It's pretty amazing how much crud a carburator can collect in only 20 years. The car came with a Weber 32/36, which doesn't look like its been touched since it was installed. I bought new jets for it from Weber Direct, and a carb soaking kit from NAPA.

That stuff from NAPA is amazing - the carb looks brand new. Everything went back together easily and the car now runs MUCH smoother and has more power, although still not quite where I'd like it to be.

I also installed a rebuilt distributor from Advance Distributor. Wow!

I still don't have everything quite dialed in yet - the timing was set using the "grab the distributor and adjust it until the car runs good" method. My friend Larry gave me a timing light last week, so I'll be dialing the timing in a little more accurately soon.

A friend of mine who is a professional mechanic and who has every tool imaginable helped me last week convert the rear shocks to Gabriel G-Force shocks. While we were under there, we replaced the rubber pads on the springs, and the straps. One strap was completely torn, the other was almost completely torn.. they were definitely due.

The car rides MUCH better now, although it's a little softer than I'd have expected in tight corners. Still very nice, and the whole job was only about $100 with everything.

Went tire shopping yesterday. The folks at The Tire Warehouse in Queensburry were the ONLY people I talked to that had any clue about what to use for tires on an MG - every other place I called had answers like "Well, bring it in and we'll match it up with something". These folks were great! Anyway, my little toy now has four General AltiMax RT's in 185/65R14. The tires on the front were from 1981, and the ones on the back from 2000, and the rubber was cracking and separating and threatening to leave me stranded.

They let me into the shop to check under the car while it was up on the lift, and the straps for the rear suspension are shot. New ones are on the way, I bought the shocks for the rear conversion to Gabriel G-Force shocks at Auto-Zone, and I'm off to pick up the hardware for the rest of that job later today.

Beautiful weather today, and today's the first I've had the top down all year. Glad the rain let up.

I love my new toy - my 1976 MGB. The car if I understand the history right was originally from somewhere they don't have snow or salt, partially restored by an auto body shop in PA somewhere, driven for a few years, then sold through an auto auction to the dealer in NJ who sold it to me on e-bay.

They tried to do everything right - but only for some reason got it 80% right or so. One example - they took the whole thing apart to paint it, did a nice job painting, and put it back together with all the original 1976 rubber parts. Not fun in the rain.

I've been doing one little project at a time, trying to bring the car up to 100%, and I'll post bits and pieces for anyone who is interested.

The forums have been a big help, with lots of good information on how other people have fixed the various issues I'm dealing with.

Last week's project was debugging the brake light circuit. Interesting symptom - the brake lights didn't work, but if you had the headlights on and held the brake pedal down, the engine would continue to run after you turned off the ignition! Seems the driver side brake light socket had a short between the brake terminal and the running light terminal, which would back feed around the ignition switch. Weird, and now fixed.

The latest project which took all of last week was rewiring the center console. Repaired all of the non-working lights, replaced the cigarette lighter with a new one (which was 1/8" longer, and needed to be shimmed to fit right) even preserving the cigarette lighter courtesy light. The stereo was hooked up so that when the ignition key was turned off you lost all the presets and the clock would revert to 12:00.. all of that's now fixed.

More fun to come..