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Q & A: Necessity is the mother of invention.

Hi John,

First off, just wanted you to know that your technical book has already paid for itself by keeping me from making a mistake with the distributor on my mgb. It really is a good manual -- thanks for putting it together.

I've got a couple of quick questions. My MGB-GT is basically a 1974, but the previous owner kludged it together. As a result, not everything was there when I bought it, and somethings just don't match up with any picture, manual, etc. So, here's a couple of real dummy questions that would be easy to answer if I had another MG to look at.

Question #1: Each of the SU carbs has a vacuum port connection near the throttle plate. The previous owner connected the distributor vacuum line to the port on the rear carb and plugged the port on the front carb. I'm not sure this is correct. I would guess that both ports should be plugged and that the vacuum line should be routed to the intake manifold itself. Your thoughts??

Question #2: The overflow outlet on fuel bowls on both carbs weren't connected to anything when I got the car. From the pictures/drawings I've seen, it looks like the car came from the factory with lines running downward from the overflow outlet. Unfortunately, none of the drawings show where they go. Do they just run downward so that any overflow drops to the ground, or do they really go somewhere?

Thanks in advance for your help. You are very gracious in offering this service.

--Mark

PS: Funny fix - I didn't want to spend $19.95 for the rubber gasket that holds the heater tubes to the heater box, so I went to home depot thinking, "Surely, there is something here that will cost less that I can use". I wound up buying a pack of scouring pads -- the green ones that are about 5/16 inch thick. I cut 5 of them to size, cut out the two holes for the heater pipes, and pasted them to the heater in a stack by using the left over window trim adhesive I had. Then, I coated them all with the adhesive, let it set and wound up with a perfect gasket for less than $3.00.

Then I got thinking about heater tubes (missing from the car when purchased). Back to Home Depot where I purchased a $1.97 P-trap extension in the plumbing section, which was cut in half. It fits the heater box perfectly and is the perfect complement to the scouring pad gasket.

Next step -- adapting the flexible hose from my wife's portable vacuum cleaner (when she's not looking) to go between the heater tubes and the demisters.

Mark!

Necessity is the mother of invention. You should write to Home Depot -- they might use your experience in an ad!! Then we'd get some free advertising for our MGs!

In 1974 the engine design was heavily influ... read more