Ulu

Hey! That's the engine from my old MG Midget! (Oh, no...an MGB, huh?)

I can remember as a kid reading rusty old Burma-shave signs, way out in the desert, long after they were gone everywhere else. There was something else too...some similar roadside ad signs that you saw along the highways, hawking some product or other. I don't remember what they sold, but they were little steel signs which people evidently liked for target practice. Lots of them were a bit shot up.

Have you tried flame polishing the plastic? Is it possible to do "clear" or transparent things? I've been waiting for these things to become more mainstream before buying one, but it looks like the time is nigh.

That is sorta strange. I don't see a reason the typical style towers (if not the exact parts) wouldn't work on the converts.

That one going slideways in the photo does look like the one which was built about 1995 in Fresno, at the world famous roach coach builder: Carlin Mfg. My Ex-boss was a salesman there. The Pontiac Bonneville lights are a clue.

Rather than put tape on the new paint, I will always tend top put the tape on the trim pieces. The adhesives can't hurt the stainless. They can hurt the paint. Now I'm not sure if that blue tape (or the green tape I bought) have a safer adhesive, but I say avoid putting tape on new paint at all costs.

$1.85 wasn't much, even back then. I was making $5/hr building VW engines in some little shop in Utah, while I was on Summer vacation. I built up a '67 Mustang V8 for my sister, then stuffed it in a ditch the first ride. Fortunately it was a soft ditch & damage was slight, but there was a small trout inside the car when retrieved. I caught a lot of flack over that adventure.

I need new ones too, and I was considering just making my own. I never did like the rocker clip arrangement on these cars, and people used to hit that trim with a foot getting out of the car and displace it slightly. I think it deserves a sturdier arrangement than it had. Mine only had a few stock clips left anyhow. Some of the rocker clips on it looked like the ones from the trunk trim of my '66 Ford. (the rhomboid-shaped ones with the little spring wire & a stud on the back. I have no idea if they were stock. Actually, my car was built up from parts of other cars in the '70s, by the previous owner. There were lots of non-stock parts on it. Certainly there are real missing P-15 parts that I've never laid eyes on.

It was a '59 Ranger, but no telling if the wiring was 100% stock. The resistor might have been added after the original wire melted down.

On my car the clips fit entirely inside the trim. Only the two fingers that go in the rectangular hole project from the stainless. In the photo your clips appear bent so perhaps they're different than the Plymouth clips I have.

The Octo-Auto? Hmmm, maybe with the quality of tires in those days it wasn't a bad idea. You could have 4 flats & still drive it.

Nice! I'd hop on that, & buzz over to Covington Chili for a 5-way. (Chili is different out here...)

The one on my Edsel was the typical white ceramic one. It failed due to age and corrosion of the resistor wire. That car was from San Diego & had some salt damage on everything, & was never really a keeper.

Sounds logical, though I've never experienced this, and I drove my Edsel from SanFrancisco to Clovis with no ballast. But not all coils are created equal & I've seen one car have back-to-back coil failures due to heat soaking. Heat definitely kills coils.

I've seen this method on many cars, but I prefer the ballast high on the firewall or fender where it'll stay 100% dry & not be subject to engine vibration. They are impervious to heat, but they heat up & if rain hits a hot ballast it'll crack it.

If your ballast breaks the engine will stop, but just unplug it & stick the two wires together & the car will run again. It'll burn up the points sooner than normal, but with good points it'll run 5 thousand miles that way. It'll go 10k and more easily on a set of points, with a ballast. It's not a critical part. It just reduces the coil voltage on a running engine to make the points last longer.

OK, so they're shorter, but how does the wire diameter & number of coils compare? If it's thinner and the springs are shorter, you'll likely end up driving a lowrider. If there's more coils you might also get some coil-bind on a bump. (bottoming)

Hah! I'll bet that thing has 3-VW engines in it

I had a '59 that wasn't bad, but the frame had cracked around all the rivet holes. I had to weld it all over. Had typical cab sill rot, but not much. It was quick, but wasn't half the truck of my '61 IHC. Unfortunately the IHC had 4-fender-death-rot from 10 years in Utah. That IHC 304 was a great engine.

I'd check the ballast resistor. When they get old they'll work for a second then open up & the ignition quits.

In '73 I was a Sophomore at USU, driving a '66 Ford Coupe I'd rebuilt during the last year of high school. I traded that for an MG midget. Second worst move of my whole life. A fun car to drive, but about as reliable as a Yugo. I soon traded the MG for a '66 Belair 4-dr, which was maybe the 2nd most reliable car I ever owned, but used a little oil.

Regarding the cleaning of brake parts: You can clean the outside of the metal lines and junction blocks with common solvent or detergents if the system is still closed, but only brake fluid or commercial brake cleaner fluids should be used to clean any rubber hoses or boots, or the internal parts & passages.

Pam? LOL... I knew this old guy who was a MIG welder all his life. He used to tell me the best MIG spatter-off was duck fat. I've never tried it, but I'll bet the welds smell nice.

I'm bumping this up so another member can find it easily. Also to report that as I've been tied up with fixing up the mancave, fixing my truck, and other chores, my de-rust operation has been allowed to die slowly. About 4" has evaporated from the tanks, and the anodes are all so crusty there is no real action now at all. Also the parts hanging inn the tank were rust-free long ago. Anyhow, though I've ignored it all for several weeks, nothing bad has happened either. Nothing was damaged, leaked, shorted out or caught fire. For all it's Frankenstein's Lab appearance, this really is a relatively safe business compared to blasting, chemicals or etching; athough a regular caustic hot tank isn't particularly hazardous unless it's gas-fired & you let things get crusty.

I've used the Uni-syn device to do a dual carb tune & I found having 2 helped, and it also helped to have an assistant, (& a pair of short "stacks" to raise them, if your air horn has a bolt in the middle.) To do my VW with twin Solex carbs I used to use tomato sauce cans with the ends removed & some gasket foam on the ends. Tiny air leaks will goof the readings, so however you fit it up, get it to seal. With a dual Weber (de Brazil') carb set I didn't need the cans, as they have a horn like the B&B. It's harder to balance a multi-carb engine with these but I've used a bank of ported vacuum gages to do 2, 3, & 4-carb engines & that usually works better (especially for sidedrafts, though the Uni-syn works with a sidedraft too.) The thing is that you want to see how the other carbs react too, when you twiddle the mix on the carb with the Uni-syn on it, (though the difference may not be so evident on log-manifold or plenum setups as a straight side-draft setup.) With only one device you can tell something but IMO you can't tell enough. Say you have a 4-carb setup: If you see carb 1 gets a different reaction than carb 2, when you twiddle carb 3, but carb 4 gets the same reaction as 1 & 3, then you know something's up with cyl 2. BTW, I thought those Brazilian Webers were real good carbs, and 2 of them would supply a 100 HP+ VW engine. All the jets were removable, so tuning was very flexible. Mine did not leak like the Solex carbs did.