Oily's MG Blog - Oily Hand's Life with MGs

Find us on Google+

Memories

11/9/2013

I just found a couple of older photos of the TA.

This one I think was taken in early 1982. It's just been freshly painted and doesn't even have the door handle on the passenger side yet. It's before we did the Beamish Reliability Trial in the June as it was that run that earned the name 'Numbum'

This one is at the Romaldkirk checkpoint on the 2004 Beamish Run.

Hunton Steam Gathering

8/9/2013

With old Numbum back on the road it was the wheels of choice for this day out. I was travelling on my own as Pam was taking her parents in their car and wasn't leaving till later in the day. This meant that I could open the taps a bit more than normal and I had a blast on the way down.

I arrived at about half past nine and managed to park right next to the arena, and wandered off to take some pictures.

Despite the torrential rain on Friday the ground was quite good, not as bad as it looks in the pictures.

Later on the field was packed with cars right up to the hedge.

One of the events was descibed as a classic car trial. A course was laid out in the arena and Russ Swift, an internationally known stunt driver set a time driving a 2.6 litre AC Ace.

I can't remember exactly what time he set, but seem to recall it was around the 25 second mark. I gave it my all but couldn't quite match it, and had great fun doing it.

There weren't as many full size traction engines as last year but what there was was very nice.

I couldn't resist snapping this cool dog.

As well as the steam & cars there were also loads of commercial vehicles, tractors, fire engines and motor bikes. I don't know what happened to the pictures of the bikes.

Once again a super day out

As I got back to the car to load up for the trip home, I found this on the tonneau. Bonus!!

Tidying things up a bit.

7/9/2013

For a while now the lower fronts of the rear wings have been suffering from serious road rash so I decided to try to improve things a bit. A full rub down & respray isn't in the plan so I used some aluminium sheet left over from another job.

Well, that's a relief

30/8/2013

With being away on holiday nothing much got done on Numbum so over the last two days I've been steadily putting things back together.

I finally finished today and despite being very careful with the reassembly, it was with an air of trepidation that I fired the old girl up.

An easy start and it settled into a steady idle. Depress the clutch - no noises and it feels like it should. Engage first gear - no noises again, is this too good to be true? Release clutch and the car starts to move - it looks like success.

A short test drive and all is well. The clutch is just great and even though I ran on a trailing throttle a few times, it stayed in top gear.

I'll call that a result! All I have to do now is clean the greasy marks off the car and tidy up the garage.

Progress has been made with Numbum

10/8/2013

The gearbox mount has been welded as has the bellhousing. The mount support plate arrived and has been fitted and the gerabox is now back in the car and loosely fastened.

All there is to do now is tighten the fastenings, refit the starter, toeboard, propshaft cover, floorboards and seats. It doesn't sound much if you say it fast. At my pace of work these days it will probably take a couple of days to finish. All I have to do is find a couple of days.

Ripon Old Cars

29/7/2013

The rain lashed down all night and it was still raining as I loaded the 71 B GT for the trip down to Ripon for the annual show.

This would normally have been a day out in the TA but it's still off the road. One of the reasons for going to Ripon was to find some parts and I got most of what I wanted.

The rain had eased by the time we set off and we had a good blast down the A19 and arrived at Ripon just before 10am. The turnout was down on previous years. I think the wet weather put a lot of people off.

Thankfully the rain held off and the afternoon turned out to be warm & sunny and we had a great time. I was tempted to buy one of my dream cars, a Mk1 Jaguar but closer inspection revealed that it wasn't that good and certainly not worth the asking price.

I took about 80 photos. Here are a few to show what the day was like.

There is always some entertainment on. This year was a magic show and this great Buddy Holly tribute.

I may have got lucky!

24/7/2013

Investigation of Nubum's gearbox revealed nothing much amiss, just two loose locking nuts. These were duly tightened and rewired.

There is some play in the input shaft bearing, but not enough for me to want to take the box apart to fix.

The clutch will have to be replaced. The pressure plate is broken, the driven plate has loose springs and the thrust bearing is worn unevenly. Looking at the witness marks, it seems that the broken part of the bellhousing got into the clutch area and caused some damage.

Time to order a new clutch assembly and get the rear mount welded up.

Numbum is out of action for the forseeable future

22/6/2013

It's been a very frustrating morning.

I decided to investigate the problems that developed on the Beamish Run, starting with what I thought would be the easiest one, the clutch adjustment.

I thought wrong, didn't I? The clutch adjustment was fine, it hadn't slipped at all. What I did find was a cracked bellhousing. Sometime between putting the engine back in last year and now, some of the engine to gearbox bolts had gone AWOL allowing the bellhousing to flex when the clutch was used. This eventually cracked it.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I found some more bolts and resecured the bellhousing, hoping that would solve the problem. Well it fastened the gearbox to the engine OK but did nothing for the clutch.

On the way home from the Beamish I had some semblance of a clutch but now, no matter what I do to the adjustment I cannot get the clutch to release. Something must have come adrift inside the bellhousing or the carbon thrust is damaged. Either way, the engine has to come out.

Looking on the bright side, I will be able to change the cracked bellhousing for the good spare I have on the shelf. I'll also address the engine oil leak which has been present since I did the crank last year. Hopefully this time I'll be able to do it right.

Discussions are ongoing with the chancellor of the exchequer about going for a 5 speed conversion while everything is out of the car. I'm not holding my breath.

For now my spare time will be spent trying to get the 71 GT back on the road again. That in itself is a challenge. I'm checking and servicing parts as I put them back on and running into problems with bits that are past their sell by date.

It's all part of life's rich pattern and we'll get there in the end.

MG Car Club Tyne Tees Centre Prince Bishops Run

9/6/2013

When I dragged myself out of bed it was cloudy but dry. By the time I'd eaten breakfast it was raining so it was with some trepidation that I loaded Numbum, our faithful old MG TA for the short run to the start at Stokeley.

Thankfully the rain stopped before we set off and held off all day. It was cool in the morning but really warm on the Palace Green at the finish. That place is a real sun trap.

We got set up for signing on duties and met all the crews of the 40 cars making the run. What a great fellow Dennis is. He had some over ordered bacon butty tickets that he kindly donated to us. Thanks, Dennis, they were most welcome.

The morning section was a good mix of interesting roads leading us 40 miles to the lunch stop at Hardwick Park.

During the course of convivial conversation one driver mentioned having trouble with the route. It was navigational error, the navigator tried to start the run from page 5 of the route book. I'll spare their blushes by not naming them.

Duly fed & watered we set off for the afternoon section of 35 miles in improving weather.

On the way was a chance to stop at Auckland Castle, once the home of the Bishop of Durham.

The driver of the big Healey with side pipes on the passenger side set off a load of car alarms as he passed by. The superb resonance of those pipes must just have been right.

After a brief stop, it was onwards to Durham and the beautiful setting of the Palace Green. We were very honoured to have this location for our finish point. It was good to see cars spanning 70 years from our 1937 TA to a 2010 MG TF 135.

Over the course of the afternoon we noticed some cars approaching junctions from different directions from us. Obviously some navigator problems. Indeed the driver mentioned above had problems in the afternoon too as the navigator attempted to do the afternoon section from the wrong pages. DOH!!!

Whilst there were a lot of familiar faces there were also some who hadn't done the run before, including one couple from Derbyshire and one from Lincolnshire. Both had decided to make a weekend of it. I hope you all enjoyed our neck of the woods and had a safe journey home.

Once again, thank you to Noel Lindford and his team of willing marshalls for another great day.

Numbum ran well all day, in fact the best it's been this year. Another 150 miles on the clock.

The Coast to Coast Weekend Day 3

27/5/2013

This was the worst day of the weekend, but it was still pretty good.

After a hearty breakfast we gathered our belongings and returned our keys. The cars were the talk of the campus. The receptionist came out to look and chat.

Then the problems started. The screw fitting for the mount for the passenger cam had done a vanishing act somewhere between late yesterday afternoon and this morning.

The rear cam wouldn't switch on. The windscreen cam seemed OK but when we got home we found it hadn't recorded a thing, so not a bit of video to show.

The weather was cloudy and cooler than the last two days but at least in wasn't raining.

We set off in good spirits and finally managed to find out how to get home. It was a scenic route and we enjoyed it.

On the way old Numbum developed a misfire which became steadily worse as the day progressed and as we neared home we had to modify our route to avoid hills as much as possible, but we made it home, albeit a bit later than we thought.

Any day we get home under our own steam is a good day.

We covered 382 miles over the three days over some difficult roads and enjoyed evey minute of it.