'63 Almond Green 8 Port

[Richspec]

copied across from previous forum and updated.
Heres some pics of my car and a brief guide on whats happening to it.

The car


Inside


This engine, MG1100


will be replaced with this,


Its 1380 which is a bit big for the carbs but I'm using what i have, en40B crank,521 rods, 286 cam, all balanced and lightened,blah,blah blah, I'm not using the paddle clutch that was fitted though! ignition will use the omex 600 thats coming out of my brothers car, either eventually or straight away if i can't find the rest of the dizzy parts.. This head is a standard MS version.

and these,


but not this.

S/C gearset, unknown ratios, Salisbury LSD, 4.6:1 semi helical CWP.


I'm intending to use the wagic wand box from the 1100 with a set of s/c drops.

My intention is to get the mechanics sorted and use it for runs and shows this year then next winter get the bodywork sorted, its got a lot of filler in it!

Rich

[Richspec]

Back in may we went to a local show and it was obvious the smoky engine wasn't just the valve stem oil seals, more likely the valve guides themselves and the timing gear was fubared, I decided to strip it out and put one of the 8 port heads etc into the car.
This was its last run out..


Within a couple of days the engine was out and i found this.


and then this.

The flywheel came off really easy

other bodges



seems a standard repair, I found another this weekend near the starter button underneath to the same 'standard'

I looked at my gearbox options and ordered a 'hybrid' box from guessworks.

Started cleaning up and painting bits.


reconning others.


a few choice purchases


ripped out the old dash and fit new bits and pieces.


the engine got a single coat of paint and was built up.


Added an underwing auxillary fan.

ebay cheapo but looks to work ok.

and there it sat while i waited for the box to come..

[Richspec]

June 5th.

todays progress.

Lighting wires replaced with correct colour codes to front relays.
Loom all re-taped and fastened back into place.
Replacement washer pump fitted (last night), old one had seized.
£4.99 off ebay, £15.99 from halfords!!
Choke cable removed from engine bay as amals dont have one.
Dash refitted
switches tightened up.
interior hoovered!
Just need the gearbox to come....

June 6th

some work on the engine today.

Fit dizzy drive, clamps and dizzy (god I'm rusty when it comes to building a series engines! LOL)
Fit new straight cut primary gear and faffed about with various new and old bits to get the primary gear endfloat to 4.5 thou. On first assemble it was nothing, zero, nada

Had to choose through a selection of 'c' washers to gain some and eventually had to resort to a small amount of wet and dry action to clean one up nicely and get some tolerance in there.



July 1st

This came.



My brother sptted this.


Luckily its just the bolt thats bent and the threaded section is a-ok.

we had to swap the studs in the speedo end housing from another gearbox as the ones in this box were too short to fit the engine mounting!

I've also removed the helical first motion gear and put my sc drops in there.
All the holes in the mounting face needed taking out to a larger size to fit the new engine.


having a look at primary gear endfloat.


July 3rd.

Engine going in.


Starting reassembly.
Gearchange, exhaust manifold, and shafts in first on the list.


Engine steadies, clutch slave on. With 3 engine steadies its rock solid,


Shaping up, time for a coffee


Fit my lambda boss to the Y piece and had a trial fit. Not my best welding but good enough.



went to a show on sunday and got rained off so came home and when dried off! did a few jobs, found some brackets to fit the Y piece to the downpipes, the alternators back on, the lambda wiring's all in and tidied up. I've had a look at the exhaust mixmatch in sizes and really can't be arsed to spend ages bodging up adaptors so I've ordered a maniflow system to go on.

One of the exhaust downpipes is touching the diff side cover bolt so will need modifying with a big hammer and a bar - maybe a job for tuesday night

[Vegard]

Looking good.

What exhaust manifold is that. Looks huge, but is that because of the wrapping?
What size are the carbs?

[Richspec]

the exhaust is just the normal 8 port size, its quite an old one though, its an ' ex-race' one thats seen its fair share of welding over the years!
I would have preferred to use a new maniflow one but the price of them is just a rip off.

Amals are whatever size MS supplied a few years ago. don't know off the top of my head but, i think, too small really for the engine spec.
We used them last time on another 1380 with the same cam and head and they went well enough though.

Rich

[chris-pilling]

Looking Goooooood Rich.. keep up the good work

[alexdenevers]

Nice job Rich ! But why did you fit std close ration instead of the SC one ?

Any idea of bhp output with amals ?

[Richspec]

Nice job Rich ! But why did you fit std close ration instead of the SC one ?

Any idea of bhp output with amals ?

Alex - the reason I didn't put the SC box in was a) noise - I like a SC box whine as much as anyone but wanted some small! degree of relaxation while driving and b) the entire diff would need changing and that was going to be expensive.
It seemed a better idea idea to get a 'new' box with a normal diff and nice high (2.95) final drive for cruising in.

As for output - no idea at all, I'm not chasing numbers on this one, I just want a decently quick, civilised driving experience.

Rich

[alexdenevers]

[Alex - the reason I didn't put the SC box in was a) noise - I like a SC box whine as much as anyone but wanted some small! degree of relaxation while driving and b) the entire diff would need changing and that was going to be expensive.
It seemed a better idea idea to get a 'new' box with a normal diff and nice high (2.95) final drive for cruising in.

As for output - no idea at all, I'm not chasing numbers on this one, I just want a decently quick, civilised driving experience.

Rich

I've tested several SCCR, and the noisest parts are the SC drop gear ! I've tested with or without SC drop gears and the difference is impressive. Currently on my S I have a ST SCCR, with helical drop gears, and the noise is quite decent, much less noisy than my weber...

Anyway, I think you'll have a decent and quick experience with your car ! And it looks lovely...

[Richspec]

New exhaust came yesterday and we got that fitted, its a Maniflow Twin Box competition system.





Today we've finished off most of the small jobs, Chris has made up some custom ignition leads and I've sorted the fuel pump connection at the back.





So after a few false starts chasing minor fuel leaks etc we got it running and then.


it wee'd all over the floor

The gasket behind the filter head failed and spurted a nice flow of millers oil into a large puddle!!
Emergency action with the handily placed sawdust saw a BP style slick averted. :bom:



Once the gasket was replaced with a better one we got it fired up again and filled the garage with the smoke from the grease in the exhaust burning off and the heat wrap curing etc!!!

Its needs the timing tweaking, some tweaks to the amals and the bonnet modifying plus a much beefier battery and other things we'll no doubt find, but its up and running.

Rich

[atlanticdave]

Great project and great looking little car, am going down similar lines with mine but fitting a 7 port head, I need to pull the finger out asap....Oh I do remember a handy tip with the Amals, as I am familiar with them from my Triumph Bike days, its maybe worth concidering a drip tray or some description under them to divert any fuel they spit out from going anywhere near the dizzy. I did hear stories of works cars involving 8 port amals,fuel spillage, dizzy, sparks and resulted in some flames! I am quite sure you probs got something planned.

[newtune]

Think most of the problems with amals is that they were ment for bikes which were gravity fed were, when you stick are a car your pumping fuel though them ?

James

[Richspec]

Thanks for the encouragement
I think i will try and fab something up to pre-empt the drip problem (although they didn't suffer from it last time), I'll get the air filter backplate on first and decide which filter will fit best (got a choice of domed or box shape) I've seen plenty of cars that run with no filters, but never one of mine
Theres a chance i could make something that fastens to the bottom of the baseplate and slopes down to the front of the car, we'll see.
Tomorrows job list is make a top rad bracket, set the timing - we've swung it already and the starting is on the button and the lambda readings are better, set throttle stops, throttle position screws on each carb and compare readings with the carb balancer.
Generally try and getting it running smoother.

If its stops raining we'll also change the brake master cylinder on my brothers '93 1380.

Rich

[Richspec]

no new photos but 'some' progress. We spent some time tonight tweaking the timing and the amals, not all of them were lifting at the same time and were at ever so slightly different heights so we spent a while tweaking the tension of the throttle cables and adjusting the throttle position screws.
I am slightly concerned that the lambda is reading very weak at idle though. Plans for tomorrow night are to whack the throttle position screws up to get it to idle at say 1100 rpm and then put the colourtune in to read the mixture and confirm or deny the lambda readings, its only weak at idle so the pilot mixture adjustment should hopefully do the trick.
not that its at all easy to access the bloody screw though

Other jobs - clutch bled and throw-out stop etc set - needs testing yet though.
Replaced weeping thermostat gasket and drilled some small holes in the stat.
Modified old rad bracket to fit.
Changed master cylinder in sprite -but still suffering from squidgy pedal.

The only really postive news is that the exhaust wrap has cured a bit and the 'heat proof' paint on the exhaust has burnt a nice blackish colour, so we're not getting smoked out anymore.

Rich

[Richspec]

the good news - it now starts well and idles at a reasonable speed with slightly rich afr's after tweaking of the throttle position and pilot mixture adjustment on all four carbs.
the bad news - can't get any gears the clutch last night was bled and was so soft, something wasn't right, we figured a dodgy slave cylinder, so i got one at minisport today.
Got that fitted tonight and it bleeds but always with loads of air bubbles?? One thing we did think was a bit suss was 'possibly' the clutch arm so we changed that in situ for a better one, which in itself was a mission because the pivot pin had been mullered and I had to cut the head off it to knock it through
But none of that made any difference..still felt like nothing was attached to the pedal.
Next thought was 'it must be the master cylinder', so I found a new (old) one and I've fitted that so tomorrow night will be crunch time...
The old master cylinder when drained was like emptying old oil..black horrible stuff came out of it.

[Richspec]

it moves

Bled the slave after topping up the newish master and straight away we had a pedal.
set the throw out stop etc and voila, it moved under its own steam for the first time in months.

[Richspec]

And now it has an air filter

blank backplate originally


pipercross filter


sadly the bonnet just didn't quite close so tonight i made another baseplate from a blank alloy sheet (took me all night ) and moved the holes up - hence moving the filter down. The bonnet now shuts but I've had to cut a piece from the slam panel and remove the legs off the bonnet badge as they were sticking through and fouling the filter.

I bought another bonnet strap from minispares so i could have one each side but this ones totally bloody different, same colour and fastenings but the stitching is different, the holes are a different size and the buckle shape is different
So I still cant fasten it for a test drive..aaarrrghhh

Rich

[Richspec]

tonights progress:
made a splash/drip guard, carefully crafted from the finest plastic, originally one of those up and over full size shields that fastens to the gearbox and rocker cover, now much modified






put it back together.


also made a splash guard for lighting relays.


Rich

[Richspec]

I thought it was all good to go but how things can go wrong!!!
before going to Mitp I decided a run out to Croft for the Nostalgia meet would be a good tester, things started well.



but rapidly went downhill this is half an hour or less later.



the rest of the day was spent like this..


with a couple of trips out ending on being towed home

Problems were:
overheating - the standard rad and fan combo just couldn't cope
misfire and cutting out when hot
wouldn't turn over and restart till it had cooled down
not charging properly?? - Amp meter jumping around all over the shop, voltage reading a steady 11V the suddenly going up to 15V, and staying there.


Things we found - wiring from starter button into main loom behind heater - replaced with generic red (like a lot of wires we've found, red or blue!) and running too close to the exhaust and getting very hot and soft when the engine ran for a period of time. So that was checked for continuity (ok) and re-routed.
We also made a heat shield for the starter button assembly as it was a bit close as well.

Dizzy cap loose and getting whacked by the rotor arm as it turned - I've never seen this before, the rotor arm was so tight inside the cap as the arm turned its top face was actually rubbing on the inside of the cap, moving the cap, the carbon centre bit in the cap was fully pushed back inside??
We think the extra thickness of the lumenition kit was pushing the rotor arm too high. By changing to a genuine lucas rotor arm we look to have gained the vital mm or so of space needed..

Last weekend before Mitp I got the new minispares rad on, put a plastic fan on and swapped the alternator just to see if that made any difference. It sort of did...
It now takes time to warm up, and the readings from the ammeter make sense, when you put a load on like lights it responds etc The volts gauge just behaves the same though.

Bad points - it still broke down repeatedly, misfiring and coasting to a silent stop. However I did do not far off 40 miles and was able to see the pattern emerge, drive for a bit, put your foot down / load the engine = lambda start to go weak followed by cutting out
Drive on the idle jets (ie very slow = no misfires, slightly rich lambda - all good) ish..

We THINK this was the fuel pressure being set too low and the carbs running out of fuel, this weekends testing will prove us right or wrong.

The other thing we found was more bodged wiring behind the heater, the radio wasn't working and when tested all the wiring in that section only showed 1.8 volts but sometimes parts would show 12 etc??
I found this to be that the power was coming off the back of the ignition switch, via two scotchlocks only 1 of which even needed to be there and wasn't making a good contact at all.

At Mitp i bought a new fuel cap to look more period and some special tuning stickers to cover up the holes in the bonnet for now

[Vegard]

Which size of Amals are you using?