The last two months have been horrible, my car was running at a snail's pace and lost all of it's power. A gradual loss of power over a period of about a month, until finally it would just crawl. I figured I would work on replacing the basics, spark plugs, cap and rotor, fuel filter. The plugs were fowled and seem like they were oily too. I also went ahead and adjusted the valves since it had been a while. That all didn't seem to work, running high octane gas didn't work either. The car did smoke a lot on the freeway at one time that I had to turn around and headed back home. I had lost about a quart or so oil and I figured that the engine was shot at that point.
I called several British car repair shops in the area. One in San Francisco: British European (415) 861-3030 asked for Bob (excellent mechanic!)and The Car Clinic in Rancho Cordova California Glynn (916) 638-8290(also a great mechanic) near Sacramento California.
The symptoms I was describing sounded just like worn valve guides, worn piston rings, or even a cracked piston. That being said it would have cost me a least $1500 to $3500 dollars to fix. Of course, describing car trouble over the phone without an inspection doesn't give you a an great picture on what the trouble really might be.
I didn't have the money to tow the car to either location, so I intended on selling it on craigslist sometime soon. SHOCKING I KNOW!
The car was used around town to get groceries and run errands.
I started to notice a stain on pavement below the engine after parking the car overnight. I checked to see if this was an oil leak or coolant and it was neither.
I finally figured out that the carb was the culprit and decided to give it a closer look.
The carb turned out to be wet and oily and needed attention. I did a little research on the internet and found an article on www.mossmotors.com where a Moss Motors LADY technician said that a poor running carb would fowl up sparkplugs and give an appearance of oil fowled sparkplugs. It sounded like a long shot so I did more research on rebuilding the Zenith Stromberg carb. One article suggested only to get the manufacture carb kit due to it's precision of parts due to trial an error with after market kits.
I found the kit at http://www.mossmotors.com and ordered it.
I also found some great videos on YouTube with John Twist of University Motors. He owns his own shop in Michigan. This guy is great he has got about maybe 90 videos or so on MG repair. He had a two part video on how to rebuild the Zenith Stromberg carb. He had a two part video on how to rebuild the Zenith Stromberg carb. and part twoAfter receiving my rebuild kit and watching John Twist's videos I went ahead and rebuilt the carb.
I was a little intimidated with some of it's complexity and was wondering if this would be all in vain.
After reinstalling the Zenith carb, I took the car for a spin and VOILA the car ran beautifully it was incredible, the acceleration was there! The power was back! The oil consumption stopped too! I guess a poor running carb doesn't aspirate the oil vapors enough and send it directly down the exhaust if that's possible?
I want to thank John Twist of University Motors for his YouTube videos and the LADY technician from the Moss Motors forums.
Hey! MGB driver enthusiasts! Join the fun! Post your comments and tell us about your MGB and fun and bad experiences. Got some tips or website recommendations? Post them! With the economy in the toilet and gas prices rising it's good to own a classic MGB. They become part of the family and are always pleasing to the eyes.
