Re: That awful colour MGB GT
Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 10:21 pm
After a two month or so secondment to my father in law, she's back again. He's been running around in it, giving it some use and having fun. Not as many miles clocked up as I hoped, but probably about 300 or so since I left it with him.
Drive back was successful and I pretty much fully trust her now.
She did start playing games with her fuel gauge though. My FiL filled it up before he gave the keys back, but it's quite hard to get a full tank on this with modern vapour recovery petrol pump nozzles. When I left, the gauge was reading the notch under full (not quite three quarters, more 4/5ths) and was steady. Thirty miles in, I noticed the gauge was dropping down to half and going quicker as I put the miles on. 35 miles in, it was at the quarter mark.
I pulled over concern that I had a leak somewhere. Fuel pump looked dry, so I popped the bonnet to check stuff under there. Fuel filter attached, pipework all good. Feeling the carb overflow ports found them to be dry.
Decided nothing was obviously seriously amiss I decided to motor on. As I carried on, the gauge decided to creep just under half. This was reassuring but still a lot lower than it should have been.
A few miles on it dropped again and as I was passing a Sainsbury's, I pulled in to fill up with some cheap Super Unleaded. First click put in 12 quid, so I did the usual pull the nozzle out slightly while peering down the spout and put another gallon in. This fill-up would tally with the fourty or so mile journey since the last fill up.
Starting up and pulling away the gauge rose again. This time to just over half. Another few miles and it was back to full. Down the road some more, back to half...
I can safely say that the gauge is not playing ball. Its got a new (decent) solid state regulator powering it (need to double check it's output voltage to be sure though) and the sender is relatively new too. I have recalibrates the gauge, so that should be in a rough ball park. Since I did all that, it was fine until now. Irritating.
I'll have a look at it soon, but for now I'll just go back to filling up after 200 miles or so on the trip counter.
Back safely home, I did a few under bonnet checks. Brake fluid level fine, clutch fluid fine ... but this cap seems very loose...
Bugger.
I don't think I can blame bad manufacturing of the cap here, as I reckon I may have kack handily overtightened it previously. Then the hot weather caused it to compress some more until it split.
Thankfully I don't throw anything away. So I had a spare with appropriate patina on.
Does the job.
Next up was the oil level. When my FiL drove it, it hasn't dropped a smidgen from just over max. After I checked it from my drive, it had dropped down to half.
I think I know what the problem is here! My driving...
Admittedly I only had it stopped running about five minutes previously. I need to do a recheck now it's been sitting for a while. Oil should drop down relatively rapidly, but it still may take a bit of time.
One thing I have done is cleaned out the old filler cap and fitted it back on with the o-ring off the new one. The new one was very loose in the cover and the old one with its old o-ring wasn't much tighter. However the new combination of old cap and new o-ring made a very tight and snug fit.
I'm hoping/wondering this may help with the oil consumption. With greater vacuum in the rocker cover on overrun, it should hopefully prevent too much oil getting sucked by the rings. That is if the rings are what at fault.
Now it's home, I can give a compression test and leakdown test to check the general health of the engine. It's not going to be changed out anytime soon (Dolomite needs to get back on the road first), but it does allow me to plan what needs work next on the fleet and where the priorities lie.
I'm also intregeued to see what state a 158k mile 70s engine is in. Especially as it still pulling pretty well.
Drive back was successful and I pretty much fully trust her now.
She did start playing games with her fuel gauge though. My FiL filled it up before he gave the keys back, but it's quite hard to get a full tank on this with modern vapour recovery petrol pump nozzles. When I left, the gauge was reading the notch under full (not quite three quarters, more 4/5ths) and was steady. Thirty miles in, I noticed the gauge was dropping down to half and going quicker as I put the miles on. 35 miles in, it was at the quarter mark.
I pulled over concern that I had a leak somewhere. Fuel pump looked dry, so I popped the bonnet to check stuff under there. Fuel filter attached, pipework all good. Feeling the carb overflow ports found them to be dry.
Decided nothing was obviously seriously amiss I decided to motor on. As I carried on, the gauge decided to creep just under half. This was reassuring but still a lot lower than it should have been.
A few miles on it dropped again and as I was passing a Sainsbury's, I pulled in to fill up with some cheap Super Unleaded. First click put in 12 quid, so I did the usual pull the nozzle out slightly while peering down the spout and put another gallon in. This fill-up would tally with the fourty or so mile journey since the last fill up.
Starting up and pulling away the gauge rose again. This time to just over half. Another few miles and it was back to full. Down the road some more, back to half...
I can safely say that the gauge is not playing ball. Its got a new (decent) solid state regulator powering it (need to double check it's output voltage to be sure though) and the sender is relatively new too. I have recalibrates the gauge, so that should be in a rough ball park. Since I did all that, it was fine until now. Irritating.
I'll have a look at it soon, but for now I'll just go back to filling up after 200 miles or so on the trip counter.
Back safely home, I did a few under bonnet checks. Brake fluid level fine, clutch fluid fine ... but this cap seems very loose...
Bugger.
I don't think I can blame bad manufacturing of the cap here, as I reckon I may have kack handily overtightened it previously. Then the hot weather caused it to compress some more until it split.
Thankfully I don't throw anything away. So I had a spare with appropriate patina on.
Does the job.
Next up was the oil level. When my FiL drove it, it hasn't dropped a smidgen from just over max. After I checked it from my drive, it had dropped down to half.
I think I know what the problem is here! My driving...
Admittedly I only had it stopped running about five minutes previously. I need to do a recheck now it's been sitting for a while. Oil should drop down relatively rapidly, but it still may take a bit of time.
One thing I have done is cleaned out the old filler cap and fitted it back on with the o-ring off the new one. The new one was very loose in the cover and the old one with its old o-ring wasn't much tighter. However the new combination of old cap and new o-ring made a very tight and snug fit.
I'm hoping/wondering this may help with the oil consumption. With greater vacuum in the rocker cover on overrun, it should hopefully prevent too much oil getting sucked by the rings. That is if the rings are what at fault.
Now it's home, I can give a compression test and leakdown test to check the general health of the engine. It's not going to be changed out anytime soon (Dolomite needs to get back on the road first), but it does allow me to plan what needs work next on the fleet and where the priorities lie.
I'm also intregeued to see what state a 158k mile 70s engine is in. Especially as it still pulling pretty well.