Spridgeteers,
I have a little time to bring the "Midget Chronicle" up to date. Stop
reading now and apply "Delete" key if you're not remotely interested
in my Midget story.
Yesterday I finally got the engine and tranny back into the car.
Actually, I was pretty pleased at having done the job entirely by
myself. This was quite a learning experience. I think I will be a
whole lot more comfortable doing this job in the future when I get
ready to clean the tub inside and out and paint everything (probably
in about 2 years).
In the beginning (Last June), the clutch plate disintegrated. I left
the car sit for months until I finally had the time to tear into it in
January this year. Here's a few of my discoveries...
Thanks to the good folks on this list, I was stopped from putting the
thing back together again immediately. Turns out, whomever did the
engine overhaul some 5K miles ago had cobbled the back plate from a
948 onto my 1275. When I posted a pic of it, a number of you hollered
at me and for that I thank you!! You saved me doing this again in
another few hundered miles! Anyway, I thought I'd beat the high price
of an alloy backplate so I bought one used online. Turns out that one
was cracked in three places around the starter mount. Welding it
didn't seem like the best fix in the world so I bought some 3/8 steel
plate and took that along with the cracked back plate to the local
Community College Industrial Technology center where they made up a
drawing and cut out two back plates on their plasma cutter.
Unfortunately, the student, in the interest of making something
esthetically beautiful beveled all the edges. I haven't had the heart
to go collect them yet but at least they didn't charge me anything to
do the work. Finally I broke down and bought the alloy back plate and
got back to work.
After taking everything down, I discovered that the radiator was
pretty nasty. Someone had put a bunch of Stop-Leak in it. This
explained my overheating problem last year. I took it to our radiator
shop to get them to rebuild it. No dice. Everytime they tried to
pressure it up to solder leaks, it blew out another part of the tanks
or the core. I ended up buying a repro radiator to replace it.
Yesterday as I was about to reinstall it, I discovered that the
threaded holes in the radiator were smaller than the original bolts so
I will have to get some bolts that work.
So...... To fix a broken clutch plate....
1) New Clutch kit
2) New Back plate and oil pump cover
3) Set of gaskets and seals - redid the pan bolts and gaskets and
re-torqued everything while it was down.
4) New Radiator and hoses
5) New points and plugs
6) All new fasteners for the engine and tranny
7) Installed missing speedo cable drive in tranny (thanks, Paul!!)
And I did all the work by myself at a micro-mini High Plains OSHIT... ;-)
Nothing left to do now except install the radiator, grill and hood and
hope that everything works properly when I turn the key..... Wish
me luck...
One Man, One Spridget.... Pictures will be on my site when I finish...
Cheers!!
Jim - nearly finished Midget in Dodge City
http://www.starrtech.net/~jimj/
--
1964 R60/2 BMW
1968 MG Midget
1976 R90/6 BMW
1990 K100LT BMW
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