MG Network - your collective wisdom, if your please:
Two different cars - two different projects.
1.) I am detailing/reassembling the engine bay on my '73 GT daily-driver,
preparing to put rebuilt engine/transmission back in. The old wiring
harness is perfectly serviceable and I'm about to replace all the bullet
connectors (while cleaning up the "bullets") for electrical, as well as
aesthetic, reasons. Although I have appropriate blue tape and will rewrap
the harness, I need to clean the harness thoroughly first - so the new tape
will stick and so as to restore, as much as possible, the colors of the
pigtails where they emerge from the harness.
Question 1A: Are there any particular solvents/cleaners and/or procedures
that are really good for this?
Also, I am struggling slowly with 3M vinyl wheel, steel wool, etc, to
clean up old brake, fuel, and clutch lines. I then spray them with clear
engine enamel. On an earlier project I replaced the brake lines, but these
lines are very serviceable, although funky, and the car is a driver - and
bending/fitting new brake lines is not exactly a speedy task either.
Question 1B: Anybody know of a faster, or better, way to refinish these?
I have painted heater, brake box, air cleaners, radiator diaphragm, horns,
etc. etc. etc. with engine enamel (Krylon, etc.) and in a couple of older
projects have found the stuff to stand up quite well. But the finish never
gets very hard and it chips or scratches very easily on reassembly if I'm
not extremely careful.
Question 1C: Is there a more durable paint for this purpose?
And now for something completely different -
2.) My '76 daily driver has just over 20,000 miles on the engine I rebuilt
with 8.7:1 pistons, Schneider road cam (' don't have the specs handy), HS4s
and duplex timing chain. It runs beautifully, but it has taken to spewing
just a little too much coolant at the oil filter to suit me. Retorquing
the head-bolts cut it down quite a bit but not enough. I'm going to pull
the head soon, chamfer the stud locations in the block, check and plane the
head if necessary and reassemble with new gasket and studs to try and get
rid of the problem.
Question 2: While I'm at it, I'm tempted to plane the head enough to get
compression up around 9.5:1. Should I? And if I should, what else should
I do with it? Valves/seats/guides are all still relatively new so I would
rather leave them alone for now. OK, so if I screw it up, I can get
another head - I would rather not but that wouldn't be the end of the
world. Somebody talk me into or out of this, please!
Many thanks - just for reading all this!
Allen Bachelder
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