Antique & Classic Cars Blog

On one of the last nice days of ‘07 I went to get the MGB GT out of the garage where I store it and it wouldn’t start.

This season, with the battery freshly charged, it did tick over but the fuel pump looked a little anemic–you can see its splishes and splashes of fuel in the clear gas filter at the back of the engine bay.

The car had hesitated a few times last season, acting as though it wanted to stall–behaving like a vehicle not getting enough gas–so I was suspicious of the fuel pump anyway. Not wanting to get stranded on the way home, I pulled the pump and took it round to Quality Coaches.

Randy, who’s been through hundreds of these cars or more, threw it on a battery and said the putter it made had the normal sound. I reinstalled it and the car started and ran fine. I’ll look at the points, plugs, plug wires, distributor cap and rotor.

Yesterday I took it to a little coffee shop gearhead gathering. Although the best solution would have been to have the battery at my house on a trickle charger, apart from that the spring routine went well and is one I’m sure all of you are following:

–put air in the tires

–put some fresh fuel in the tank

–check brake fluid and pedal feel, both fine

–ensure car in neutral to start and that no tools or other objects are underneath

–open hood for start-up and warm up to make sure nothing looks amiss

–check underneath for evidence of leaks

–forgot to check the radiator fluid level but there was no coolant on the garage floor and I kept careful watch on the temp guage.

Today I’ll get a helper to check brake lights, headlights, turn signals, back-up lights, etc.

The amount of dust you see here is not desirable, however my last move in the fall was to wash the car and get a good coat of carnauba wax on there, so it should be fine. Will wash it off this weekend.

Hope everyone’s getting their classics out for some summer fun. Luckily this little car gets 45 mpg. Not.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 8:07 am and is filed under Car stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.