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MG TD TF 1500 - SU Carb damper brass slide guide

I’m wondering if anyone has run into this issue before. The little brass slide guide in the front carb of my newly acquired MGTC was missing. This allows the damper piston to rotate. I have managed to press one out of a junk ebay carb from my spares. It seems to be just peened into place. Does this sound correct?
Anything to watch for? Suggestions?

Thanks,

Kirk




Kirk Trigg

The above pic is actually from a carb from my spares as well.
Kirk Trigg

Kirk, I made one and tapped with a small screw and used permeated sleeve locker to secure

Regards, Tom
tm peterson

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the response. I took the carb off and got it swaged in there I think. It sounds like your fix would have worked better though.

Kirk
Kirk Trigg

Not knowing how long it’s been gone I’d be worried as to whether the piece is waiting to be ingested by the engine. I would be pulling the intake off and looking at it and the ports for debris
W A Chasser

My dad bought a YT with the same issue. It wouldn't run properly because the piston would turn and the suction hole would not necessarily be where it should be, so the piston would not rise. I just fitted another from a donor carby and the car ran properly again. I would think that you should know when the piece fell out because that would be when the car started to run poorly (at least most of the time). I would think that the piece would have gone through the valves/cylinder and into the exhaust very soon after it came out. However, for peace of mind, a look (with one of those scopes which I should buy soon) into the two cylinders which that carby serves, might be worth while. I don't think the piece would stop in the inlet manifold but that could be checked with the scope too. Hopefully the offending piece has not left any more than a few pock marks in the top of a piston before going out the exhaust valve.

Can't remember how they are located, but a peened peg sounds right. A bit of JB weld might help.
Bob
R L Schapel

This is more sound advice from the members of this board, as usual. That’s why I’ve been lurking here for the last seven years or so. The TC was the last car that a friend of mine named Don, restored. He finished it about a year or so before he unfortunately passed away. I’m not sure how many miles he put on the fresh engine, but certainly not many. Probably well under 500 miles.

I hadn’t considered it before, but that brass piece may have gotten swallowed on the first and only trip that I have taken with it so far. My wife and I left the house and travelled maybe 20 miles or so uneventfully. We stopped for lunch and when we started it back up it was running rough and the throttle stuck open. I limped it home. I found that one of the throttle return springs on the TC carb was no where near as stiff as the one on my fully disassembled TD’s carb linkage. I robbed that spring and put it on the TC and that solved the sticking throttle problem. It could well be that the rough running was a result of the brass piece coming out. I’ll tear into it this weekend using one or other of the above described methods and report back.

My goal is to make sure that the car is a reliable cruiser. So, I’d like to get it running well with the SU’s. However, several years before my friend Don’s passing, he offered to give me the Marshall Nordec setup that came on the car when he purchased it because he had decided that he was going to put the SU’s on it. I believe he probably bought the TC some time in the 1960’s or 70’s. I told him that I couldn’t accept such a generous gift. A few years later, he’d suffered a couple of strokes and was letting most of he and his wife’s collection of several vintage cars and bikes go. It was obvious that the Marshall was going to go in the scrap bin if I didn’t accept it, so I did. I originally expected the Marshall to go on my TD when I get retired and have time to work on it again. However, now that I have unexpectedly acquired the TC from their estate, (His wife passed as well just 4 or 5 months after him), I feel that it would be only fitting to put the Marshall back where it belongs.

I know that this is getting long winded, but I hope that you’ll find the next bit interesting. About a year or so ago, I decided to clean most of the 60 year old crud off of the supercharger. Underneath the goo, I found the name “Ernie McAfee”. I made up a fantastic story about Ernie McAfee being a famous racing driver during the 40’s and 50’s and texted my story to a good friend of mine who has a British car collection of his own. He did what I didn’t have sense enough to do, and looked the name Ernie McAfee up on Wikipedia. I encourage the readers that are still with me to look that name up on Wikipedia as well.

Let me just say that I don’t have any way of knowing whether the Ernie McAfee that stamped his name on my supercharger was the same guy that died by crashing his Ferrari into a tree at Pebble Beach or not. I do know that Don and his wife’s main residence was in San Diego so the car very likely spent most of its life in Southern California and I believe it could have easily been owned by Ernie McAfee the racing driver who apparently was from Los Angeles. If anyone happens to know any more information about Ernie McAfee I’d love to hear more about him.

At any rate, I expect to be replacing the carbs with the supercharger once I have more confidence in all the other aspects of the TC. I know almost nothing about superchargers, so I’ll be checking the archives and asking for more advice, I’m sure.

I do hope that this overly long report was worth the read.

Kirk
Kirk Trigg

I’m having trouble uploading photos. I hope this works.




Kirk Trigg

Interesting backstory. And your very lucky to have a Marshall SC dumped in your lap. I’ve been looking for one several years now to no avail.
W A Chasser

Thanks Bill. Yes, I do feel fortunate to have gotten the supercharger. I never expected when I first got it that some time later I’d be able to buy the TC from the estate and reunite them. I guess you just never know.
Kirk Trigg

Kirk: Scroll down for Ernie Mc Afee details

https://www.mg-cars.org.uk/mgtd/mgtd_america.htm#KeyPeople
Christopher Couper

Thanks Chris. I’ve found several things about him online. Certainly an interesting character. There’s probably no way to know whether he ever owned my TC, or just added a supercharger to it. Or, it may have been on some other car entirely and got added to mine at some later date.

Don had quite a collection of cars that include the TC, a 1937 Derby Bentley, an Alfa that Dustin Hoffman drove in “The Graduate”, a Model T, a1923(?) AJS bike with a side car, and a 1953 Riley in original condition, plus several others. If I’d had any idea that I would ever end up with the TC, I’d have tried to pry any information I could’ve out of him. Unfortunately, that opportunity is now lost.
Kirk Trigg

This thread was discussed between 06/06/2020 and 10/06/2020

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