1976 MG Midget

[Native]

No 7 years bad luck?

[Loren]

No, I did that on the last Miata I had! Was trying to snap it back into the housing and cracked it.

This one didn't actually break the mirror. It's survived 47 years, being removed and reinstalled for a repaint, AND falling on the garage floor. It's a good luck charm!

But, today... well, I've started another mini-project that's gonna get it's own thread. At a minimum, I needed someplace to mount my main power switch and my horn button. The center console seems like the best place, and I don't want to drill holes in it all willy-nilly without knowing what's behind them. Plus, I need to remove that console to replace the old barely-working hazard flasher. Already have the replacement.

So, I removed the console. That required removal of the center carpet and the entire shifter assembly. The console itself is only held in by 8 screws. And there are a BUNCH of wires back there. I'll put the deets in the other thread.

Console Thread

[Loren]

Okay, so the console is essentially done. Just need to finish putting the interior back in.

That project covered a lot of bases. I now have main power switching, a functional horn button, and I went ahead and added ignition power and starter buttons so that I can bypass the ignition switch. (It's just a matter of time before that switch gets funky, and I hate, hate, hate the steering wheel lock release on that thing)

I need to get back to what I was doing before the brake lights gave out and instigated the whole electrical project and related console project!

But, yesterday, I had a few minutes, so I tended to horns. I need to rewire them because I'm now switching positive side rather than negative. First, I wanted to see if the horns worked, so I removed them both. One of them is dead. The other one sounds ill. So, I proceeded further down the rabbit hole of horns.

Warning, serious geekery follows.

As I've become somewhat musical over the past decade or so (I've learned to play Ukulele), I wanted to experiment with at least 3 horns to create a nice chord. That's what they did with those classic Cadillac horns that sound so good. 3 or 4 horns in particular notes to make a pleasant chord... in spite of being a blaringly loud and obnoxious horn.

Ultimately, I opted for a Hella Supertone Red set, which gets me 300hz & 500hz. That's (roughly) a D and a B note. I opted for a cheaper horn for the 3rd note and was just going to buy a single Farbin brand 410hz horn. That's a G-Sharp. When I went to pull the trigger, I found that a high/low set of the Farbin horns was only $5 more than the single horn. So, I got a 410hz and a 510hz.

That gives me a D, B and G#. Plus another B. The two B's are 10hz apart. Musically, that's actually pretty close. I'll experiment. If they sound good together, I'll use both. If one sounds better than the other, I'll use one.

D, B and G# makes a bit of a "jazz chord", which I think I'll like. It's either a G Sharp Major Diminished, or a B Minor 6th with no 5th (who needs a 5th, anyway?), or a D Major Diminished 7th with no 3rd (yeah, we need that 3rd even less than we need the 5th!). Being a fan of Bluesy 7th chords, I'll probably call it a Ddim7 chord. If I remember my chord theory correctly, the D is the lowest note and would be considered the "root", so Ddim7 would probably be most appropriate. So, I'll be ready. You now... when people ask.

The classic Caddy horns were, as near as I can tell, A, C, D and F. That's either an F 6th chord, or a D Minor 7th chord. I'm sure you wanted to know that.

Playing around here: https://www.onemotion.com/chord-player/ with the instrument set to "horn", working in the B Flat Major scale with a few settings tweaked to allow extended chords... I think the Ddim7 sounds a little better than the Dm7. It's a slightly lower chord. Mind you, Dm7 is a pretty okay sounding chord, too!

Anyway, my four horns are on order. And I'll have an "interesting" horn to go with my new horn button.

[AScoda]

Custom horn notes seems very...you. I can't say I have ever given a thought to a horn. "Does it work? Yes. Next"
You mentioned the ignition lock and that reminded me of the old crustang. There is a button on the bottom of the console you have to press to remove the key. The solution was to zip tie the switch part in the depressed position inside the column and forget it ever existed. Don't know why it existed, but it was annoying.

[Loren]

I'm not much for using a horn, and I've honestly driven cars without a functional horn for years at a time and not missed it at all.

But, this is the kind of car (and this is the age) where people might pull out in front of you if they don't see you. Also the kind of car that you might want to give a friendly "meep meep" to a waving LBC fan. So, I'd like to have a horn that is both loud, and has a moderately pleasant, or at least interesting sound.

Oddly enough, the first few times I drove this car, I did indeed find instances where I could have used the horn. Some flake at a stop sign about to pull out, oblivious to my presence.

The DRL's will also help. But, a horn that says "I'm here" without being one of those obnoxious high-pitched "in your face" air horns is also good. I hope.

When I use a horn, I just like it to have a proper sound. Curiously, the Smart car has a GREAT horn. I almost sourced one of those. It's a "big" horn. Not like a little 80's era Honda Civic horn.

[Loren]

Here's a fun one:

I've been driving the car more. Trying to work out the kinks and build trust in it. So, I drove it over to CLW for dinner Friday night. Took the long way home, drove through CLW/Dunedin area. Nice little drive.

As I turned into my neighborhood (yes, I hung the corner... that's why I fitted that swaybar!), I immediately got significant fuel starvation. It came back... barely. And I was able to limp it home. This happened once before when I was low on fuel. Chalked it up to crud in the fuel tank probably blocking the fuel pick-up, a project for another day as long as it keeps running. Putting gas in it solved the problem that time, but it only took a couple gallons to fill it. Weird.

So, this time, I'd filled up earlier in the week just on a whim. It took less than 2 gallons to fill it, and I reset the trip meter. (What? Of course this car has a trip meter! It would be uncivilized to not have such a fundamental feature!) So, I knew that I'd only driven 34 miles, there should be around 5 gallons of fuel left in the tank.

I spent the whole night looking up how to remove the fuel tank, researching cleaning it vs. replacing it. Replacing it with a fuel cell or a plastic tank rather than an OE tank. I went down every rabbit hole there was. Ultimately, decided to replace it with a quality OE style fuel tank. Couple hundred bucks and I'll never have to fuck with it again. BUT... I've not even looked at it. They told me they'd replace "the entire fuel system", did that include that tank? Probably not, but I don't know. And even if it's not new, is it actually rusty inside? I have Steve's digital endoscope, I can look inside. Better check before I spend money.

Saturday: I go out and look. Sure enough, the tank IS new! Well, newish. It's been replaced. Couple scrapes on the bottom and some surface rust. Stuck the scope in it... squeaky clean! And... the scope came out dry. No fuel on it at all. Tap on the tank... huh. That sounds very hollow and empty!

Yep. I ran the car out of gas!

Some additional research turned up this nugget:

Vintage cars like this that have a 90-degree bend in the filler hose, and old fuel tank venting systems (that may or may not be working right) often have trouble with modern fuel pump shut-offs! So, I thought I'd filled the car up... and I had not.

One potential solution: Rip the little flapper thingie out of the fuel filler tube, that's reported to help. A less-invasive solution: Insert the fill nozzle UPSIDE DOWN so that the sniffer tube is at the top rather than the bottom and less likely to catch splash-back from inside the filler tube. Do that, AND fill slower.

Once I went out and got some gas in a gas can and limped the car to the gas station, doing that allowed me to put a full 6.5 gallons in the tank before shut-off. And I was able to squeak in another half-gallon. That, plus the half-gallon I'd put in from my gas can... that's the capacity of the tank. 7.5 gallons.

Someday, I'll drop the tank and fix the fuel sending unit. Meanwhile, at least I know how to fill the car up, and the trip meter works.

[Loren]

Here's a fun diversion that I decided to take care of while the car is already down for parts. (waiting for some headlight-related parts so I can button that all up)

The oil filter on this car is attached to an adapter. Looks a lot like a sandwich adapter for an oil cooler, but I guess it's not. It's an offset adapter that changes the position and angle of the oil filter. It seems that nobody really knows for sure why it exists! The original Midget engine doesn't have it. Completely different engine, I'm not even sure where the filter is located on that engine, but it's probably on the other side.

This engine, you may recall, is the Triumph engine out of a Spitfire. Exactly the same engine and transmission, lifted out of the Spitfire, stuffed into the Midget. They did that because they needed an engine that could handle the US emissions requirements and still deliver some performance. The MG engine was tapped out, the Triumph engine was at max bore, but was able to be stroked from 1300 to 1500 for additional torques. Mmmm... torques. So, that's why they did it.

I'm guessing there are two possible reasons for this filter adapter. One is the oil filter itself. The original Spitfire oil filter just plain wouldn't clear the steering shaft, and there may not have been a smaller alternative at the time. Another possibility is that maybe they crash-tested it and found that the steering shaft can puncture the oil filter spraying hot oil in a collision. (doesn't seem likely, but it's possible) One more possibility is that they had to fit the air pump (pumps air into the exhaust manifolds for some dumb emissions reason), and it's right there in that vicinity. So, for whatever reason, they fitted this stupid filter adapter thingy on the Midget 1500 engine.

The filter hangs off of the left side of the engine and looks a little like this:

Notice that little bracket hanging out in the air in front of it? That's the air pump bracket. I need to remember to remove that while I have the filter out. (can't get the bolt out with the filter in place)

And that's not the original filter! The original Triumph filter is still available, but it's hard to get in the US, and expensive. I think the original filter is a little fatter and slightly shorter. Almost everybody has converted the car by replacing the threaded adapter that goes between the block and the filter, and replacing it with one that converts the thread from 5/8-18 to a much more common 3/4-16 thread. There are MANY readily available filters that fit that thread and will work just fine.

Because it fits in this application, the filter they used is a long, skinny 3/4-16 filter. Namely a PL20252. It's about the biggest commonly available filter that will easily fit. Cool.

Why am I talking about all of this? Well, the oil filter adapter is LEAKING. I could replace the O-rings in it and fix that. Or... maybe, I could just eliminate the thing altogether? Man, it was hard to find clear answers about whether it was possible to do that or not! But, it appears that some people have done it by removing the adapter, and fitting a shorter PL10241 filter. That's a 3/4-16 filter, so it has to use that threaded adapter. Cool.

So, I dug into it last night. Took the filter off, no issues there. Found a suitable socket (29mm worked), and got out my 1/2" breaker bar, prepared to put some grunt to it. Turned out to be barely more than finger tight. No wonder it was leaking! Once I got it out, I found that the main o-ring was mashed completely flat and level with the housing, and was hard as a rock.

The banjo bolt that holds the thing in place also has an o-ring. It was also mashed flat and aged to a crispness far beyond what one would expect of rubber. If you've ever done a CAS o-ring on a Miata... yeah, like that.

Here's the threaded adapter:

Something I learned from a YouTube video... the 3/4-16 end is too short to engage the threads of the filter if you thread the 5/8 end all the way into the block. So, I need some kind of spacer to keep that from threading all the way in. No biggie, just another part to order.

I slapped the old filter on there just to see if it would work. Nah. I could get the threads started, but it's WAY too close to the steering shaft. Hangs over the top of it with like 1/8" of clearance. No bueno.

Measured the space between the flange on the block and the steering shaft. It's right about 3.25" at its closest point. Most filters are longest right in the middle of their diameter and taper off around the sides. So, call it 3.5".

Thinkng... The PL10241 filter that others have used here is 3.36" long. So, yeah, it'll fit... just. And I have to wonder if my completely shot transmission mounts (trans is sagging and resting on the crossmember) and my engine mounts of unknown condition have compromised my clearance a little bit. I could be at "worse case" right now, I bet that's the case. Anyway, I don't like having less than 1/4" clearance between the oil filter and hard objects.

Research... I found that the smallest commonly available 3/4-16 filter is a PL14476. It's 2.88" long. Much better. It's a common Toyota filter used in engine up to at least 2.0 liters, I think it'll be just fine on the 1500. I did fine an even smaller filter, about 2.25" long. But, it's spec'd for small tractors, and seemed to have a lower bypass valve pressure, don't want that.

So, I've ordered the PL14476 filter, and I opted to use a 5/8-18 jam nut as a spacer on the adapter. Once those parts arrive, I'll go ahead and do an oil change and fit them. That SHOULD take care of my most significant oil leak. Whilst simplifying and adding lightness, of course. (should have used an aluminum spacer)

[Native]

Generic filter relocation kit? You didn't mention that.

[Loren]

No, it's actually a factory part. I initially thought it was an aftermarket oil cooler kit (there is one that looks almost the same, but it's got two hose fittings on the side). This one has some kind of fitting off of the bottom that I'm not even sure what it's for. But, it's a factory part.

The smaller filters probably weren't available back in the 70's, so they had to reposition the filter to fit the steering column in this car. That seems like the most likely explanation.

[Native]

I meant - relocate the filter completely to do away with fitment/space issues. You know - hoses and a remote mount. It's not "simplify" but it might make it easier?

[Loren]

This is the easiest. Just remove the adapter and put the filter directly to the block. It just requires a smaller filter to do it. My filter arrived Friday. It's a cute little thing! But, it's sufficient for 2.0 Toyotas, so I have no concerns about its ability.

I should get back to this on Tuesday. And the rest of my parts for the headlights should also arrive Tuesday, so I can get back to that Friday or Saturday.

[Loren]

Got the oil filter stuff done. Ended up using a 5/8-18 nut as a spacer on the threaded adapter. It all went together without issue.

The filter is a cute little thing, not a chance of a clearance problem. Looks a little something like this:

[Loren]

I also made some progress on installing the headlight harness and headlights today. The right side is mostly done and installed and working. The left side I just took apart... and, it's different. Looks like it may be a headlight bucket assembly from an older car. I need to do some research and decide if I want to make some changes there.

[Native]

Somebody before you cut corners when messing with it?

[Loren]

Yeah. It had a cheap and dirty "restoration" done sometime within the past 5-10 years. It doesn't look like they did much other than a rushed paint job, and some butchering of the exterior light wiring (which was mostly cut and spliced rather than digging for the connectors to unplug things). They also got red overspray all over stuff under the hood, like the wiring harness!

I'm just happy the car is relatively rust-free and solid.

[Native]

I'm just happy the car is relatively rust-free and solid.

Yah - the other stuff is (obviously) fixable.

[Loren]

Figured out the headlight stuffs. They did use a setup from an earlier Midget. The headlight bucket is the same, I just need to get the spring clip to replace the screw clip. The chrome trim is different, and slightly smaller diameter, so I'm ordering a correct replacement. That's all I need. The clip and the trim ring. Somebody hacked it together... actually had glue holding it together!

Since I was placing an order with Moss Motors, and having to pay their $12 minimum shipping charge... I went ahead and ordered my one-piece speedo cable ($26) to replace the 3 piece one that I have. The speedo cable goes to a mileage counter for the EGR light, and another mileage counter for the CAT light. They're supposed to light up at like 30 or 50k miles. I've removed the lights! Certainly don't need the stupid little counter boxes. Simplify, and add lightness!

If I can get motivated today, I'll finish wiring the left side headlight. I can put it together, just can't put the trim ring on. I should do that. But, my sinus infection says I should take a nap.

[Loren]

Well, a sinus infection delayed my progress this week. Didn't do squat on my Tuesday off... or my Friday off. But, I felt better today. Did some garage clean-up, and finished up the headlight install!

I've got them reasonably aimed, and they're great! Crisp white light. Bright, but, nobody's flashing me. And SERIOUS high beams! New horn works great, too.

Low Beam:


High Beam:


Street Demo:

[AScoda]

[quote="Loren" I've removed the lights! Simplify, and add lightness![/quote]

Technically, you removed lightness.

[Loren]

But, then I added additional light... ness.

So, after getting the headlights working, I'm back to trying to drive the car more. And, of course, every other time I drive the car, some new issue surfaces.

The latest:
Brake pedal has been getting lower. Last drive on Tuesday, it started to get concerning. Dang it!

On that drive, I stopped for gas. Trip meter said 65 miles (is it accurate? I don't know, never checked it.), and it took 5 gallons to fill the tank. So... 13 mpg??? That's terrible! I guess it's running richer than I thought.

Got home, and as I was pulling into the driveway, the window regulator handle fell off of my door! Parked in the driveway and left the car idling while I found a screw and reinstalled the window regulator, then looked under the car to see if I could find a brake fluid leak.

While doing that, the engine started stumbling. I managed to catch it before it stalled, revved some black smoke out of it, and it stabilized. I didn't find any brake fluid leaking, but the fluid level in the back half of the reservoir was low. I went ahead and topped it up.

Decided to take a quick run around the block to see if the brake pedal felt any different. It didn't. But, the engine is now running like shit. Like it's running on 3 cylinders. Evens out a little over 3k, but still has no power. Is it running so pig rich that it's fouled plugs? Something else? Idunno.