So, I finally did something with this car, came here to post an update and realized that I never even had an S&S on it - poor thing. The deal with this car, essentially, is that when I was 5 years old, my dad, as a serious MG guy at the time, had some foresight to buy MGBs for his kids while they were still cheap used cars, and stick them away for when we were old enough to enjoy them. Mine was purchased in 1994, I was 5, and my brother got one a year or so later, he was 3...Both super low mileage cars (21K on mine, 13K on my brothers) original cars.
Both cars got stored in the garage at the grandparents place and as little kids we'd play around in them when we'd visit, but they essentially sat. We would start them up once a year, take them around the block, maybe do a bit of maintenance, and put them back....By the time I was old enough to drive, I had already accumulated a couple other vehicles on my own, had multiple jobs, a girlfriend, etc....So interest at the time in putting the old MGB on the road was kinda limited. Life only got busier from there, so the annual ritual of pulling it out and spinning it around the block continued, but that's about it. So while I've revived a dozen or so MGBs, I've hardly touched this one, despite owning it forever.
In 2018 when I went to start it, it was really running bad, old fuel (even though I had been stabilizing it....we're talking a decade or more old) had gunked up the carb, which is the factory single Zenith Stromberg with the water choke. I pulled the carb, rebuilt it and got the car running well, then put it on casters and pushed it against the back wall. Where it sat until now.
I needed to physically move the car, so took the opportunity to get it properly registered, and put a bit of work in. I dropped in a battery and it shockingly started right up, and idled nicely, the brake and clutch hydraulics worked great having been rebuilt maybe 5-6 years ago, so I made the ~30 minute drive home to my place with it. On the drive it started running really rich, like richer than Bill Gates rich, and one of the front brakes was starting to bind up....minor issues I guess considering it's been off the road for 28 years.
The old ZS carb is known to be really finicky, and I spent a couple hours tuning it without much luck brining the mixture down. So, I turned my attention to the much hated water controlled automatic choke assembly. Disconnected it from the carb, used some masking tape as a make-shift choke-delete plate, and the car ran great! So, now I had to venture into rebuilding the choke assembly....Fortunately YouTube has some very helpful videos, and I happened to have a rebuild kit on hand, so an evening worth of work and the choke was fixed. Turns out it had a stuck jet that was just dumping extra fuel into the carb.
Bolted the choke back on, checked the tuning on the carb again, and boom, she's running perfect....As hated as these carbs are, a properly tuned one is an excellent performer.
The sticky caliper was a failing front flex line, also had a set of those on hand, so I swapped those this morning, bled the system, and went for a nice long shakedown run - trouble free! Still a couple little things to sort out, the horn is intermittent, and the fuel gauge is dead (I suspect a sunk float in the tank), but otherwise a nice driving car.
With it running well I tackled a couple little cosmetic things today. First replaced the falling under hood insulation with some of that reflective foil stuff I had pre-cut extras when I did another project MGB. Then, I installed an accessory (MOSS Motors) trunk carpet kit that I had gotten for Christmas in 2006! The trunk was ugly as someone had crudely undercoated it, this really tidied it up.
I am on vacation this week, so between family day-trips I'll continue tinkering. I'd like to do a paint correction and a good detail, and maybe tackle that fuel sending unit if I can source the gasket I need this week. The whole thing is sorta surreal to me as I am working on this car with my 4 year old son, who is only a little younger than I was when I started working on this car with my dad.
Where it sat, at least since 2018....It was on the adjacent wall before that.
Home after it's maiden voyage
BEFORE of the trunk
