MGA Finally Started

We finally got a chance to try and start the MGA #46 after many years sitting idle. It took a while to finish things up before we were able to fire it a few friends were on hand to see this old race car start. The car idled fine and all of a sudden quit . Tom and I spent some time trying to restart it on the following Saturday a quick call to Jim Blett and he said to check for stuck valves what we found were 2 broken rocker arms. We then checked to see if all the valves were opening and all was fine so we replaced the rocker arms and it idled just fine I went to drive the car and heard a POP!! and it quit again. We pulled the valve cover off and another broken rocker arm. Tom called John Twist a well known MG expert who runs a shop nearby and who rebuilt the engine 13 years ago he said to bring in the head and he would check it over and while we had the head off to check the rise on the cam. A stock MG has .250 rise so we pulled the head and bingo there was the problem the valves were hitting the top of the block. We then checked the rise on the cam with a dial indicator and it was .325 so this all finally made sense.John Twist checked the head and all was fine no damage so what we did wad to cut clearance in the top of the engine block for the valves to open fully. The head was reassembled and started fine so we took the car for a ride nothing like driving an open roadster when it is below 30 degrees out and snowing. We both drove the car it was fun to finally drive this car after it had sat for over 30 years.

Later that day we loaded the car on the trailer and delivered it to the Beadle house. the car was driven off the trailer and into the garage for the rest of the winter. John Beadle aka "Big Dog" would have been proud to see the car running. There is some details to finish on the car we decided to wait till the weather improves before tackling those issues.