I've blanked off the manifold connection for the brake booster in hopes of getting my car back to where it was in the starting and smooth running department. It was still very hard starting when cold and required a lot of choke to keep running until some real heat was showing on the gauge.

So, I've rechecked the valve clearances, pulled the dizzy to recheck the points and set up static timing at 10BTDC, and turned the jets in and out with and without the benefit of the ColourTune (my bunsen burner blues on the Tune still resulted in the car stalling when the lifting pins were pushed). I finally opted for doing it the old way and just tuning by ear and the lifting pins until I've got everything running just right. I'll have to wait for a non-rain day though to take it out and see how all of the fiddling has worked out.

I'm concerned that something else just isn't quite right. I changed the manifold studs out when installing the new PECO header and shimmed like a madman to line up with the intake manifold. I'm starting to wonder if vibration has loosened those studs up and I have a vacuum leak there as well. My thinking being coloured by the fact that I found the four studs that you can access that aren't blocked by the heat shield were no longer at torqued values and that carb tuning results aren't consistent like they were before my hot on the highway story reported earlier.

The car never overheated - at least not according to the gauge, the rad cap and physical evidence - but it hasn't been the same since. "Oh, where oh where can my baby be, Bieber took her away from me."

So being unaware of what was going on in town, I got caught on the main crosstown highway in a parking-lot collection of fans on their way to a Justin Beiber concert. The singing of car loads of teeny-boopers just about drowned out my cries of anguish as for over an hour and a half I never got out of second gear and I couldn't keep my eyes of the temperature gauge in the 90 degree heat.

When the traffic finally broke and I stated to accelerate there was some farting until the car settled down into its customary smooth and easy running. But - at the first off ramp - my brake pedal went from a very stiff hard pedal to a light responsive power pedal.

In my rebuild last year, I changed the master cylinder, all of the flex lines, the steel axle lines (crushed), wheel cylinders, brake shoes and brake pads. After everything was bled, I drove around in the mistaken belief that very hard pedal brakes with a dose of - is this going to stop in time feeling - was typical for the B.

Looks as though the extended heat period on the highway was more than the car has experienced in the 2500 miles that I have put on it since rebuild and something in the booster has decided to break itself out of a slumber and do the right thing. I'm guessing one of the non-return valves must have been stuck (I have two - one on the manifold and one at the bottom front of the booster) and now it ain't.

But - the new braking condition came with a cost - increased idle speed so that's a vacuum leak. Got out the carb cleaner and started to spray around and sure enuff idle picked up when the booster to MC joint was sprayed. Eased the two items apart - why isn't there a gasket here? - and ensured that there was a cup seal in the booster that the MC was mating with. Noting a slight indentation on the booster around the inner mating bolt - maybe a screwdriver had been forced in here to wedge the two apart at some time in the past - I opted to slap some RTV sealant on the mating surface and then get them bolted up. Don't shoot me - with only a month or so left in the season I didn't want to get involved with pulling the master cylinder and rebuilding the brake booster. Vacuum leak appears solved - at least there is now no response to the carb cleaner.

But idle is still problematic. The car is harder to start when cold - it doesn't fire immediately as it did before and it takes more choke to establish a running idle. Coming to a stop, the idle drops below 500 momentarily with every indication that the car is going to stall and then the idle recovers by itself with no input to settle at 1000. I also note a very nice sounding, but previously unencountered, farting and coughing in the downshifts. All of this suggests to me that the manifold conditions have changed from what they were when I first tuned the carbs and they now should be retuned to richen them up a mite.

So this weekend, it will be rechecking the valve clearances, looking at the timing mark with the timing light and getting out that colour tune that I got on eBay in the Spring.

I listened very carefully at John Twist's tech session at MG2010 when he was looking at a car with SU conversions. He stressed that from 1 to 2 HP could be gained by putting in the original alloy back plate adapters from the old filter cans to ensure that flow into the SU's was smooth.

Say no more.

I got my hands on a set of adapters and then started to grind down the lower side of them (without affecting the air entry curve) to get enough room to get the K&N conical filters on. On my '76 there is next to no room between the brake booster and the rear carb and the K&N conical filters (or perhaps a pancake filter) are the only things that will fit. I could have picked up a 1/2 inch or so by shaving down the phenolic spacers but I'm already concerned about the PECO header lurking just behind the heat shield so didn't want to get the carbs any closer than the original design specifications.

Got the job done and while the adapters don't look pretty they are hidden by the filters. The filters are a very tight fit and I have some concerns about vibration wear and will have to watch this carefully. I am working on the theory that the filter will be vibrating at the same frequency as the engine so that there "shouldn't" be any friction.

Can't say that I have noted any real difference to power output but I don't ever drive my car real hard anyway. Before the adapters mileage was about 29 to the imperial gallon - now its about 31. I didn't retune the carbs.

Well the first trip to the field for "Abeja" and with the rain coming down and beating an early retreat to head for home, I was very pleased to hear later that the car was voted 3rd in Class "E".

When I think back to the bare tub that I had in October '08 to how she looks today, I am proud that the work done stands her in respectable stead with her peers.

Now if I can just get the Missus to go along with a few more bucks to get a new steering wheel and some of the fuel hosing tarted up .......

The B's first car show to hit the field with about 60 other B's, and lots of other British marques, at the Hudson British Car Show just outside of Montreal, Quebec. Although the weather was threatening rain, tops remained down and the car handled and performed very well.

And in the mail today was a copy of the B's birth Certificate from British Heritage. The car rolled off the line on a Wednesday, May 5, 1976 and was shipped to the USA on May 11th. As she was "born" on Cinco de Mayo it was entirely appropriate and a little surprising that we had already decided to nickname her "Abeja" which is Spanish for bee.