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MG MGB GT V8 Factory Originals Technical - A little good news

The car runs. I'd like to thank everyone on this forum who put up with me while trying to get it all together. It was an unusual project and involved some pretty big challenges. To recap, an eec-iv system with edis cannibalized from a 4.6L '93 Crown Vic was adapted to a blown and intercooled '63 Olds 215, transplanted into a '71 MGB. The stock Ford wiring harness was modified and grafted into the car, crank trigger adapted, and all sensors, etc fitted. After rechecking ignition and injector timing about 6 different ways and clearing all but 3 koeo codes I removed the injectors, cleaned and backflushed them and got them all working, reinstalled, and it fired right up. Idle is excellent, responsiveness is the best I've seen on these engines, and it sounds extremely healthy. As it is a fresh engine and there's more to do I didn't do a road test. No tags or insurance anyway and the area sees a lot of law enforcement traffic. I'm not at all eager to get towed.

So that's the good news. The one thing that will need attention soon, is that after raising the revs and holding it for awhile it will suddenly cut out, and I haven't tried holding the throttle steady to see if it's just a hiccup or if it would die, but it will drop right back to idle and run smoothly. In fact it runs so smooth that I was able to balance a quarter on it's edge on the cowling :)

Here's what the car looks like: http://www.foresight.cc/blackwoodlabs/Projects/MG/MG_Main.htm
Now I can get back to the body and paint work, and I hope to have it painted by summer. After that I will start driving it and assess how well it works with the unmodified Crown Vic computer. The results of that assessment will determine how deeply I'll want to go into custom tuning since I'll want a baseline to start with at the very least, but I do intend to put together the wideband O2 sensor board once I manage to get some parts so that I can monitor the air/fuel ratio, and I would very much like to find a way to make use of the knock sensors I've mounted to the engine. In case anybody was wondering where I've been, my ISP went belly-up a few weeks ago and I've been so tied up with this and one other project (hydraulics) that it's taken me this long to get it all sorted out. In the meantime about 2 weeks worth of e-mail hit the bit bucket with no way to recover it, so I'll apologize for not responding to anyone who may have tried to contact me. Man that car sounds good!

Jim
Jim Blackwood

Jim,

Congratulations! I for one am looking forward to seeing your car in the flesh. You've done an amazing job on that car.
Dan Masters

Great Job Jim!!! Its great to hear that its running....Man if you get that body work all done that is going to be one wicked car!!!...It IS one wicked car!!!

Dave

http://pages.prodigy.net/chevy_dave/mgb.html
Dave

Jim-
E-GAD!! Incognito, huh? One thing's for sure: you won't have to worry about anybody local stealing it for a joyride. All of the members of the local Police Department will know who it belongs to!
Steve S.

You could just scare thieves away with that remote hood 'eatcha' thing! Then, leave 'em in your smoke. We all aspire to create our dream-mobile, however yours stands out as a truely inspired piece of art. Congratulations, and may the products of your creativity never leave you satisfied. Will it be mostly red and do you do airplanes?
Angus

Yep, red it'll be. Airplanes? It -would- be fun to get back to that sometime, who knows? Thanks for all the kind comments guys. I suspect the safest course would be to stop by all the local police departments and offer rides. Some of them will have seen it before, and a few may even remember who I am, but I suspect it'd be a smart move just to cut down on the "curiosity" stops.

BTW, I've completed the article on the supercharger installation and will be sending it in for publication in the British V8 Newsletter tomorrow, hopefully along with some new jpg's, and I'm going to try to take a decent mpg of the engine running and get it up on my website. That may not be done before this weekend though.

Jim
Jim Blackwood

Jim,

Well this looks amazing. I just did a "stock" conversion but made a walnut interior. I know how much time and effort it takes to make something one-off. Compared to your car, mine interior looks like a small job.
Hope you enjoy driving it because a person who takes so much time to convert a car often gets bored when its ready and will look for another project soon.
Keep us posted
Peter
Peter van de Velde

Thanks Peter. I've had it 20 years, been a V8 for well over a dozen, it's hard to keep track. This is the 4th V8 I think. Dash was done many moons back, body has been through many changes. Much as I like transforming it to what I want, the real joy is in driving it. As a result it has spent most of its life in hot rod primer with incomplete mods, being driven hard. This will be the first time its been "purty" since I bought it. Don't expect to see it on the auction block during my lifetime.

Jim
Jim Blackwood

This thread was discussed between 17/03/2002 and 28/03/2002

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