The MGA With An Attitude
MGA Guru Is GOING MOBILE - (March 1 - March 15, 2026)
Sunday, March 1, 2026:
What a way to kill a day. I was documenting the double threaded stud that secures the brake circuit 5-way fitting to the frame side rail in the MGA. This is such an obscure part that it may never get disassembled, even during restoration work. Being such a low demand part, it has not been commercially available from any known source for decades. When I couldn't find a picture of it, I had to fudge one. It has three different factory part numbers, the third one superseding the other two, AHH5195, AHH5875, FHS0411.
Monday, March 2, 2026:
Interesting day, stuff happening. Finally got enough info from the vintage radiator rebuilder, and shipped my old cell core radiator off to Salt Lake City, Utah for rebuilding. Also progress on a replacement crankshaft in California, getting off to a machine shop for appraisal and Quotes, expecting to be a week for service before shipping to Florida. And, oddly enough, it looks like we are getting another crankshaft for spare from Arizona, go figure. Wait to see which one may arrive first.
Tuesday, March 3, 2026:
If I keep picking away at these threaded studs in my spare time, we might eventually get the whole collection documented. This AHH5299 Stud is short and fat, 3/8-in diameter studs on top of the intake manifold in pushrod engine MGA's. Two of these secure the Accelerator Abutment Bracket (holding two cables), heater return pipe P-clips, and the firing order and valve clearance brass tag.
Wednesday, March 4, 2026:
Got these two documented before lunch, ARH898 and ARH899 Studs that hold the grille together on the MGA. -- And just got a phone call from Arizona. One good used 18G/18GA type crankshaft is boxed up and being shipped today. Only guaranteed to be a good core, don't know until I see it if it might be usable as-is. I suspect it may arrive by the time the one in California is finished being polished or re-ground. -- And now, Fed-X tracking just changed my core radiator delivery to Utah from Friday to next Monday. Grrrrr.
Thursday, March 5, 2026:
Just uploaded a new tech article TS-101B for repair of the MGA turn signal vacuum timer switch. This one is compliments of Ed Hollingsworth in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. He found a novel way to repair the common stripped or broken threaded mounting spigot on the front end of the switch housing.
Friday, March 6, 2026:
The Corvette at Tech Central is still having electrical problems, as well as the struggle to install the new rag top, and slow.
Someone was repairing a crank handle for an MGA screw jack. The original rivet joint had decomposed, so they replaced the rivet with a bolt and self-locking nut, and put a flat washer in between to make it fold more smoothly.
Navigator and i got busy changing our battery ground cable, long time overdue. It became more urgent a day or two ago when the car wouldn't start without aid of a small jumper box. Jerry was making good progress on the Sirocco engine, getting close to race ready again.
Late afternoon , posting today's photos and notes. Then from evening to late night, making good progress on Part Numbers tech pages for threaded studs, mostly Twin Cam engine parts that have very sparse documentation, little current parts supply, and very few pictures of the parts to be found anywhere.
Saturday, March 7, 2026:
Half a day of very good progress on the Part Numbers tech pages for threaded studs, mostly for Twin Cam engine parts. We now have new information pages for
AEH375 Stud, AEH390 Stud, AEH549 Stud, AEH583 Stud, CHS0512 Stud, CHS0520 Stud, CLS0512 Stud, CLS2512 Stud, and CLS2613 Stud.
 As I was on line uploading the new "Studs" data and pages, the data stream died. Now my web site and email are nested on the CMGC web server account, so if the CMGC server has a problem it rubs off on me, and my web site goes down along with my email. I knew exactly when this happened. After 20 minutes poking around, everything on the internet was working, except the club server account being dead, while the server company web site was still working. A quick call to the current CMGC webmaster to notify him that the club server was dead. He was on the road, arriving home an hour later before he could call the server company to investigate. After another hour and a half (mostly on hold), the issues were resolved, and the club server was back on line (along with my web site and email). That killed a few hours, then back to work.
Sunday, March 8, 2026:
My significant challenge for today was to resolve the last part number on my list of Threaded Studs used in MGA cars. This one was AHH5805 Stud, used to secure the fuel pump to its mounting bracket in the MGA Twin Cam (and "Deluxe") cars. The special drawing number was required due to an odd combination of threads. The base end screwing into the fuel pump housing has 5/16-22-BSF thread (pre-war hold-over design),while the exposed end has 5/16-24-UNF thread for a post-war hex nut. Go ahead and tear your hair out. I'm still missing the length of a few of the studs, but at least I have the tech pages up for all of them.
Monday, March 9, 2026:
Weekend over, time for business calls. The best news is, the next replacement crankshaft in the shop in California has been cleaned, crack tested, and polished. Undersize is 0.010M, 0.010R, it polished up nicely and does not need to be ground again. And it is being shipped out today, now need to find new bearings of it. The other "spare" crankshaft from Arizona should arrive tomorrow. My cell core radiator has arrived in Utah today, where it will be re-cored as original, give it a week maybe before being shipped back.
Tuesday, March10, 2026:
Waiting patiently while watching tracking information, package from Arizona arrived early afternoon. Open the box to check out a "spare" 18GA crankshaft. This one is standard size on both main and rod journals, mains are perfect, while rods are slightly scuffed and will need a regrind. Clean it to inspect and measure it, grease it for preservation, pack it back in the box, clearly labeled, and stash it in the attic for future reference. It would have been nice to have this one three months ago. But for now, the "real" one from California, checked and polished, M.010, R.010, was shipped yesterday, and may arrive by the week end. More good news is, our freshly re-cored cellular core radiator (very expensive) is finished and is shipping from Utah today. With luck, that one may also be here by the week end. Late night ordering of Main and Rod bearings (and a few more trivial parts).
Wednesday, March11, 2026:
mostly catching up BBS and email, and filling in a few more blanks in the Studs List dimensions. Some trouble finding tracking numbers. Posted a request to aTwin Cam friend half way around the world to see if he can provide information on length of a few Twin Cam engine studs and rear wheel bearing hub studs. Very close to filling in the last few blanks on the studs list.
Thursday, March12, 2026:
Finally got the most recent tracking numbers. Crankshaft bearings should arrive Friday. The fresh crankshaft and the rebuilt cell core radiator should arrive Monday.
Friday, March13, 2026:
Tech day at Tech Central. Tired of being the last ones in at 10-am, we arrived at 9:30 this time. No one else showed up until 10. Go figure, can't win for losing.
Early on the Triumph guys were chatting bout this TR8 that some time ago had a mysterious knocking noise. Some pro
shop rebuilt the engine with new cam and tappets, cam drive parts, reground crankshaft, new oil pump, etc. After three year sand thousands of dollars it was running again, but still had the same mysterious knocking noise. Duh? So the car went to a different hop where the knocking noise was soon diagnosed as a loose cylinder liner moving up and down with the piston motion. Rather than re-sleeving cylinders, another engine block was procured and rebuilt with most of the parts from the prior rebuild. All in all a very expensive tech lesson, but at least now the fuel injected 3.5-Litre aluminum V8 engine is running like a champ.
Tina the young race car was getting a little attention. Seems like it must have a bad battery that won't hold charge. After some time on a charger it did fire up, then was back to sleep with a float charger to bring it up to full charge, so the battery could be properly tested later.
The greater project today was to finish installing engine mounts and halfshafts in the VW Scirocco. As soon as this one is running again, there should be two racing VW's operational at the same time (kind of rare circumstance I suppose).
There was this MGB that stumbled in with a mostly dysfunctional clutch, pedal going to the floor with not much effect. With some luck it might be just air in the circuit, which might be fixed with a normal bleeding job.
the guys got to work with the pneumatic bellows jack, which actually works quite well once you get the hang of it. Sometimes it may seem a little wobbly half way up, but it is easy to use and has nice high lift. Just be sure to use a good jack stand along with it. With one guy pushing pedal, one guy working a vacuum bleeder, two guys regularly refilling the small clutch master cylinder reservoir, it wasn't long to get the job done, and the clutch works well with no new parts required.
We got to check out some new toys over lunch. The first was a new 12V DC powered engine oil transfer pump. Two
screw in hose barbs and some plastic tubing, battery power clips, a simple on-off switch. On one side there is a plastic mounting flange with four small screw holes, like it could be permanently mounted somewhere. Looks like it may have a permanent magnet motor and an eccentric rubber impellor pump. It struck me as being too heavy, so I'm not interested in carrying one in the Magic Trailer.
Then there were two half liter bottles of DOT 5.1 brake fluid. This stuff is glycol based fluid, one step up the performance scale from DOT-3 and DOT-4 fluid (definitely not DOT-5 silicone fluid). Apparently Jerry noticed some brake fade on his last race outing with the racing Rabbit, possibly due to some water absorption in his DOT-4 brake fluid (which had not been changed for some time). So he thought it might be good experience to try the DOT-5.1 fluid, just for kicks.
Saturday-Sunday, March14-15, 2026:
Killing the weekend while waiting for parts deliveries. Thinking about posting more Part Numbers tech pages. Put together an index of all part numbers for individual tools in the various traveling too kits that were included with every MGA ever built. The parts included in each tool kit were gleaned from the Service Parts List, section "S" for each model of MGA. These items are sorted in alpha-numerical order in a new index found at mgtech/tools/tools3.htm (lower part of page). It's a good start.
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