Tanny's 1967 MGB GT

[tannyo]

When I bought this nonrunning car in 2011 the previous owner had installed a Falcon Big Bore exhaust and header. By the time it was running in February 2012 the car had a beautiful exhaust note. It was louder than stock, but much quieter than Moss’ Tourist Trophy exhaust. As time went by the exhaust sound got louder and louder. Now with the choke on it’s over 95 DB. You can hear my car from blocks away. It’s just too loud. I think the Tourist Trophy exhaust is too loud.

If I was the original buyer of the exhaust, I could get it replaced under warranty. Unfortunately I’m not the original buyer and there is no warranty for Tanny. I’ve tried to find a replacement muffler from Falcon and could not find it at any of the sites I frequent for parts. So I decided to talk to several people and Joe Siam recommended Magnaflow. The Falcon muffler is 18” x 6” round with the inlet and outlet on one side of the muffler. The closest I could get was 18” x 6” round with the inlet and outlet centered. I think this’ll work. It will put the front of the muffler down about a half inch lower than the current installation and the back of the muffler at the same height with the exhaust now centered in the exhaust cutout instead of low.

71F69D86-F2D9-4C4D-8A81-5A1476E5823F.jpeg (46.86 KiB) Viewed 42014 times

This is the muffler that I need from the Falcon Big Bore kit. Unfortunately I could not find it.

FA2FA58A-7F0B-4346-85AA-CD777F304DE5.jpeg (17.45 KiB) Viewed 42014 times

This is what I ordered from Magnaflow.

96229EAE-6718-409D-A145-C80AF020A35D.jpeg (15.01 KiB) Viewed 42014 times

This is what I received. The discoloration is from the welds and dirt. Magnaflow told me that I could clean up the discoloration from the welds and a little soap and water would make it look like the picture. Maybe I expect too much for a $100 muffler.

E8024518-1427-4E29-884D-8200852AEC9D.jpeg (67.63 KiB) Viewed 42014 times

Tomorrow I get the muffler installed and I’ll take more pictures. Maybe I’ll do a video of how it sounds before and after.

[VWNate1]

You might have been able to match it better from a "Buyer's Guide, opps, gotta go....

[VWNate1]

I've had very good luck using the paper catalogs from various muffler manufacturer's , Goerlich (SP ?) has a really good one , once you've measured the inlet & outlet diameter and figured out the available length and girth you can find a free flowing muffler that's not so noisy .

I'm not surprised magnaflow cheated you by displaying a polished into them delivering a crappy ugly thing and then giving you B.S. instead of making it right .

They lied to and cheated me badly, their red "revolver" show truck is my old 1949 Chevy I sold them for a song expecting them to be honest and return personal items left in it , they of course didn't until a big brouhaha OnLine embarrased them, I never did get all my things back, shame on them .

Anyway, go to NAPA and look in the paper "buyers guide.

Dammit, gotta go again, first day of school for a Foster boy .

[tannyo]

Here’s the video.



https://youtu.be/71_Mqe59xLQ

[whitebuffalo]

Sounds good, more throaty.

[tannyo]

Over 4 years later and the RetroAir AC kit works! It works really well. Even on 100°F plus days the temperature knob is not set at the coldest setting and I’m cool. It took a month to be sure because I had to wait a little while for the air to clear up from the fires. Even out in the desert at over 100°F with the sun shining through clear skies I’m cool. In the past it did a better, but an unsatisfactory job if it was an overcast day.

How did it get fixed?

I had to have my overdrive rebuilt. Well, we bought a rebuilt unit and when it was installed and because it took a long time to get the rebuilt overdrive unit we had to replace the dryer and have the AC refilled with R-134. My mechanic (Russ Thompson) called RetroAir and asked them how much R-134 to put in the system. Russ Thompson (my mechanic) said that the guy on the phone without skipping a beat said 24 ounces. His AC guy thought that was way too much, but put that much in. That’s it. That’s all it took. Over 4 years later I finally have an AC system in my 1967 MGB GT that works.

Why did it take this long to get an answer from RetroAir?

This is all my assumption. The person who sold me the unit and gave me technical support at Retro Air told me when I was asking him installation questions because we were having problems with the installation that the person who designed the system had left the company. I am assuming here that he didn’t leave all the information needed for this installation or that the needed information had been “misplaced.” The person I dealt with did not know the system and I believe was not able to give me correct answers regarding how much R-134 to use. Now you AC experts out there probably would say that the AC guy only needs to know the high and low pressures and that’s that. I don’t know what the pressures are. I wasn’t there. All I know is they put 24 ounces of R-134 in and now the AC works.

What did I do to try to “fix“ the problem?

1. My car is insulated.
2. The car has factory tinted windows.
3. I sealed all the leaks that I could including putting a magnetic cover over the air intake grill.
4. The condenser was installed 1 inch away from the radiator per installation instructions. At the time I was using a Ron Davis aluminum radiator. It has 18 fins per inch as opposed to the stock 8 fins per inch radiator. The air was not going through the radiator. I installed foam between the outside of the condenser and the radiator so as to direct air through the radiator. This worked a little.
5. The original electric fan that came with the kit was pretty anemic in my opinion and they sent me a higher CFM electric fan. It seemed pretty anemic too so I bought a 1680 CFM Spal electric fan. It barely fits and seemed to work better. The electric fan is installed in addition to the mechanical engine fan.

I would like to install a 3M Crystalline window tint that is almost clear and can be installed on all windows including the front windshield. This light tint is said to get rid of 35% of the heat. Stewart has the lighter Crystalline tint on his front windshield and the slightly darker tint which according to 3M gets rid of 55% of the heat on the rest of the windows of his 1967 MGB GT and it makes an amazing difference in the amount of heat that is let into the interior of the car. It’s expensive. The estimate I got was for over $900.

I can’t install the tint until the deeply pitted windshield and scratched door windows are replaced. Someday, hopefully.

Epilogue

RetroAir has been bought by Classic Auto Air and they no longer make the A/C kits for the MGB and TR6. I was told that the person who was helping me now works in the warehouse.

If I had to do it again I would install the Vintage Air unit that people install on V8 conversions. I think that even with the custom work because there isn’t a kit it would cost less and I’d have a better heater/defroster with a multi-speed fan. Which would have been important last week as it may have removed the ice from my windshield.

3B79AEA8-FB32-4340-BA60-491A54FBAF0F.jpeg (96.68 KiB) Viewed 40507 times

[Larry Kluss]

Wow, what an ordeal. Glad it's working great for you now!

[Steve Simmons]

You got me beat on the lowest temperature so far. My coldest was 29F in Malibu Canyon a couple weeks ago. Thankfully I wasn't in the convertible.

[Stewart]

Still quite balmy in my book.
With the top up and heater working -15f with the top down -5f and the b had bare metal floors and no seats as the floors had just been replaced. 20 Miles of fun. FYI snow will fly out of the shifter hole and hit you right in the face if the boot is not in place.

With everything working it was actually quite fine inside though the push button on the door handle would freeze solid after a few minutes.

[VWNate1]

That muffler sounds nice to me, I imagine because if the insulation added you can't hear it much .

Cool beans on the AC at long last ! .

Doing the charging by the pressures requires a lot of hands on experience .

Was there any slippage on the steep roads going through Pine Mountain Club ? .

I just took a nice three day motor up to the bay area, it was nice .

[tannyo]

…
Was there any slippage on the steep roads going through Pine Mountain Club ? .

No chains and yes there was slippage even after they put cinder on the road at 6 AM. It was 14°F when I left in the morning. My car was covered with about 6” of snow and ice. Icicles were hanging off the front bumper. Sorry, I was too cold to take pictures. I broke my Costco card scraping the windshield. I got out of there with slipping and by modulating the throttle kept slipping down enough that I didn’t have to stop.

The heater in my 1967 MGBGT doesn’t work well. The inside flaps are covered by carpet and won’t open and the knob that controls the direction sorta works. I was wearing gloves but my fingers were so cold they burned. The anemic defroster was able to keep 2 circles clear in front of me and the passenger seat. By the time it hit 40°F it was working pretty well.

As I was driving down the 5 snow and ice would melt on the hood (bonnet) and fenders (wings) and splash on my windshield. I was the only car with a personal rain.

[VWNate1]

Thanx Tanny ;

The final insult that made me give up on my '67 MGB GT was the ingress of water when it rained ~ I replaced all the body rubber and so on yet it still dripped water on my left leg, I got caught out in a freezing rain storm far from home and had to suffer it, that was enough .

I imagine you could trim the carpet to help the heater out put and also put in a 190* thermostat...

Or, just carry a watch cap and gloves like I always did .

[tannyo]

On September 6, 2015 a lady in a Ford F150 blew through a stop sign and ran over the top of my right fender. You can see where I slammed on my brakes and then she pushed me sideways.

2DF92DAE-0365-4209-A1AF-F9BB5E668C54.jpeg (106.64 KiB) Viewed 39045 times

F0E60210-B96A-4999-9768-332D2ADAE4EF.jpeg (85.34 KiB) Viewed 39045 times

F3E7D01D-1101-4A08-8799-B5813A812EA1.jpeg (98.02 KiB) Viewed 39045 times

683AD7C7-7BE7-4A9E-ACB8-5F26DA621859.jpeg (99.31 KiB) Viewed 39045 times

C3801064-4524-45A7-9754-9A4AE393F98B.jpeg (83.98 KiB) Viewed 39045 times

A8C6F39A-369C-470A-858D-403DF9DAA4BA.jpeg (96.74 KiB) Viewed 39045 times

Since this was an insurance job I decided to use Classic Vision Restorations. A couple of guys had used them and liked the results, only later did I find out it took almost a year for one of the guys to get his car fixed completely after it has been returned to him. Supposedly this guy had done cars for Pebble Beach.

All I know is that AAA paid him over $12,000 and instead of replacing the fender one of his guys pounded out the fender and used a lot of Bondo to get it smooth. It was so crooked that Stewart and I had to adjust the headlight facing as high as possible to shine down the road. The piece between the fender and the body looked like it had been painted with a paint brush. I asked him to fix it and he refused. Because he was not an accredited AAA auto body shop they wouldn’t do anything either.

A rock hit that fender and took a chunk of Bondo out and it has really bothered me. So I bought a used fender from Malcolm Buckeridge and because Enrique who owns Henry’s autobody in Van Nuys was doing some rust repair for me I also asked him to take off the old fender and he will be putting this one on and filling in the antenna hole. Total cost of rust repair and fender replacement and pulling out the body where fender attaches is going to be $2,000.

E20338DC-683F-48B8-B5A5-94132B1A5B95.jpeg (50.73 KiB) Viewed 39045 times

082A9753-46EB-4C05-93FF-F8FE2F3CEE7A.jpeg (84.82 KiB) Viewed 39045 times

A805F35C-0691-440F-9C00-9FFBDEDB27A6.jpeg (102.45 KiB) Viewed 39045 times

24F4993D-920E-4A64-A05D-8F0AD1EDE291.jpeg (87.02 KiB) Viewed 39045 times

216DD662-4E5B-47F9-89DF-1E5938D35AEE.jpeg (83.83 KiB) Viewed 39045 times

I’m surprised by the rust since the car was taken down to bare metal when it was painted.

viewtopic.php?p=14160#p14160

[VWNate1]

Damn Tanny ;

That sucks, after all you've been through already .

FWIW, that was no "lady" she might have been a woman .

[tannyo]

Even though I gave Enrique 50% more time he had to go and find more damage.

When the car was first painted in 2011 it was taken all the way down to the metal and the left dogleg was repaired, but it did not appear that the right dog leg needed repair. Malcolm took a screwdriver and stuck it up underneath the body didn’t find anything weak, then. It looks like there may be problems with the front left fender too.

EE659739-25E5-4CE6-BF49-B48AE1D9CC85.jpeg (84.82 KiB) Viewed 38974 times

B33B3C43-5748-452E-9D8D-056B060788F6.jpeg (86.68 KiB) Viewed 38974 times

A0461FAB-E3DE-440E-92FC-D700DB323ACF.jpeg (66.19 KiB) Viewed 38974 times

The used fender I got from Malcolm had some filler on the top and the few creases that we can see. There is a little surface rust on the underside of the fender, but that’s no big deal.

9922197A-AA78-48F0-B6CE-20A61212F97F.jpeg (86.53 KiB) Viewed 38974 times

80D23556-9CDD-46E5-A555-6A121D6C7E49.jpeg (121.43 KiB) Viewed 38974 times

23759D0B-9294-432C-8C13-55BA5E4EFCA2.jpeg (86.66 KiB) Viewed 38974 times

The right side underneath the fender except for a little dirt looks pretty good.

4AEE8E16-6377-4BE6-8770-AED91D73158D.jpeg (101.91 KiB) Viewed 38974 times

There was a bulge at the bottom of the A pillar from the accident that wasn’t taken care of by Classic Vision Restorations. Once Enrique pointed it out to me I couldn’t unsee it. He said there’s a little more tapping, but it’s pretty much fixed.

B2A20582-FF33-4DD5-87CC-CCC0F6F8178A.jpeg (134.39 KiB) Viewed 38974 times

Rant.

And yes the window trim has not been put in. I found out the “expert” put the old filler strip in the windshield rubber instead of the wider filler strip that McGregor provided which is supposed to make putting in the window trim easier because he had trouble installing the wider strip. Not only that, but they didn’t tell me and they kept the wider McGregor filler strip.

On top of that the person who put in the door rubber messed it up totally. I told Russ that I never wanted that person to touch my car again. I was that angry. Russ put in the new door rubber I got from McGregors for which I paid another $185 to replace the messed up installation and the person who messed up the installation in the first place asked me if he could have the door rubber that he messed up installing on my GT that was taken out of the car for free to use on a convertible. Because I’m on Social Security Disability and a small pension I’m not poor, but I’m not rich. He should’ve asked how much he could pay me for the door rubber he messed up. I couldn’t believe the chutzpah/gall. I don’t believe he treated me honestly. Keeping the new parts he didn’t use instead of returning them to me and asking for what he messed up for free. That’s just wrong in my eyes. I’m still angry about it. I’m so angry I’m shaking worse than I normally do.

[Steve Simmons]

Sorry to hear about the accident. Classic Vision used to be one of the best around. Years ago they fired their entire staff and tried to start over, but continue to have issues with the quality of work being done. Guillermo retired several years ago and handed the shop to his son Brian. He cares about quality, but it's impossible to find people willing to do the kind of work he requires. They have indeed done many Pebble Beach winners and other famous cars, but that was years ago.

I'm very surprised how much rust there is on that car. My BGT was a mess, and Classic Vision got it all sorted for me. It's been probably 100K miles of daily driving since then and while I've had a few issues around the body seams, there hasn't been anything drastic. The rust on your car appears to have been there for a long time, and not addressed during the last repaint. Doglegs should not rust so fast, especially in Southern California.

[tannyo]

Sorry to hear about the accident. Classic Vision used to be one of the best around. Years ago they fired their entire staff and tried to start over, but continue to have issues with the quality of work being done. …

The rust on your car appears to have been there for a long time, and not addressed during the last repaint. Doglegs should not rust so fast, especially in Southern California.

Under the right front fender is fine other than the cross threaded captive nuts and the right dog leg was never checked. It came from Cambridge England. And yes I probably should’ve had it put on a rotisserie and done completely but that’s a lot of money and I didn’t.

Guillermo fired his whole staff after doing my car. The problem is that he refused to fix the problems. Like the part that goes between the front fender and the body looked like it had been painted with a paint brush and was mashed. The headlight on the right fender was lined up to the highest it could go by Stewart and myself and he refused to fix that. Before we adjusted it the headlight was pointed about 2 1/2 feet in front of the car on the ground. AAA paid him quite a bit of money and I was disappointed in the result.

I will say though that he really did get the front of the hood to line up with the grill quite well. But I think Guillermo did that job.

Unfortunately the fender I bought had a little rust on the underside and the top had a bunch of Bondo on it. When Enrique took the Bondo off and took off the rust there were some pinholes. He made a patch panel and put it on top of the fender. Still less expensive than buying a new fender. I am hoping Enrique can get it done by this Saturday so I can take it to the Channel Islands car show on Sunday.

Also unfortunate, is that my Parkinson’s symptoms have been getting worse. I am no longer using the cane which is good, but I have a lot more pain and stiffness and it is really difficult to get out of a chair. I have good days and bad days. Hopefully Sunday will be a good day.

[VWNate1]

Don't sit still is my motto .

I know it hurts a bunch but your mind will turn to mush ere long if you don't keep it busy and T.V. doesn't work .

I have an MBG right front fender, I wish Tanny had told me about the collision before he bought the rusty one still for sale if any one needs one .