Doodling around

This week I managed to get the new wheel bearings pressed onto the axle shafts. As short visit as Stephan’s workshop made this a 5-minute job. When picking them up from the bench – I already subconsciously noticed that they don’t have the same length. I also pressed the new oil seals into the retainer plates. Back in the garage I then noticed that I made a stupid mistake when I loaded the Morgan for the BVAC trip.

One of the two Salisbury tube axles I stripped had Wire-Wheels (axle shaft part no BTB714) – the other had bolt on steel wheels (BTB700). The difference of these two is that the wire wheel shaft is 7/8inch shorter. At some point during dissemble I must have mixed them up. I was not aware of the difference and did not notice it before. Now one mixed set is in the UK with Hardy Engineering and the other on my bench. The axle in the UK will get a Blackline LSD and the longer bolt-on axle shafts – I just need to sort out how I will exchange the two in the next two weeks.

With our summer vacation trip up shortly – it is unrealistic to finish the axle in the next few weeks. It was best to pack everything back into storage to clean up the bench. This took a bit of time and while at it – I also decided to clean and check the Mildred’s rocker assembly. It was the first time I took apart a B-Series rocker – but it is really not that much different than a Mini A-series variant. After degreasing and cleaning the parts and the shaft – I am quite unsure how to best proceed. The shaft looks really good. Initially I wanted to swap it at Rimmersbros for an overhauled one – but now I believe that might not be required. All rocker arms looks good – the bronze bushes are all in good nick.

The valve contact surface is flat and straight on 6 or 8 rocker arms. I think filing a bit of material on the two problematic ones might be good enough. For now I sprayed a bit of WD40 on this assembly and wrapped until in foil.

I moved on to the MX5 seats I bought for the MGB GT. There is a complete adapter kit available from CrateParts in the US to easily mount MX 5 seats. But it is already expensive without the shipping costs to Europe. As my son will be home this week – he offered to give me a quick tutorial for a CAD software. My plan was to take measurements, create a dummy variant out of wood – and then create a DXF file so that I can have the adapters hydro cut at some Online Shop.