Wocha bin doin on your MG this week then?

The gearbox is the same pg1 on most of the early fs 
The only difference is the speedo drive if your car has a digital display. 

Thank you for the info R40MGF

The early mk1 has a 2 part speedo cable and the late mk1 has a 3 part cable.
Mike Sutar offers a 1 part cable which is what I will probably go for.
It is a similar price to the originals but is of new manufacture and saves me trying to work out if my car is a late early or an early late. Also the gearbox end section of both the 2 part and 3 part boxes are becoming harder to find.

I did make an end section by cutting down a middle section and filling the end square but probably spent longer doing this than just replacing the whole thing.

The mk2 F has a drive on the gearbox sending a digital pulse to the system. This is easy to tell as it has the LCD odometer.

I repaired the mounting for the remote oil filler/ dipstick tube assembly on my 135. This never looked quite right and didnt seem very solidly fixed so the other day I took a closer look.
The way the filler assembly is supported by the manifold differs according to the type of inlet manifold. Id been used to plastic manifolds (on a Mk1 F 120 and Mk1 TF 115) where the oil filler assembly bolts on a simple bracket to the right. The early metal VVC manifold has the same arrangement i think. 
The 135 though relies on a more complex shaped bracket that curves around the assembly and bolts to the manifold on the left. Except on mine this was just held on by a cable tie.

   

Once the cable tie was off and the assembly lifted away this revealed the manifold end of the bracket had sheared off leaving the bottom part still bolted to the manifold. 

Given that the thing had snapped you'd be forgiven for thinking this was a plastic bracket but I was surprised to find it was mild steel. There was no sign of bending or metal fatigued, it had mysteriously just sheared. 
Now thats a bad thing in one way as I've no idea how a steel bracket supporting something as light as an oil filler would ever have sheared but it's actually rather good because fixing this became just a 5 minute Mig welding job.
Using a couple of mole wrenches to hold the broken halves together I cleaned off the paint and then welded it from both sides. No prizes for neatness but it doesnt stick out like a sore thumb after grinding and primer.

   
 

This failure pattern isn’t unusual, it would crop up on regular intervals in the olden days. As with a number of once prevalent faults, those who knew & were up to the task broke out the welder or commissioned someone to do it for then, those who noticed & weren’t bothered helped the rest of our community by eventually scraping their cars. This in due course became a donor of useful parts.
I have cause to thank those people, in the way the general populace might be grateful to a blood or organ donor.
M

    As it’s so cold, I thought I would do an inside job and decided to remove the door speakers as I had a pair of Pioneer speakers left over from my camper van build.

i think I got to the door speakers in the nick of time.




 

Blimey I bet those speakers were sounding a bit ropey with so much of the cones surround having disintegrated.

If you happen to find the T bar speakers are in a similar state as that then give me a shout as I have a good original pair of rears you can have for the cost of postage only

Whilst visiting a scrapyard in another area, I was told that any pair of speakers from the cars at the bottom of the yard were a fiver, providing I took them out myself & no damage was done to the door cards.
“And the tweeters?”
“Yes!”
“And the rears?”
He nodded.
I now have a set of JBLs front & rears, with only minor modifications.
M

I may take you up on that, I have swapped the bar out for one with speakers but I didn’t check them at the time.

I've not had the chance to do much due to the bad weather and work 😫 
Decided to treat our older F to a hardtop for the winter so I took the opportunity of a drive out in the old girl and picked up a bargain for..£40. 
I've not had much chance to drive this one over the summer but I was very impressed with how it handled.
The TF is now at the point where I have everything I need to start putting it back together but I really need to sort out R40s head gasket issue's next 🤔 

Following Cobber´s and AP´s path, fitted two 15w fans to the TF´s engine grille. They will be connected to the right lateral vent fan and will come off with it.

As predicted, they hit the more anterior part of the boot lid ventilation "hole". But I intend to widen it and improve the turbulent air flow by obliterating the current nooks and removing the ledges. Of course the boundaries will have to be reinforced.

But that will happen, hopefully, next spring.

Sorry, had some trouble uploading the pics

 

 

 

Fitted a 2nd hand Pioneer BT head unit that cost me the princely sum of £20 from MGFnTFBITZ. Not sure if it's the head unit or the fact that I just spent some time going through the audio settings, but it sounds really good in comparison to the Kenwood that was in there - meaning I might not even look at upgrading speakers.

They also sent me a steering wheel for a tenner so gonna mess about with it to recover it myself, or send it off. Spent 5 mins cleaning it with a Flash Magic eraser - go careful if you try it, can be quite abrasive according to online vids but it cleaned all the shine off it really well and now has a nice matt surface which is what I was after and will do the same to my blue and black steering wheel I have fitted currently - but won't do the painted blue sections for fear of removing the paint.