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MG MG Y Type - Another heat shield topic

YA Hot starting cured!
Plagued by the common problem of difficult hot starting due to fuel vapourising in the float chamber and galleries, I decided it was time to tackle it. Wanting to make a shield in a simple form, I made a cardboard template for the heat shield. For trial locating a wide slot was cut from the top where the carb would bolt on, so that the template could be slid up from underneath into position.
Certain that nothing fouled I then drew this up on the computer and created PDF & DXF files suitable for machine production. The shield was made from 1.5mm stainless steel, with the reverse side (facing the manifold) faced in self adhesive heat reflecting material (an A4 sheet was about £16 on eBay). This reflects back over 65% of heat. A mate produced the stainless shield for a £20 drink. I got a 1/4" thick insulating carb gasket from Southern Carburettors, plus a standard 1 1/4" SU gasket.
Two 30mm x M10 x 1.5 bolts cost £2.29 off eBay. I had to cut about 3mm off the lower bolt to get it past the carb housing.
Hot starting is now a breeze and the float chamber actually feels cool after a run. There has been a major side effect. The car runs like a dream compared to before fitting. Smoother, more power and a lighter throttle.


P Downing

Another image

P Downing

and another

P Downing

Nice work

Paul
Paul Barrow

Neat!
Willem van der Veer

The problem with fuel vapourisation has often been raised on this site and in articles and correspondence about those MG’s fitted with XPAG engines.

The solution outlined on this thread is very neat and well thought through. Some years back I acquired a s/steel shield from John James (of Totally T Type 2). This was specifically designed to fit a TC and could therefore be fitted to a YT. John’s advice was to use spacers as recommended in this post. This however, resulted in fouling the bonnet and as a result I have not progressed the installation (through suitable modification etc).The reason is that I have very few problems, which it appears plagues quite a few owners. Indeed driving in Portugal last year in temperatures of around 40c (though considerably hotter in the engine bay) other than the very occasional problem when re-fueling, The car ran well and does so now. I had the engine rebuilt in 2014 and the carbs also rebuilt (by Ed Biddle in Malvern). I also have electronic ignition. No doubt these have all helped.

Interestingly, we also run a TC (which had been exported directly from Abingdon in December 1947 to South Africa). The car, which had been rebuilt in SA in 1981/82, returned to the UK in 2014. I acquired the TC in September 2016. The engine and car is very good and had done 5,750 miles since the rebuild (which appears to marry in with the history file that came with the car).

Amongst a number of jobs I replaced all the fuel lines and fuel pump and had the carbs rebuilt (again by Ed). He discovered that the carbs had been built up and quite obviously were not original. One problem that he identified was the state of the carb bodies, which were manufactured from Mazak, colloquially known as monkey metal. This cheap material was all that was available in the UK in the immediate post war period. By around 1948 aluminium became more readily available.
The mazak body meant that a proper seal could not be achieved when setting up the carbs. A set of aluminium bodies had been remanufactured by Burlen and I was able to fit them. The engine was tuned and I had already fitted electronic ignition and it ran well,

The point is that this XPAG engine has performed really well and last week we took her on a 600 mile trip to Wales, with temperatures of 31c recorded. Despite having no heat shield I had no problems with vapourisation.

It would be very interesting to hear the views of some Y owners in warm countries – for example Tony Slattery in Australia and to hear and note their experiences on this subject. One question I would pose does the fitting of electronic ignition help? (Both the YT and TC are fitted with basic systems that I picked up from shows and cost about 25 GBP.

All the best
Jerry
JERRY BIRKBECK

I'm pleased to say that attending a show yesterday in 30 degree heat, absolutely no problems encountered. This is from requiring full choke and some lumpy running for some 20 seconds to clear the hot start problem, even in mild weather. Nothing worse than a short fuel stop with people in the garage admiring the car, then the embarrassment of trying to get the engine running again. Using just a 1/4" insulating gasket means it doesn't foul the bonnet. It does have electronic ignition fitted.
P Downing

With the recent unusually hot UK temperatures, I decided to make a heat shield for my YB. When I removed carb from manifold there was only one paper gasket. I fitted a phenolic spacer and made the heatshield from 3mm aluminium. On refitting the carb I realised that the existing bolts holding carb to manifold would be too short and not in safety with the threads in manifold. This is because of the limited space to fit bolts between carb flange and carb body. To overcome this problem I cut down longer 10mm x 1.5 bolts and made them into studs that were fully threaded into manifold. This is the method used on Morris Minor were a 25mm phenolic spacer can be fitted between manifold and carb. The additional advantage of this system is that it is less fiddly than trying to line up bolts with the manifold. With the studs in place it is easy to slide carb straight onto manifold.


M C Bath

This thread was discussed between 25/06/2018 and 25/07/2018

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