Steve's '98 'F', Update 04/11/13

Soooo...I'm really board. The weather is cold and I haven't been near the MG for over a week now because of said coldness, snow, etc. This is frustrating because it only needs three small things doing to it before I can punt it up the road in the direction of the MOT station.

Firstly I need tighten up the nearside handbrake cable - hopefully an easy job.
I also need to remove the old thermostat from behind the engine and either cut out the middle or replace with a suitably large washer that I acquired from work, to give the old (redundant) 'stat housing something to seal around. I also need to refill the coolant and bleed it (I've got the correct pinky fluid to do this).

Anyway, at the weekend I was having a tidy up in the shed and I found these:-



They're a set of Mugen (Honda) aluminium pedals that I must have bought for another project and never used.
I think that the 'F is perfect for them to be fitted to so tonight I dug out my spare pedal box to trial fit them to. I think they'll look quite good:-



I've just stripped down this pedal box so I can clean and paint it. I might even drill some holes to take some weight out it - the main pedal arms are 5mm thick and the whole thing is on the heavy side!


Whilst I think about it, has anyone ever considered relocating the brake reservoir over to the drivers side? I've had a look and I cant see why my car (no abs or powersteering) can't have this done. It even appears that MG have made it easy by putting holes in the bulk head for both left hand and right hand cars. Benefits as far as I can see are less parts and so less flex in the system (I've see a video where the reservoir moves quite a lot when the brake pedal is pressed). What do people think?

Update time!

So, Saturday was spent installing some tunes into the 'F as I've not had a stereo in it since I've owned it.

Removing the door cards and inspecting what was there, I found the standard speakers were perished and the cable leading to them thin and frankly, crap. Wont be using those then...

I started by removing the standard speaker from the plastic basket to see if it could be adapted to take a new speaker, and whilst it could it would leave me limited space between speaker and the door panel grille so I decided to break out the MDF and make a new one. I checked mounting depths and with a 12mm thick mdf baffle it gave me enough room at the back of the speaker to clear the window mechanism, and enough for that clearance at the front.

I started by tracing the profile of the orginal basket onto my MDF:-

Which I then cut with the Jigsaw and sprayed with black car paint so it would look a bit more OEM.

Looking at the doors, there was no sound deadening at all on or in them. Not even the bit of cursory foam that manufacturers often chuck into doors to give them more of a 'thunk' when you shut them. So, I broke out my Sound-Deadening-On-The-Cheap. I'll be the first to admit that Dynamat Sound Deadening is class leading and very nice stuff, etc, but it is pricey.
This is what I used instead:-

It's flashing tape from any good (or bad) DIY-type place which is basically a foil backed bitumen, like car specific sound deadening but a third of the price! Also in the pic is the stuff I used to cut and attach it with; note the roller and heat gun which are very useful for getting it to bond really well to the panel.
I cut it into sections and applied it to anywhere on the door where there was a largish surface area, like behind the speaker baffle and inside the door:-

So, what to fit in the hole then? I though these would do the job:-

They are CDT audio (used to be known as Cliff Design) tweeter and 5.25" Mid bass which I bought a couple of years ago but never got around to fitting into anything.

They look like this:-

If you see above, the cool thing about them is that the tweeter can either be mounted stand-alone in the door panel somewhere or centrally on a pole that scres into the centre of the mid-bass which is what I've done.

I also needed some cable which I had spare in the shed. A bit of soldering and heatshrinking and I had this:-

The other job was to find somewhere to put the crossover. I decided that inside the bottom of the door was as good as any place, but it does get damp in there so I bagged and tagged it:-

With that done it was a case or routing the new cable through the existing cable grommet in the door, and under the dash to the centre console. To make this look factory, I wrapped the cable in black tape, anywhere where it was visible. With that, I could fit the new speakers in place:-

I then soldered the new cables to a spare ISO loom that I had (therefore avoiding cutting the car or the stereos original loom), and plonked the radio in.

The finished system looks like this:-

As you can see, the new speakers are hidden and other than my trusty JVC headunit (bluetooth and ipod control)it looks nice and stock in there.

It also sounds pretty good, despite being in a noisy convertible. Punchy, with a decent volume but not harsh at all. Simple too, with no amps, etc.

Cracking read..

Its really coming on..

Cheers Allan!

Other jobs worth mentioning - the rear bumper supports which it seems are designed to collapse in a collision which means that they are quite torsionally weak so when you try and remove rusty bumper screws they just twist.
I managed to get mine off by cutting the bumper from around the screws (it was knackered anyway and I had another one to go on) and chiselling out what was left.

After lots on penetrating fluid and some gentle persuasion, the original bolts came out. I then knocked up some stainless steel plates at work and combined with some stainless steel screws and loads of copper slip hopefully they wont become seized in again:-

Some will notice that I've also now got the car on the road and been to a couple of meets (Donnington & POL). To do this I obviously had to get it through that pesky MOT.

So, jobs from earlier up the thread:-

- Nearside Handbrake cable; After checking the cable, it seems that was fine, not so good was the calliper on which the handbrake mechanism had seized. I read up on the subject and it looked fairly straight forward to rebuild it but I've already been covered in brake dust and muck a couple of times on this build so I elected to save myself some hassle and buy an exchange unit for a paltry £52. Fitted and fixed!

Thermostat; I'd already relocated the new 'stat at the front of the car, so all that was required was to remove the old one and replace it with a washer. Sounds easy when you say it quickly - it wasnt! The old 'stat is tucked nicely under the inlet manifold so to get to it wise old men on the internet say remove the manifold. I didn't listen and endured several hours of pain and swearing instead.
Basically the steel pipe that joins to it has to be moved out of the way, and the coil and coil bracket needs to be removed to do this. So far so good. The tricky bit is actually removing the 3 bolts that locate the 'stat.
I did this with a ratchet spanner. One click at a time. I imagine the North Korean government inflict similar torture on their subjects in one of their many labour camps, but its probably easier for them because they have smaller hands.
Anyway got the old one out and removed the centre from it by twisting the tabs off with with a pair of pliers. And in great Haynes tradition refit is the reverse of removal...

Coolant; Filled and bled. No leaks there so all good.

Emissions; Had a bit of grief with this and couldn't work it out because the car was running great but they were still too high. In the end I took it to a mate who plugged it into his snap-on analysis machine and this showed odd readings from the lambda sensor. Back to the wiring again then. Long and short was a break in the wiring. Repaired and all good now!

With this lot sorted out I now had MOT and road legality so on with the tinkering...

Quick update: new wheels...

I bought them for temp use whilst I refurb my cups but I have to say that I really quite like them. The ride is better and the toyo's fitted to them grip well. If only they would go over AP's.