Category: NG

Oh dear, another car project.

We bought this November 2021 without viewing it and it’s been under a tarp since. Supposed to be a Dad and Son project. Now sitting in a Clark tent garage.

Closer inspection reveals lots of surface rust however I’m expecting most of it will clean up.

Front end coming apart. It seems to have the wrong dampers. These are similar to an Austin Cambridge or maybe MGA with the arms turned round. Either way the bump stops don’t line up and the geometry is different to the MGB dampers.

The lower radiator hose is kinked and collapsed and full of a waxy deposit from the anti-freeze. I believe this happens when the anti-freeze boils and the waxy stuff separates out when it cools. I have some in the TC V8 expansion tank and I think both V8’s have suffered. Oddly there is little online relating to this and I can’t imagine that I’ve got the only two V8’s suffering this.

OK – here is a short set of pics as I took the engine out. Probably your NG was put together differently.

The big pain is getting the radiator cowling aligned so the bonnet gaps are nice. To simplify this I have tapped some locating bolts through the cowling bracket to the radiator brackets. This is because in building the car the holes get enlarged and elongated to get the gaps right so once in place drill and tap some 4BA (showing my age there!) bolts just so the exact position can be found again.
When I built this NG (a long time ago!) I did try and make the cowling removeable as a unit with the head and spot lights, horns and wiring sub-harness that has a multi-plug. You can see this as the white bit resting on the chassis to the left of the rad.

To realign the radiator brackets I put a bit of wood across the car and some tape on the wings see pic 5. Note that my wings seem to have moved so they need tweaking later!

Not much else really just undo anything that joins to the engine. I forget the temperature sender capillary pipe and bent it a bit, it then broke off. Also when removing it from the manifold it broke in half and the end bit was left in the manifold. A bit of careful wiggling got it out without loosing it inside.
I’d recommend not leaving that bit connected as a recon gauge is about 60 pounds.