Short May update

After returning from my business trip, it took a while before I had a chance to get back to the garage. The only thing I managed to do this week is to clean up Maggie after a longer tour this weekend. Following a friend’s recommendation, I ordered a Gloria foam master and the somewhat expensive Meguiar’s Ulitmate snow foam a couple of weeks ago. It was time to test it. The stuff requires a 5:1 mix ratio and I started off with 0.5l of water and 100ml of foam. This was certainly enough to cover the entire car – but I did not manage to produce a complete foam cover as seem on some Youtube videos.

Nevertheless, I must admit that it does clean very well. 300km on the Autobahn left Maggie covered with dead insects and other dirt. With the foam stuff it was really effortless to get rid of this. I also applied Meguiar’s Ceramic wax afterwards and hope that this will last a while. While cleaning the car I realized that the previously small rust area on the RHD sill has become quite bad. The other side has a first small bubble on the rear part of the sill – nothing on the front wing yet. As the next TÜV check is late next year this sets the timeline for the other MGB restauration.

Unfortunately, there is no progress on Mildred. My hopes that the repairs on the “new” shell I bought last November would start in April/May are gone. The rough timeline and task list I made for myself in January does not fit with my new job. In addition, the next couple weekends are also planned for other activities and trips. Therefore, my minimal goal for this summer is to finish the Morgan. And in theory, this should be quite easy. The rear axle is in, engine fires up easily – the only problem left right now is the rear brake like. After replacing the rear Girling HL3 brake cylinder – the old brake line tub nut would just not fit anymore. Tonight, I took the entire rear axle brake pipe out and if you carefully look that the nut on the picture below, you see that the flare of the brake has bent the metal of the nut outwards.

I don’t have a flaring tool (yet) and the new MGB brake lines I already have for Mildred after bubble flares (F Standard in german) on the end. The line on the Morgan has double flares (E Standard) on both sides. If I cannot find a place that can replace the tub nuts on the old line tomorrow, I think I will order a tool to flare the lines myself – it doesn’t look too complicated to make the flares and brake lines.