Ken G's Journal

The winter in NJ has had a lot of snow and cold, but I'm hoping that the weather has finally changed towards Spring. We were in the mid-60's today and even though I was out of state for a soccer event and came back early for a dance recital I still was able to make a bit of time for the MG.
First tried to just start it up and it wouldn't go. I cleaned up the plugs gave it another try and on the 3rd attempt it fired up. I let it run for about 15 minutes while I worked on cleaning up the garage from the inevitable winter mess. Shut it down and half an hour later it started up first attempt. Did it again after about an hour and drove it back into the cleanish garage with brakes, clutch, and all lights working as intended. Quite happy with that.
I need to track down my to do list that I avoided during the cold and see if I can get some projects completed. First on the list is the fuel and temp gauges, both are out. I thought it was the voltage regulator but when I last tried a replacement I had no luck.
Anyways it is always a happy day when I get it running and don't have to fight that waking up a sleeping MG problem right of the bat.

Yesterday I went to the MVC and got the car titled, registered and licensed, first time since 1991 as far as I can tell. Today after work I reinstalled the hood and went on the first road test since having the car.

Backed into the road, started to go around the block in first and second gear and decided that I didn't want to go to far on the first drive. I pulled into a driveway and reverse out. As I go to put it into first gear, she dies, just like that.
I crank it over and it sort of runs and I hit the accelerator to up the rpms for the shift into first and it dies. Restart it two more times some thing. Push it home.
My first thought is out of gas, so I ran to the gas station and put 3 more gallons in the tank. nope not even trying to start now.

Got to say I'm pretty bummed, from a exciting high of the first drive, to a crap out in the street and a push home.

This morning the car started on the first try which really surprised me as it was a little cold and my experience with a DCOE is that they don't like the cold. I played a bit with the idle and raised it to around 1000 which it holds nicely. I spent a ton of time searching the garage for the steering wheel horn rubber button to no luck but it did give me a chance to clean up and reorganize.
I did have one event of note. I opened the last box that came with the car when I got it. It held the door window parts and the side mirror and a TON of packing peanuts. Looks like it is all there so now I need to order new rubber since it is all apart.
I did pull the bumpers out of the shed and gave them a quick go over and got them installed. Overall it went pretty easy.
It is starting to look like a real car again,

Yesterday my goal was to get the car running and use the light to set the timing. About the third try she started up, a little fluttery with full choke, but once warmed up pretty solid. I had painted the timing mark white, but it wasn't showing up very well.
I went back and forth in the drive multiple times and the brakes are holding, I hope to get it on the road this week once I get the insurance sorted out again.
Having this hurdle passed I worked on putting some things back together. I installed the steering wheel cowl, the glove box, (but not the door) and the center vent covers.
The dash and ignition wires from the steering wheel are all hanging down and I need to figure out a nice clean way to move them out of the way.
Many issues still remain, bumpers leaking oil return, leaking water pump, install the windows in the door, carpet. etc. but I can't overstate how nice it feels to have the car starting and moving. This has been a long process since getting the car.

No soccer tonight and my wife has car uber duties for dancing daughter so I snuck into the garage and messed around.
I reset the static timing, and tried to start no luck. Advanced the timing a bit and there was a little life, advanced again and she powered up.
Very slow and timid but once a warmed up she idled well.
The DCOE is bogging, almost stalling, when I hit the accelerator so I'm sure I need to do some fine tuning with the timing and see what that gets me.
Anyways it is nice to see some life in it again and now I can start working on some of the things like cleaning up the dash, the door windows and carpets.

The car hasn't been starting for a few weeks but I really hadn't had a lot of time to spend on this issue. When I determined that the car wasn't getting power to the plugs at all I realized that the issue is more than just bad timing.
I "guessed" that I had maybe fried the points, condenser or the coil while doing other testing so that is where I started. I checked the coil and had power on both positive and negative posts. I then decided to pull the distributor and check that over, clean and re-gapped the points to .017.
After getting the Distributor back into the car. (I have the darnedest time getting it to align and slide in. There must be a trick.) I set the static timing.
Thinking I had it covered, I tried to start the engine and well it was the same. Turns over great, but no ignition and no spark to the plugs. Annoying..

I then checked the wires to the coil to make sure they were good and tight, positive from the fuse box, center to distributor, negative to distributor, all tight on the post, but I noticed that the negative wire at the coil was bent at a sharp angle. I tested the continuity of the wire and got nothing. The wire was broken but it was covered by heat tape and I hadn't noticed.

I replaced this 8 inch piece of wire and had spark and combustion!!!. I wasn't able to to get it to stay running but it was great to see some life.