So the top has been on and I've claimed somewhat vaguely that I'm commuting "most days". What that means is "when it's not raining or snowing". The top is up, and I'm willing to carry a towel to work around the likely leaks or direct water penetration through the poorly fitting top, but there was another more important problem to resolve before I felt it wise to drive in the rain. I discovered this one early on driving with my 11 year old son.
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Investigating the source of the problem.
This is not an uncommon sight lately. |
It was a beautiful day in early October just after getting the seat belts fitted. I picked him up from a friend's house across town and we were enjoying a fun ride back to the house when we were set upon by a surprise sun shower. The top wasn't yet very functional but as long as we kept moving we weren't getting very wet. I put the wipers on and discovered two odd things. First, the blades were too long to make the complete arc. Second, they were starting from the passenger's side, so that after getting stuck on the top frame and returning the right 2/3 of the windshield (windscreen in British) was fairly clear, but the part I needed to look through was completely missed. I remembered a covered port cochère at a building near us and we pulled in to wait through the worst of the shower. As the rain slacked up we went on, and I just sat up a little straighter to see over the windscreen. This needed to be fixed before I could rely on this car in the rain though.
In the spare parts that came with the car were a set of wiper blades that fit properly and were designed with a bend to work with the blades "parked" against the drivers side as they are supposed to for a left hand drive (LHD) car. Why they were parked on the other side is a bit of a mystery to me since I know that my car was originally built as left hand drive for the large North American MG export market. Luckily, the MGA Guru site had full instructions on how to adjust the wiper motor parking position. Unfortunately it was pretty involved. There is an electrical position sensor on the back side of the motor housing that needs to be rotated to a new position. The motor is on the shelf in the engine bay tucked up under the body, but not too bad to reach - if your car is set up for right hand drive. If it's a left hand drive, the top of the clutch and brake pedals get in the way since they've been relocated but the motor has not. The solution is to remove the clutch and brake pedals, and the push rods that they attach to to operate the brake and clutch fluid. So, this simple fix amounted to the most significant mucking around with equipment related to forward motion and safety to date. I stalled for a few weeks and then got into it.
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The site of the surgery a few steps in after the push rods
were out and the rubber covering removed. The tops
of the pedals are seen poking up from below still in the way
of the wiper motor in the background. |
The push rods are held to the pedal tops with clevis pins that came out quickly with pliers. The push rods from the master cylinders pull right out with a little encouragement, but I found out later that I could have adjusted the length first. Four bolts to get the thin metal frame off that holds the rubber fume excluder pretty trivial. The forward two bolts are in capture nuts but the rear two required a complaining teenage helper on his back under the steering wheel to hold the nuts still. Also two of those bolts needed a universal joint to get a socket on them. The rubber pedal covering "draught excluder" that keeps engine fumes out of the cockpit needed a little light finger prying to get unstuck from the heater shelf but came out no problem. The pedals rotate on one bolt exposed cleanly after the excluder is off. There are bushings (mine stayed pressed into the pedal) and spacers (distance pieces) on it but that was trivial too. The return springs underneath sort of hold the pedals up at that point by pulling them into the back of the opening. I had my son pull the springs off while I held the pedals above to keep them from falling on his head but you could probably do all that solo from below. All that was probably 20 minutes or less including recruiting. I only had one bolt holding the Wiper motor mount to the heater shelf and that was quick to get out. I think that was a capture nut again so no helper needed.
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Crow's foot head on a socket extension reaching back to
the flare nut holding the wiper cable pipe to the motor. |
By far the hardest part for me was getting to the flare where the wiper cable pipe is held to the back of the motor assembly. It's 3/4" and it's tight enough that a regular adjustable wrench wouldn't fit. Since i didn't have a fixed open end wrench that big and one wouldn't have reached anyway I wound up buying a set of crows foot heads for $15 from autozone. With that it took 30 seconds to loosen enough to twist by finger from there. Pulling the motor and cable out is slightly awkward to keep from banging the motor on things but isn't difficult.
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| High Tech Motor Repair on my "workbench" (the garage floor) |
I cleaned everything up, and took the wiper motor apart to clean inside. Since the motor seemed weak the few times I tried to use it, I decided to try to clean off the commutator (internal electric motor part) with a pencil eraser. The replaceable carbon brushes seemed to be in good shape, so I put the motor back together, hooked it up temporarily with alligator clips to the battery and confirmed it worked. I rotated the parking setting adjustment and set it for left hand park. In the process, I discovered that I really probably could have adjusted this setting by loosening the cover screws with everything still in place in the car, but oh well - it's good that I have a chance to clean and re-lubricate everything. If re-positioning is all you need to do, try it first without disassembly. Now, just to put the car back together. Simple, right? Stay tuned for a future episode...
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