converting it into a high flow oil
pump.
It is getting close. The garage has been cleaned sufficient for
assmebling the motor. All the parts are sitting there in their
nitrided and balanced glory. I've replaced the shoes and cylinders
for the rear brakes so the car can now roll around on it's wheels.
And I have to go to work tomorrow.
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