That's a good find. I'd love to find a gauge with a separate sensor that could replace the ammeter so that one doesn't have to run everything through the gauge itself...

-Wayne

Success! After many hours of working on it, the new wire harness is a success and everything now works perfectly! Well, as perfect as one could expect. The wiring was old and black and hard and I had to create a new harness to replace the old one. Fixed up some odd wiring too while I was at it. Just a lot of cleaning everything up.

I re-ran the speaker wires too - that's the most important thing, of course. :)

-Wayne

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Bad wires:
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New harness, etc:

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Hooked up the new harness tonight. Everything appears to be working now! No more low voltage issues! The new harness + the new connectors and a new ignition switch has seemed to breathe new life into the thing. I took a look a the ignition system and started taking the components off to see what to replace. Most of the stuff looks very good! I'm debating what to mess with / replace. The cap and rotor look brand new. The plug wires are old, but still appear very good. Points and condenser look okay - the points probably needs a piece of sand paper run between them, but they don't look worn. The only things that look worn is the coil wire (looks like it wasn't secured all the way and was arching), and the spark plugs which look dirty. I think I'll replace the wires and the plugs and see what happens. I don't have timing specs on the car, so I'm a bit reluctant to mess with the timing before I have a chance to see it with a timing lamp. I'll mark it of course before I move the distributor...

-Wayne

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I was taught early on in my auto mechanic life to NEVER use sand paper on points. You want to use something that can't leave anything behind, like a grain of sand, which can cause untold problems. Get a small points file, but please don't use sandpaper or anything that can 'shed' abrasive material.

New harness looks great, glad things are working too.
If I were reading those plugs, I'd say it was a mixture problem more than an electrical problem.

Maybe I'll start with some q-tips and some alcohol. The sand paper has worked in the past, but that was on 914s, which are pretty much no brainers with respect to points - just plug in a new set for $3 and be done with it. No worries about messing anything up. The file sounds like a good idea - I just bought a new set three days ago as well...

-Wayne

https://mossmotors.com/mgb/electrical-ignition/ignition/pertronix-flame-thrower-replacement-parts

Much easier...

Wayne - That's awesome! Did you ever figure out what the bridge rectifier was for?

Engine is an B-series one (1798cc) is it not?
Suggest you look up MGB timings as a decent reference....
It might have been tuned originally..... you could give Oselli Engineering:-

Classic Oselli | Oselli

a call, they have been doing BMC engines since 1962 so might be able to give some guidance.
They did the engine on our MGB Roadster.

+1 on this recommendation. Now, to find an actual points file...

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Here's mine!

It'll start all the time, but won't work 100% right. After years of having aftermarket electronic ignition, per recommendation of SU guru, Joe Curto, I switched back to a points system. Much better performance through the entire rev range. Plus, points are cheap when the car is not daily driven.

I am sort of expecting this sometime soon. There is quite the limited market, but I would buy one.

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Yes, eventually that. But I'm trying to keep things as original as possible on the car for the moment. Plus, I'm a bit wary of adding any additional electrical components to the car. Plus, the car is a positive ground, which adds to the confusion. Get the car running (and stopping with the brakes), and then start to go through the fine-tuning. That's the plan, otherwise it will end up morphing into a 2-3 year project where every nut and bolt gets removed and plated! That's no my style, I like the cars to be original and driveable. Not restored and "museum pieces".

-Wayne

The headlamp motor has four wires going to it, so I'm assuming it has to do with a clever way to reverse the current to the motor without using a complex switch in the dash. That's the best I can think of. Since I installed the new harness, it's working better than ever (with the diode bridge), so I'm going to leave it alone and move on to more pressing things (more photos coming today).

-Wayne

That is awesome! With your permission, I'm going to use that as a running joke! We can also add:

- 101 Projects for your American LaFrance Fire Truck
- 101 Projects for your Daimler Ferret (tank)
- 101 Projects for your carbon fiber Solar Car
- 101 Projects for your 959
- 101 Projects for your 962

The 959 one would have to be 2-3 volumes for sure. That car is immensely complicated to an extreme!

-Wayne

It is all yours. I was just having fun with the concept as I read through your thread on this really cool car.

-Christopher

Interesting. Ive had nothing but the opposite results...Can you elaborate?

Been working on a lot of 70's British stuff over the last few years. Got pretty familiar with Lucas stuff. (And SUs too.)

Today it was fuel tank sender day.

One side looked great. Needed a small wire resoldered in order to get it working. The other side was completely covered in crud. And this crud smells as bad as the bathroom at your college dorm at 2:30AM after a big party when about six people have already thrown up. It's not making me sick like that would, but it smells terrible. 37-year old varnish from the tanks. Speaking of that, there is a major problem brewing, one that I do not have a solution for - more on that in a few days when I gather more info.

I took the fuel senders out (there are two fuel tanks) and wire brushed them to heck using the Dewalt drill (can't imagine doing them by hand). They cleaned up fairly well. I could buy new ones, but the only one I found (could not find a part number on them) were not an exact match. I bought it anyway, as a spare, it was only $45 or so for an NOS one - boy, this stuff seems cheap compared to Porsche parts (and in particular parts for a 962 or a 959! I think a 959 fuel sender (if you can find one) is probably $3K!

These senders work the way all the others do - they have a sliding contact that slides up and down a coil of wire. The more coils between the contact and ground, the greater the distance. To fix these, I cleaned the heck out of them (using isopropyl alcohol), and also used some small wire brushes made of brass attached to my Dewalt cordless drill (very slowly and carefully there). You don't want to damage the coils. On one of these, the small ground wire had broken off, so I resoldered the connect (had to scratch and prep the surface to make the solder flow properly). The other one, the contact strip was not making contact the whole way down, so I slightly bend it a bit. Both work now - tested them on the multi-meter. I tried to use the oscilloscope to test, but for some reason, I couldn't get the scope to work properly with these, so I just went back to the multimeter.

Tomorrow, we'll start tackling the brakes. I need to get the brakes down so that we can put the wheels back on to take the car out of the garage so that I can then work on flushing the gas tanks...

Left side (not as smelly as the right side):

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Right side. The fuel tanks were replaced a while ago with stainless steel ones. In the process, the sender hole wasn't lined up completely right, so I had to round it out a bit using my router. I didn't like doing this, but there was no way to get the sender out. It had obviously been installed in the tank first, and then the tank installed into the car. No worries, just a little trimming of the wood with the router, and it popped right out (like about an eighth of an inch).

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