MG Reassembly Update

After much toil, the MG is still incomplete. The struggles are too numerous and dull to bother listing here. However, I will tell you about two humorous incidents--because some things are so annoying you just have to laugh.

After finally conquering the blasted thermostat housing by successfully coupling it with the smog pump, one of the thermostat studs snapped in two as I was tightening it. This necessitated the removal of the now thoroughly stuck thermostat housing and another trip down to O'Connors for a new stud. Some hours later, I stood triumphant over the indifferent cooling system control housing.

Much later, after valve adjustments and spark plug installation, I was almost done with reassembly. All that remained to reattach was the air injection manifold. This looked to be realtively simple, requiring the mounting of four pipes directly into the head via nuts attached to the manifold. But two of the nuts simply would not thread in place. Lots of penetrating oil and posts the to MG BBS later, it was clear that I'd need a new manifold.

This was doubly annoying because, in addition of being costly, the air injection manifold doesn't actually do very much. It's supposed to route excess unexploded gas and fumes to the smog pump so that those emissions can mix with fresh air and fully complete their reaction before exiting to the outside world through the exhaust. If this indeed took place, it would make the emmisions much cleaner. Unfortunately, what it really does is dilute the fumes with fresh air making the emissions seem cleaner.

Fortunately, Brian had a few used manifolds to offer me. So I now have three air injection manifolds in my possesion. Hopefully I can mount one of them and avoid having to buy a new one.