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MG MGB Technical - Connecting rods polishing

Peter, I am going to guess you will be reading this. For the benefit of myself and others contemplating the same thing; You say in your book, 'How to power tune the MGB engine', that it is not necessary to polish the con rods for road, merely to balance them. I have made a jig that will support the small end and large end in turn, so that I may weigh accurately each. Unfortunately,(I have the ponderously heavy early diagonally split rods of the 5 bearing engine.)I would like to polish them anyway, my question is this, is it forbidden to grind the oil hole nipple that lies at the foot of the rod at the big end? Carrillo rods do not have this bump. If is is ground flat but generously radiused will oil still pass in out out efficiently? Thanks all, Mike
J.M. Doust

Do yourself a favor and go and find some later straight cut rods Willy
William Revit

Hi William

I couldn't have put it better myself. Far better to buy a set of later rods.


Mike

The nipple is probably best left alone, they are not, after all, Carillo rods. They are also ridiculously heavy.
You are wasting your time polishing. The rods are shot peened when they are made.

I think people like to see shiny rods....sad thing is they are weaker than the original rods once polished as they will always have little stress/fracture lines left from the polishing. The rods must be stress relieved by shot peening after polishing which will leave the lovely polish finish a dull grey, and cost loads of dollars if you haven't shot peening facilities.

Peter
P Burgess

Oops, Thank you very much. I will have to do the rounds for the later rods then, Blast! I could alwats put the old rods into the lawn mower! Mike
J.M. Doust

Sorry, I should have also added on my last post this comment; Yes, people like shiny things. Which reminds me, when I was looking for car wheels. I went into a wheels shop, everything was sooo shiny. These car wheels go onto custom vehicles and the like.( not really for MG's but had to start somewhere!) Anyway, being an old fart I was not used to modern terms, so I did not know what 'Bling' meant. I said rather sheepishly to the sales person, whom had dreds and all, what's with this bling thing?' He said, 'it's shiny man! Oooh, I said, rather embarassed. So to chear myself up, I am going to polish my engine block! Mike
J.M. Doust

You shall henceforth be known as 'The King of Bling' :)

Have a 'Fat' day

Peter
P Burgess

Thanks Peter!
J.M. Doust

This thread was discussed between 26/02/2011 and 28/02/2011

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