(With apologies to the song, and to Roland, who commented about
"cold ears" a week or so ago...)
So this morning dawned clear but chilly. I started the MGB on the
first turn of the key, backed out of the garage, and motored off
to work, protected by my Lindsay tartan scarf (my first European
ancestors in the New World were Lindsays), my new Scottish tweed
cap, a very heavy jacket (a fried accused me of trying to impersonate
a firefighter in it not long ago), and of course the string-back
gloves that my daughters gave me for my birthday not long ago (even
if they are almost useless at these temperatures).
Six out of the ten miles between home and work, I noticed that the
cars behind me seemed to be tinged with blue. On the Central Expressway
(not to try to sound *exactly* like Roland), I stopped at the light at
De La Cruz and was rapidly enveloped with a misty oil haze, coming both
from under the car and from the edges of the bonnet. I made a rapid
right into a nearby parking lot and popped the bonnet, wondering whether
I was on fire.
I wasn't. One of my hose clamps (see PCV Valve notes from yesterday)
had popped off the rear carb, which has been a consistent problem. I
also noticed a film of oil all over the air cleaners, the valve cover,
and the head.
I cleaned up as much as I could (doesn't everyone keep a box of wipes
in the trunk?), used my handy-dandy Lucas screwdriver to tighten the
rear fitting as best I could, and fired up the motor. No leak, not
much smoke -- which I later realized was because the exhaust had
cooled to the point where the oil wasn't vaporizing (more later) --
but a noticeable puffing coming from around the oil filler cap.
So I conferred with my manager here, whose sports car credentials are
pretty respectable -- he's rebuilt B Series engines before (for an
MGA that his wife picked up in England and drove all around Europe
one summer) and has had a number of interesting vehicles. I'm pretty
certain that we didn't get the ring gaps lined up or anything; it's
also very likely that the rings haven't seated yet, as this motor only
has something like 10 or 12 hours on it. Of course, it *is* running
about 10.5:1 compression, and we did overfill the crankcase by about
half a quart of oil.
Neal wondered whether bad valve guides would cause this kind of blowby
from the head, since that seems to be the worst of it; even when I had
the catch tank set up before converting to the PCV valve, I saw a little
smoke coming out from the valve cover.
Oh, right. When we drove this motor at Sears, we didn't have any of
this because we used the vented filler cap from Danny's MGB. It has a
filtering mechanism -- I remember seeing the steel wool -- inside it,
and is meant for use on earlier cars. Aha! And even in 25-minute
practice and racing sessions, we were never meatball-flagged (I would
have been today from the amount of smoke I was blowing). Hmmm. Maybe
I should try to make it to O'Connor at lunch; I'll call and see if
the cap I need is less than $20...
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