Digger914

You obviously have a much better retirement pension than I do.

This is the way I started and this is the way I do it now. I've only done one complete ground up restoration, finished it in time to show it at MG 2001. In the spring of 2002, I was rammed by 40 ton of tractor trailer hauling rock in a construction zone and it was a couple of years before I could change my own oil again. The difference between the way I started and the way I do it now is that now I have more time, more tools, better tools, better work area. the internet and I know my limitations.

WWII gas rationing wasn't to ration gas because we were short on gas, it was because rubber was in short supply and limiting gas meant limiting driving. That and the 35mph victory speed limit helped to keep tires from wearing out and tires for trucks were allocated at twice the rate as tires for cars. If your car was a truck you had a better chance of getting tires. If you needed a truck it was easier to make your own than get one new. Any time you could make one trip and not two these things were the cats you know what. I don't know how many of these things were factory made, but great uncle Art made his out of wood.

Whoever made the wooden frame had more patience for woodworking than I do and the chassis looks a bit naked without it, but don't leave us in suspense too long. What about the Rapier, have you had it on the road for a run? does the gearbox work like it should?

So maybe a Tesla would be OK, but we're not Brits, we're Americans and I wouldn't be caught dead leading a funeral procession down an American road in a Nissan Leaf. After all a good home has to have some pride in their rolling stock.

Reading that your beautiful little white roadster is sparkling clean and ready for the road put a bit of a smile on my face.

I'm almost 20 years younger and fully agree. If my garage ceiling was 10 ft higher I would get a hoist that raised the car high enough for me to stand underneath. For now it's new rubber wheels on what we call a creeper and you might call a mechanics trolly, but what you call the thing doesn't matter, what does matter is that rolling under the car on a rough garage floor with new rubber wheeled casters is almost fun.

The gage layout is old car sporty, but the original shell is just OK and whatever you do will add sparkle to a rather drab look.

You're right Frank, I should have written how to polarize (the Generator) at the voltage regulator and with those 2 words where they should have been, the chassis vs direct ground can cause problems would naturally lead to the first step of troubleshooting, which is polarizing at the generator and checking the ground, just in case it was the reason it didn't polarize the easy way. Not wanting to write a lengthy step by step how to I Googled and as I was crushing out my cigarette in my mid 1950's, 5 digit phone number Ford Sales & Service ashtray, I found the 1960 Ford 6 cyl generator video with a reverse voltage problem and the simplest way to identify and rectify a reversed polarity gen.

60 years ago every shade tree mechanic knew how to polarize the voltage regulator and you wouldn't think it should make a difference with the wire going direct from gen to reg which end you hit with the +12 to polarize but chassis versus direct ground can make a difference ond I was taught to always polarize at the regulator. After that, a movie is worth a thousand words and you might find watching these short vids useful

By the time you finish bending 95 springs you will be a master spring bender. What you're doing will get the job done and if you can find a piece of pipe or an old cast fitting with an outer or inner diameter in the size you need, clamping to the pipe will make this a faster and easier job.

When you consider all the impossible things that people have done when they didn't know that what they were doing wasn't possible, you need to consider that with sufficient resources, ingenuity and determination, that everything imaginable is possible. With the tools you had to work with, what you did with the cone was impressive. Never really know what you can accomplish and my guess is that the people who built your gearbox might have have had an optical comparator to check the fitment and still had a disappointment or two before they got the results they wanted. Pride in workmanship is great when you successfully make your own and no shame in using a factory made part when it's available.

Saving a small fortune and doing the work yourself is always a bit of an adventure, doing the same job a second time because it didn't work as expected after is a task. A couple of days ago I invested $30 in materials and made a tool do the dirtiest job that nobody does. I would have gladly purchased new if the parts had been available, but there is that certain sense of accomplishment that makes cleaning up the greasy mess worth the effort. Hope you get that gear slippage fixed this time.

Sorry to hear that, was looking forward to hearing how good it worked.

I'm not surprised or shocked by the fine $573,000 code violation and interest on unpaid fines. I have a brother that is a hoarder, with money, so every month he pays his city fines for the rotting storage shed in his yard and every few months during the summer he pays the city another hundred and some dollars for cutting his grass when it gets over a foot high. Every couple of years I cut the trees away from his foundation and clean up his yard, he has a John Deer mower that is worth more than my daily driver and I would gladly cut his grass for half what the city charges him, but the mower is surrounded by cars that haven't run in years. No fines from the city on those rotting cars as he keeps the licenses current. The old saying is that you get all the justice that you can afford to buy and when a hoarder has the financial resources to pay all the fines and live like a pig, the law protects their rights to live in squalor, up until there is an emergency that grants access to the property. My guess is that the trash in this guys yard is nothing compared to what he has inside the house. I can't change my brother and I can't force him to invite me into his house, but a $573K fine would be enough to get my brother to clean up his place and sometimes change needs to be forced.

Who could forget the Tonka Elephant stepped on it commercial

So your preselect would be the ENV 75 pictured, then guessing that the castle nuts on the side somehow attach to the bands and that there is some sort of internal spring tensioned ratcheting mechanism to keep the bands adjusted with band shaped friction material that grabs the spinning part and when it's held tight the propellor shaft turns with the banded gear Thinking this way gives me a different conceptual view of the internal workings, but I would still need to see how all the inner parts fit together before I would even consider attempting to repair one of these things.

Now that I know that the Rapier tranny isn't fluid coupled, I have no idea what makes it smoothly transfer power to the wheels from a dead stop. There is book learning and there is actual hands on experience. Up until I saw all the fingers, valves and castle nuts of your transmission photo. I thought I knew how a preselect works and I probably do, but that doesn't mean that I have the slightest idea of how to work on one.

Bernie, it looks like your entire garage section is one big toolkit with a car stuffed inside. Nothing inadequate about your tools and certainly nothing inadequate with the way you use them.

Simply green wouldn't be to harsh, but Dawn will work better for the top. Not just Dawn, Dawn Ultra. In a spritzing spray bottle about 2oz Dawn Ultra, mix with about 1oz spray and wash fabric pretreat and a half quart of very hot water. Liberally spritz on the top in an area of about 2 sq ft at a time, scrub it in with a soft scrub brush rinse with really hot water and keep at it until the top is clean. Let the top dry and spray the material with convertible top sealer.

I bought a damaged display because I knew I could fix it and the price was right. Got even better when they sent me the wrong damaged display, so I got free delivery, free repair parts and another hundred dollars off.

As I was cleaning and moving tools from the old boxes to the new box, I found this same multiple page chart from a different source tucked under my MGB service manuals and remembered why I used my SAE tap&dye set on my 4 BSW holes.

Is this the same as "British Standard" ? Like what you did with the cans, I remember when Empress Brand Jelly & Jam came in tins. I use old coffee cans screwed through to the wall open end pointing out as cubby's for lightweight items like gloves, clean shop towels and being round they also do a good job of keeping face shields and goggles somewhat clean and handy.

Before you spend another dime unplug the airflow sensor the next time it won't start without your foot to the floor, if it starts right up and runs smooth get a new one, or clean the heck out of the one you have and hope for the best. The ignition module under the coils or the crank sensor and a sticky relay in the fuse box under the hood, are the most likely causes for your operational stalling.

Not a lot of room for two under a car on jack stands, floor jacks are tippy when top heavy and sometimes helping hands are more of a well intended hindrance. Glad you were able to get the tranny in and while you're filling your old gear box with new oil, I'll be filling my new tool box with old tools. All except for my oldest tool, my dad's old locking pliers that wasn't in the drawer where it was supposed to be, or any other tool box drawer. The new tool box has working locks and it's big enough to hold all the tools from all my garage tool boxes and because helping hands sometimes help themselves, the new tool box is going to stay locked when I'm not around until my dad's old Channellock / vice grips are found.