MG MGB and MGB GT Tech Talk
I spent a lot of time yesterday doing searches on venting the cover I bought from Basil and saw a lot of different ways to vent it I have been putting off doing the replacement but now I have it apart and am ready to commit to a venting method. Since these have been around a while does anybody have any new insight into doing this?
Funny you should mention this, as I did it just last week.
I went to the jewelry store (Elliot's the upscale hardware store, has EVERYTHING, and prices to match) and bought a brass 90 degree fitting with barbs on one side and threads on the other.
Took Basil's pristine, beautiful, well designed and executed plate and set up on the drill press and drilled a hole on the northwest corner of the plate. Tapped it to match the 90, teflon taped it and installed it so the barbed end was pointing west by northwest (think 290 to 300 degrees on a compass) and added a length of appropriate rubber hose that was long enough to make it around to the front of the engine and turn downward. Before I installed the hose, I placed a fairly large amount of steel wool in the hose as a filter.
I know that a group of you will pick this method to pieces, but its the easiest, cleanest option that Jimmy and I could agree on (yes, I'm dropping names again).
No photos, 'cause I'm busy doing rather than documenting.
Have fun
That sounds very much like what a lot of people have done. I'd think about using an aluminum fitting (Aeroquip or Earl's) so that the metal of the fitting and the plate are common. I'd happily put vents in these if I knew what size hose you guys need but it seems that different years had vents attached to the intake manifold or to the EGR hose and those hoses are different sizes so they take different fittings. I'm not big on the steel wool simply because I wouldn't want any errant steel scrap getting into the oiling system. The reason for pointing the fitting upward is so any oil that enters the system drains back down. If you want an obstruction in the hose, a little glass wool might be safer - but either shouldn't be necessary. Basil
PS - I have 8 backorders right now and will go to production on more when I have 10 orders. If there are any takers, let me know. They're $75 for the plate and $10 for the mounting kit. Thanks.
I did roughly the same as Harry except I used compressor fittings and tapped the hole in the plate with a tapered 1/4 inch pipe thread, I used a little loctite on the threads when I screwed the 90 degree fitting in.
Thanks for the replies. I am going to try to find a suitable aluminum elbow if I can. Might just go with brass. The thrill of the hunt!
This is what I di it require getting the correct size aluminum tubing and bending it just so to replicate the orginal tube, then tig welding it on, plus I made a baffle on the inside, not the easy way, but it was nice. I putting one on a race car engine now, and just usng a fitting simular to what Harry described, but I paln on doing the aluminum tube on my persoanl street engine.
I don't have a tig welder, here's what I did. I wnet to the local hydralic hose place, almost every populated city has one, I went armed with a piece of wire that was bent to what I needed the tubing to be bent to, then they bent me a piece of aluminum tubing, I had them make it a bit longer than I needed it to be. Then back at the shop, drill the hole in the cover where I wanted it, I then shorten the tubing to correct lenght and made sure it was placed the way I wanted it on the side cover made a index mark on the cover and tubing, took it down the road to my buddy who had a tig welder, he matvched up the index marks and welded it. For a baffle I took a small piece of the tubing, cut it in half, well a little less than half and had him tack it on the inside of the cover for the baffle.
What Hap said!
I looked at a similar approach, but since I'm on the road (Hap, you saw the engine on my trailer) I don't have a shop, and the swap was done in my son's new house-garage. No access to a welder, and no time to spend waiting on a shop to do it for me.
Hap, yours looks great. How much for one for me?
Have fun
Rather than drill through Basil's plate, I bought a breather that goes on the blanking plate below where a mechanical fuel pump would've been.
http://www.minimania.com/web/Item/C-2A265/InvDetail.cfm
Yep, the Mini Mania piece is good piece to use, if you do have the blanking plate on your block, because it get the crankcase gases directly at the source, we used on them Spridget race motors for years. It's funny how some blocks have the mech. pump palte and sopme don't and it's not whatnyou think, mosty there are on 18V, and almost all RB 18V, go fiquire.
I decided to go the blanking plate route, that cover is much too nice for me to screw up drilling holes into!
I got the fuel pump blanking plate breather also but I'm not sure if I will have room to fit it next to the RB engine mounts. Do any of you guys have a photo of yours installed?