Hi fellow MGB V8 ers,
YYYYYIIIIIIPPPPPPPPEEEEEEEEEE !!!!!!!!!!!
After 14 months of doing this father-son MGB V8 conversion, we started up
the 75 B yesterday. What a thrill of accomplishment. Even managed to
drive it around the block. What an absolute kick when it fired up for the
first time - with no exhaust it sounds pretty dramatic - it is going to be
a wonderful car to drive. Many thanks from everybody for all the help to
get this far, especially Glen Towery - many visits and days, nights,
weekends on the phone.
Pretty frustrated a week and a half ago when we tried to start and the
starter solenoid was bad in the used GM starter I had bought. After a
weekend of electrical troubleshooting on the phone with David Jenkins in
Houston and my brother in San Fran, we determined it was the starter
solenoid. Dan LaGru had a new gear reduction starter on the shelf that
got here this week. Thanks for the bail out Dan.
Didn't do quite as well as Jim Stuart a month ago when his fired right up
the first time he tried. I had to go back and set the distributor to top
dead center on #1 once, must have missed it with pulling out the
distributor to run the oil pump and putting it back in, but that was no
problem. Actually we were trying to make sure we had a spark to #1 at the
right time when it fired the first time, so it gave us quite a thrill. We
ran it at 2000 rpm for 10 minutes, but by that time I was really worried
about how hot it was getting, and without the guage working I shut it down.
All that high temperature aluminum colored paint smoked off the exhaust
headers in the first 5 minutes, we were a bit worried at first, but then
made sure it was the paint and let it burn off. After it cooled off awhile
we gave it another run, and even drove around the block a little later
after it cooled and we got the throttle linkage rigged up.
The temperature gauge doesn't indicate anything and I'm quite concerned
about running it for very long and overheating, so I've got to go out today
and try to figure out why the temperature gauge doesn't work. The green
wire I'm using doesn't show anything on the gauge when I ground it out, so
I'm missing something somewhere.
Boy this is great !!!!
Cheers,
Rick
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