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MG MGB Technical - Camshaft swop

Has anyone any knowledge on changing a cam shaft on a B series engine without removing the engine or sump from the car. Theoretically it's possible but whats it like in practice ? does anyone have any experience.

Ta. Oscar
Oscar

To change the camshaft there is no need whatsoever to remove the engine nor drop the sump or any thing like it. All you need to do is take the radiator out (and probably it's mounting diaphragm too) to give room to withdraw the shaft.

Ernie York

Don't forget to remove the distributor drive gear and the tappets.
John H

What about the oil pump drive gear?
David DuBois

Oscar,

You can do it on all but 18GB engines - for these the sump and oil pump need to come out too.
Chris at Octarine Services

No one has mentioned that you need to remove the cyl. head to take out the tappets, but that is obvious, isnīt it? :-)

Tore
Tore

On second thought - may be you can just loosen the rocker shaft so that you get the pushrods out? :-(

But that means you will have to retighten the cyl. head nuts with the old gasket, and that may not be good practise? Or?

Itīs Friday! :-)

Tore
Tore

Yes it is Friday isn't it !! To remove the rocker shaft slacken the head bolts individually and then tighten to about 25ft/lbs. Then remove the bolts holding the rocker shaft. The residual torque in the remaining bolts is sufficient to hold the head gasket firmly in place whilst not being sufficient to warp the head. The other thing you can do of course is to slacken the rocker adjustment screws and push the rockers over to release the pushrods.
Iain MacKintosh

You can usually get the pushrods out by backing off the adjusters and sliding the rocker over against the seperator spring then, remove no 1 & 8 rocker. Denis
DENIS H

Chris,
"You can do it on all but 18GB engines - for these the sump and oil pump need to come out too."

Now you've tweaked my curiosity. What's unique about the 18GB engine?
Steve Buchina

There isn't enough clearance in the hole in no 4 main bearing web to get the rear cam journal past the oil pump drive. Hence take off the sump and remove the pump and drive.
Paul Walbran

Thanks Paul,
Never had a need to remove cam, except during total rebuilds. Nice bit of info to tuck away in the memory banks.
Steve Buchina

I'm dumb enough to change mine frequently, between events. Race cam where warranted, tractable cam for autotests. One day I might grow out of it, I thought 30-od years ago. Still waiting :-)
Paul Walbran

This thread was discussed between 12/04/2007 and 15/04/2007

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