MGB - Mechanical work completed
Our MGB is now ready to go on the road. Technically and with the MOT passed
After several months of work, the MGB is now on the road ready to shoot (and rent).
As you could see from what we told you at the time, the MGB works were in progress. This vehicle has undergone a major transformation since we acquired it a couple of years ago (back in 2022). While in the first stage we focused on the finishing part, this time we have focused on finalizing the mechanical part, although some finishing work has also been carried out.
MGB- Work performed between the second half of 2023 and the first half of 2024
This vehicle still had some outstanding issues. It is true that in the first part, important improvements were made to the ignition, exhaust, engine mountings, overdrive start-up, etc.
In this last stage, this is what we have done to him:
- Radiator cleaning and repainting
- Disassembly, cleaning and restoration of the original electric fan.
- Redo the electrical supply circuit of the fuel pump (it was correct, but could be improved in terms of the material used (connectors/cables).
- Replace right front shock absorber. Yes, just one: In these cars the shock absorbers are extremely expensive (around 300€/unit, and also in our case, it was not that the shock absorber showed “wear” as such, but that it “suffered” an accident as a part that made it lose its sealing. So only the broken shock absorber was replaced.
- Change of the distribution. In this car it goes by chain, theoretically valid for the whole life of the car. But this is only partly true. On this engine, the timing chain was very noisy. In fact, when we disassembled the cover, we saw that the tensioner was at the “top” of its travel precisely because the chain was already very stretched. In this case we replaced all the parts with new ones:
- Chain
- Sprockets (camshaft, crankshaft)
- Chain tensioner
- Screw braking keys
- Crankshaft pulley seal
- Oil retainer plate.
- Crankshaft damper (pulley) – We installed an “extended” version, which incorporates the harmonic balancer.
- Crankshaft pulley bolt
- Carburetor readjustment. There are a couple of great videos for adjusting SU carburetors. We recommend them. These carburetors are not complicated to adjust but they do have their own little “trick”. If you follow the order of adjustment it is easy, but if you try to adjust here and there randomly by trial and error, it may be impossible. Here are a couple of videos.
- We installed a steel plate cover-carter, as we did in other models of ours. You can look at the blog posts here and here what we did, and it’s the same thing we’ve done to the MGB.
- Finally, we repainted the underbody with black polyurethane.
MGB - Carburetor adjustment SU (video).
There is no better explanation than some good images. So following this principle, I share with you a couple of videos about how to adjust SU carburetors. The image quality is not the best, but the explanations are worth it. It’s key to mention that the “University Motors” channel is one of the best ones for English roadsters.
MGB Mechanical overhauls. Some photos
I am preparing a blog post on the change of the distribution in the MGB (and indeed extensible to the MGA). But in the meantime, I share with you some images of the process. Click on them to see any comments that may be useful to you.
If you are in the process of changing the timing, or anything else on any of these engines and have any questions, you can contact us. We will gladly share all the information we have regarding the operations performed on the model.
MGB Ready: Hood renewed and MOT passed.
To complete the work, we polished the paint (metallic black), and restored the black color of the hood. This has been done with a product called RENOVO supplied by the company “CueroLiquido”. You can see the
link to the product
here. You can also see the result in the photo at the top of this page.
The vehicle has had its MOT renewed so we have it now fully in running order until June 2028.
