The title didn't take much thinking up.
It's a tale of lost and found and lost again, rubber sculpting and grunting. No it's not about the latest Jilly Cooper effort at lustful narrative.
I left the newly covered door cards in the shed and resolved to get the Important things done, namely fuel filler cap and pipe sealed and secure, fit rubber fuel hose onto fuel pump ( this time with a jubilee clip) then start the engine with catch bottles on the carb overflows. Methinks it's gonna result in removing the carbs again and find " stuff" therein. Sadly a result of my eagerness to fire up the car after the wiring Issues and not fitting the fuel filter ( I've had it skulking around for years but lost it !)
So with great determination I rose early on the promise of a fine and sunny week, very sunny.
So what did I do ? Nothing much. It was too hot. I did rearrange some of the MG bits strewn around the shed, outside storage box, outhouse and conservatory desk. I was looking for the two chrome triangular door trims ( that fits on the door end top)..... found ONE. Windscreen wipers.....found THREE.
Here is a view of the shed packed to the gunnels with "stuff".
A padded box liberated from work to store the expensive chrome parts. It did contain an Aortic stent delivery device worth about £ 4500 so it will take care of the chrome nicely.
A view of my man size vice and work area......guffaw. It's tiny, it's crap and used rarely. You may notice it's rather dark and cramped and that's after I got rid of loads of stuff like carpet scraps, empty paint tins and useless MG crappy rusty stuff. Right at the back is a rather stylish and expensive 1.5 mtr Draughting machine with stand and 20kg counterbalance plus the mountain bike not used for 18 months. Anyways more story.
Since it was so hot I sought shade on the patio table under the brolly
I cleaned up the wiper blades with good old WD 40 and steel wool. Getting the arms off was a fiddle though but with a small bradawl I managed it by only stabbing myself twice releasing this little bugger.
Below is a shot halfway through.
The actual rubber blades were in a bad state. I did read somewhere that you can replace just the rubber part but it was a fiddle. Looking at it and the new type blades it looks near on Impossible. Still, you know I like a challenge.
Original blade ( big one ) next to a more modern version.
Since I only had the one "new" blade ( left over from the ill fated Peugeot ) that had been in the outhouse for about 10 years. So I called it a day ready for another one whilst wifey was out touring the coffee shops and garden centres of North Derbyshire with pal Jean.
Above you can see the teeny tiny slot that the rubber should fit into. Well Mr Hunt of Hammer and spanner MG guru par excellence, you may be wrong on this. More of this in the future.
A new day was met with sunshine but not as hot, clear skies but not too bright, perfect weather really.
First job fit the new outer rubber grommet on the fuel pipe and tighten new spring clips. Much easier said than done.
The Original grommet was ok really, just covered in some primer overspray ( not me but previous owner) and looked old and tired.
I wish I'd not bothered.
The new one was thinner and harder with a very small slot for the bodywork to slip into around the outside. The main issue was the bodywork hole in this respect was not just a hole pinched into the rear deck. It was punched and had a lip on the inside of about 3mm/ 1/8". No way would the new grommet slip into the groove without some modification. So out came the precision Chinesium scalpels and after about an hour test fitted it with the metal filler tube. It and the tube were ok, but it didn't look right.
After some quick research proved it was wrong. That's how it should be. I thought the cap protruded out too much or the tube needed to have its larger flange inside the grommet. Alas there was no inner groove for the outer flange to fit into to allow the main tube to move inwards. It needed to go in about another 3mm to make it look right.
So I set about cutting an internal groove with aforementioned scalpels. It took ages and very fiddly. It took two attempts and about two hours of cursing, pushing, pulling and prising, hoping I don't damage the inner and outer edges.
Here it is halfway through.
N
It was tricky trying to get the lip over the larger metal flange and not damage it but eventually in it went and looked good. However, I still had to fit the large tough internal hose to the back and onto the tank vertical flange.
Boy what a struggle, even cutting some chamfers onto the inside of both ends it was still a struggle and hard on the hands and fingers.
Then bugger me, when it all fitted together it pushed the steel tube out a little and back over the large flange. Despite what I did it would not go in any further and the lip was looking delicate and stretched as well as not in far enough. After a lot of thinking I bit the bullet and removed it all ( just as difficult to remove) and tackled the cut-outs I'd made to make them wider and deeper. It was when refitting I noticed that maybe I'd had the big tough hose on the wrong way round. Well I must have done as the vertical flange was a little easier, not by much though, to fit on. The grommet was also easier a bit to get in the hole as was the lip to get inside the larger tube flange.
See the difference. I think it looks a lot better even though it's not as standard, but that's not going to bother me.
Since the roof of the house is to have scaffold around it next week I have to really get the fuel leak sorted in order to move the car forward onto the vacant garage base.
So more soon.
N
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