Morgana

The bronze discussion is about downpipe nuts which are UNF. No, I'm not going metric as I'm spending a lot of time removing the PO's various bodges, and there's nothing worse than having mix-'n'-match fastenings when there's a specification in the manual. I'll report back when I've made some bronze UNF nuts.

Alas, no. Instead I have a bar of 1/2" bronze hex and as soon as my lathist has recovered from Covid I'll set about making some with him...

If it's been drilled for an aftermarket servo (I have no idea if the Vitesse came with one, but Canley's parts list suggests not, and other threads on here showing various servo installations support that surmise) then it could be almost anything. Around that major diameter you've measured it could be BSW, BSP(P or T), BSF, UNF etc. Without a thread gauge or plate to screw it into, or a helpful motor factors to test it for you then you're not going to have much luck tracking down the thread. Witness the hair-pulling I gave myself with the screw specifications on my carburettor... If you just want to tune with the vacuum gauge, can you disconnect the brake servo (the car will be stationary) and just use a reducing hose adaptor between the servo hose size and the one on your vacuum gauge? My gauge was secondhand and came with lots of tee pieces and double-ended hosetail bits for connecting different diameters of hose. Fiddle for the highest vacuum, back off 1" then take off the gauge and hook the servo back up and take the car for a drive.

Without a thread gauge and/or a specification it's rather difficult to identify. Why don't you just put a tee in the servo hose and take the vacuum gauge off that? Are you looking to plumb it in permanently, or just as a tuning aid? What's the car and engine setup?

More excitement today. With the half-shaft assembly off, there was no wobble outside a few thou with a dial gauge. However, we noticed the yoke could only flop one side a small amount, with full travel the other way. It turns out the plugged grease point, which bulges up out of the casting at the centre of the spider, was fouling the yoke. This is concerning as I followed Mr Haynes's instructions on this. "NOTE: The spider must always be fitted so the lubricating plug holes are towards the propeller shaft." Actually, it's clear that if the lubricating plug hole is positioned towards the hub end of things, the yoke is much deeper there and cannot foul. Dismantling it again, reassembling in a helpful family member's fly press and regreasing (a couple of wear marks are the worst that the spider or needles showed) I am hopeful that the binding was nothing more than the greasing point rubbing the yoke. Possibly it only happened in the wheel-droop situation of axle stands under the chassis when the UJ was significantly cranked, so had no effect in use. I'll put it back together tomorrow and see. If it's sorted, it's on to whether the shock absorber is crock or not.

With the flanges separated it was a bit dodgy trying to support the vertical links against the spring pressure, so I took the whole thing out as if replacing the UJ. Thankfully, the differential flange rotates smoothly with no binding, so it must be something to do with the half-shaft end of things. Rotating it by hand doesn't show any major wobble, but as it's hard to keep still further investigation will have to wait on a big vice and the workbench to hold it still.

Thank you. It is possible to remove the flange bolts without taking the whole assembly off, so @johny's suggestion might be the first port of call. If the differential side of the flange junction could be smoothly rotated by hand then that would rule out something rather more expensive...

Through France and down to the Adriatic with German auto-touring maps and an atlas. It was OK when the car was new, so no reason the mk. 1 noggin can't work now! Not a fan of sat-nav drongos failing to read signs and ending up stuck fast in a Cornish lane blinking as though they've awakened from a long sleep and wondering how they got there. Abscond from your brain at your peril. At least in the UK one hits the sea sooner or later. Many stories of drivers on the continent selecting a similarly-named place to their destination by mistake, and blithely driving several thousand miles to a distant country without realising they were heading entirely in the wrong direction. Itineraries pinned to the dashboard work well for longer trips. I've recently found a 1940s 'Motorist's Logbook' in a family file which details journeys up and down the country, mileages, itineraries for directions and dates and costs for work done on the Riley Nine. Another world...

With this wheel jacked up and the brakes backed right off, rotating it is easy until one point in the rotation where it becomes very stiff, but slightly springy rather than graunchy. The best way I can think to describe it is as if the wheel were connected to a cog and this cog were driving a teardrop cog. Straightforward on the circular bit, then harder up to the point, then easy again down the other side. The vertical link can be seen to move slightly while rotating the wheel over this 'hump', as if it's being forced backwards. Spinning the hub fast up to the point of strain leads to the rotation stopping and bouncing back with a bit of a clonk. My first thought was a bent half shaft, but a straight edge along it at various points of rotation appears to rule this out. It is the same with the brake drum on or off. The offside rotates smoothly back and forth. Nothing untoward has been noticed while driving; the universal joints have been recently replaced both sides, and the reason I took the nearside wheel off in the first place was because a rattle over bumps made me think the shock absorber had gone.

Ensure you have proper penetration. MIG is a form of welding where it's easy to get a bead that looks good, but is all fur coat and no trousers. When practising, ensure you give as much inspection to the back of the weld as to the front. This book "The Art of Welding" from the Workshop Practice Series doesn't deal very much with MIG, but has some useful diagrams that are universal, and good resources for analysing where one went wrong. Zintec from 'Metals4u' has been handy to have around, as it doesn't rust very quickly so can be stored in less than ideal conditions. A big vice, engineer's hammers, rawhide hammer, and an anvil can be helpful for forming rudimentary shapes. My partner made a metal bender from angle iron from an example shown on the MIG Welding Forum. Good for sill sections. What gas are you using? Rent-free or a contract with Air Products etc.?

I would like to second that the forum built-in search engine is not good. I have never been able to get useful results with it. I've stopped using it, instead using search modifiers on my normal search engine which actually throws up useful results. If one suffixes a normal search using the engine of one's choice with "site:forum.tssc.org.uk" much more reasonable results are available, and there are more to a page enabling swifter visual sifting. There's also not the problem with searching again too quickly on realising the keywords were wrong, so Colin Lindsay's error message is a thing of the past.

What size are they? They could be mushroom head semi-tubulars. Bresco do 5/16" and 7/32". A cursory search suggests you could get in touch with a supplier like Sapphire Products, Clevedon Fasteners, or Rivets Maker. They'd probably be able to set you up with a rivet set as well. I find companies that make a useful industrial product in the UK and have a rudimentary website are usually worthwhile to talk to, especially if you tell them the bizarre piece of restoration work you intend for their product. You may find someone who did the original rivetting! Or you could just pop-rivet them, but where's the fun in that? I'd give the back of the catch and the rivets a good coating of waxoyl or lanolin grease (or quench the hot part in linseed oil as the Swedes do) before refitting.

It depends if you have a standard steel rocker cover or a new alloy one. The standard gasket (GEG414) will not fit an alloy cover. I have this problem with a Herald 1200 where the PO has used an original type gasket with a new alloy cover. The alloy ones have flat sealing surfaces with no rim to retain the standard narrow gasket so need a thin, wider gasket. Rimmer Bros. have an example of this thin type for the alloy covers in silicone (AJM414URT), as do the Club Shop. I like rubberised cork, so have got Rimmers' thin cork version for the Herald (AJM414T).

My partner has a £50 Gumtree Sealey 130XT which has been fine for welding steel together for a house build and MGB sills and panels. I think the welder is less important than practice, as others have said! If you're ever down in Cornwall you could be shown the ropes. Ask on the MIG Welding Forum advertised above and there will very likely be a member there who is nearby and can give you some tips. I found the local college was booked up for months, but luckily partner's brother's archery club president is an ex-welder and offered several months of weekly sessions with metal to play with to give structured practice. There'll be someone like that near you!

MGBs have a wooden slat under the seat base with holes at each end for thick washers so the base is screwed down against the spacer and the slat ensures the middle doesn't sag. Triumph seem to have gone with the spacer washers only, at least for the Herald. I've just had the seats in and out to fix a PO's metric bodge and there was an uneven variety of washers. Returning to the original captive UNF nuts and some new spacer washers (between carpet and seat base) from Mick Dolphin mean the seats slide far better now and can be installed and removed in a trice from inside the car, without having to have a Mr Tickle hand underneat to hold a nut...

Yes, the faces are the problem. The alloy's flat and the tall, narrow cork one on there has been bent over the inner edge of the cylinder head so it's not sealing square around the flat mating surfaces. I read on here some disappointed experiences with the club's neoprene one, so was considering Rimmer's thin rubber/cork offering for alloy covers which is also cheaper. I'm also a sucker for cork as it's a wonder material. Perhaps an autojumble will throw up an old undistorted rocker cover for the future, though the alloy one feels quite robust. If it weren't for that silly spigot...

The Herald manual has a nice diagram showing how to swap the tyres around so they all get used, including the spare, 'at least every 3,000 miles'. That way wear is evened out. Perhaps less problematic with modern tyre compounds, but not exactly a hardship. Mine's my only car so I'm concerned about tread wear from use more than age-related decay of the tyres as they'll be replaced before then. When I got the car the tyres were awful and a mismatch of years, but all over a decade old. If you're not driving regularly they do still need replacing, and certainly if I weren't certain of the condition I'd get someone to check them after five years. Luckily, our tyres are cheap compared to the low-profile things in fashion now. My partner has winter and summer tyres for the MGB and the best ones were still very reasonably priced. For the only part of the car in contact with the road, and being on alert for dealing with modern idiots who think their car aids are driving for them, I think anything else is a false economy.

I've spent days wrestling with my Herald 1200 fibreglass cover. A PO had installed it with extra screws, drilled holes in the wrong place but so close to the right place and to the edge that so the only option was to enlarge them and risk splitting the fibreglass. They also failed to trim it so it didn't bind against the bulkhead. Leaks all round into the footwells too as rain leaves the heater box plenum and dribbles down the bulkhead. I trimmed it significantly and forced it into place with some closed-cell neoprene foam strip stuck on to the cover with CT1 and it appears to have stopped the leaks. A nightmare to install though, and trying to get all the screw holes to line up. If you're starting from scratch I think you'd have a much better chance of getting the holes in the right place. On the Herald the three top front screws are supposed to be installed from the engine side of the bulkhead originally. Perhaps the Spitfire is the same if you find it very awkward to fit. I understand the plastic type is a better shape than the fibreglass.

It's not the material that's the problem, PeteH, it's that the bronze nuts aren't obtainable! I think I remember the manual specifying bronze nuts, yet I guess cost means all the current kits supply brass as at least it doesn't weld to the steel studs with all the temperature cycling. I've tried all the chandlers I know, JohnD (I do a lot of sailing so am familiar with quite a few) and those that have bronze fittings are almost exclusively metric so I've had no luck. The same with Imperial clevis pins. There are fewer and fewer treasure-trove type chandlers, and more with high-tech dealer-specific parts rather than generic, good quality hardware. I've enquired with Anglia Stainless just now so I'll see what they come up with. Brilliant photos Colin, thank you. I have a big wire loop of various exhaust clamps of that same design, so I'm sure I can work up a metal strip to hook over one of the threads. A good spot on the nuts, too. I had wondered about barrel nuts since there are more threads, but as I understand the tension in a threaded joint is entirely in the first three threads I wonder whether they can actually be torqued more before stripping than normal height brass nuts? 1/2" bronze hex is readily available. Perhaps I ought to manufacture a sideline in 5/16" UNF bronze barrel nuts...

Thank you Colin. Do you have a picture? I found a thread from you while searching around that involved a peculiar exhaust-sized clamp. Is that some kind of similar support bracket? As the original P-shaped things in the diagram aren't available, I wonder if I'll have to make a suitable strap to fit a U-clamp or similar current exhaust fitting.

I second that it's likely just gunge from solidified lubricant. I have avoided any liquid lubricant for the actual cable, preferring to extract the inner cable (great if you can do it without removing the outer cable so you don't even have to get under the car) and getting it very clean, before assembling with a little powdered graphite. Assuming the outer cable sheathing isn't rusty and causing the inner to bind, which can be tested with spinning the inner cable with one's fingers. Any stuck elements in the instrument itself can be sorted as in ed.h's links. I've attached a similar article I've found useful in the past. I would not advise squirting anything in 'just in case', as it's always worthwhile popping the bezel and checking what the problem really is, while going in blind can end up making things worse. Speedometer Repair.pdf

Alas, the holes are off-centre so it can't be mounted back to front. On with the plug, or I get good at TIG welding and cut it off. Although. Canley have original secondhand covers listed... I noticed a lot of oil covering the bottom of the engine (more than the usual 'rust prevention system') when replacing the exhaust downpipe gasket, and realised the rocker cover gasket wasn't sealing properly (as well as the continuous leak behind the fuel pump). The gasket is a thick, yet narrow, cork one which I think is not suitable for the alloy rocker cover as far as the parts advice on the supplier websites goes.

I had read the very same thing, JohnD, and have hunted for bronze nuts high and low, with nary a result (and that's in Cornwall!) There don't seem to be any online suppliers outside the US, and all the 'usual suspects' sell brass nuts. I've just replaced mine as the ones on there appeared to be a totally different thread from the studs and the gasket had gone, and was very wary of doing them up as they felt very soft. I just nipped them with the engine running until I couldn't feel any blow-by with my hand... Maybe I need to make some bronze ones. My bracket is missing (Herald 1200 Canley 122134 and GEX7511). The former is NCA, but I guess I could lash up an exhaust clamp or something. Does GEX7511, the twisted piece, bolt onto the bell housing flange somewhere, or further back?

I'm going to have to do this at some point and have been wondering how - rust is along the same seam... I was hoping that the whole roof section would somehow lift off from studying the parts diagrams, making the seam easier to access. I'll see what you do with it.

I have a (secondhand) Filter King after the pump as despite extra gaskets the pressure is still too high according to my gauge. Unfortunately despite servicing and new parts it appears to have adjustment between 'on' and 'off' with the slightest tweak of the adjuster screw cutting off the fuel entirely, with pressure measured on a 'tee' at the carburettor dropping to zero. It didn't stop the needle valve getting clogged numerous times in the last week either.