"Listen to your car" my dad used to say, "and it will tell you what
is wrong with it". It took many years to learn that what he really
meant was to pay attention with all of your senses and try and
translate the information supplied to quicken the diagnosis time.
Yesterday my '66 MGB was giving me a lesson in vibration frequencies.
Over the weekend I noticed a worsening vibration in the drive train
accompanied by a loss of power. Sunday found the distributor to have
loosened enough to retard the timing a good bit, but even without a
test-drive I assumed I'd fixed THE problem. The next morning's
commute proved otherwise. With a shuddering vibration that seemed
to occur at the same fairly low road speed, regardless of the load
condition or RPM of the engine my car was virtually whispering in
my ear. The vibration occurred about the same amplitude whether the
car was accelerating or decelerating, clutch engaged or not. When I
got home and got the car up on lifts, I knew I would find some sort
of problem with the propshaft, even though I had replaced the U-joints
during my gearbox swap over the holidays.
What I did find made me smile, probably because it wouldn't take long
to fix, not because it couldn't have been a very serious problem, left
unfixed. One of the circlips holding one of the needle bearing races
had worked loose (it was never pressed all the way home apparently),
allowing the bearing race to spin outward, introducing a lot of play
in the U-joint and throwing the balance way off. Take care when doing
your U-joints, make sure the circlip is fully seated.
Dave Culgan
'66MGB
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