Wheels & Rims & The Plans of Mice & Men

Quick note on the rims we're running with. 

I removed the caked on grease & muck from the rims to take to shop to get new tires installed on them.

And while we were installing new tires, I dug out the two nicer rims that we scrounged from Crazy Ray's U-Pick-It, U-Pull-It that were on an old Datsun 260Z (it only had 3 attached); these rims have "cooling holes" in them, I figured I should put them on the front to help cool the brake calipers.

Vented rims on left, rims we were using on the right:

A collection of American Racing 4x4.5 rims

I decided I better measure the heck out of them to make sure they fit properly.

Long story short, both styles are exact matches, but both are +10mm offset instead of MGB spec’s +22mm wheel offset. Oops.

Both clear the calipers & suspension ok, so I think this just means the bearings et al get more leverage on them and will wear sooner.

The big difference between the rims is a show stopper: the lug nut holes on the “vented rims” are flat faced and deeper (20mm), causing the lug to use half the threads that it does on the non-vented rims (which have sunken and beveled holes, with steel inserts). The MGB lug studs are only 25mm long.

The MG lug nuts want beveled seats.

Non vented: blue is flat shoulder sunk 6mm in, white is additional 4mm beveled edge (these have steel inserts but you can't tell from the photo):

 

Vented rims: chalked area is flat face, about 0.5 mm sunk (the dirt makes it look deeper):

Sigh.Oh well. Not brave enough to alter the lug nut hole profile... yet.


Update 2013-05-22:
I was going to order a set of the steel inserts and drill out the Datsun 260Z American Racing 4x4.5 rims (on left of first photo above, with the vent holes)... until I stumbled upon the proper solution: Mag Lug Bolts.

The MGB takes 1/2-20 thread bolts; the trick is to get a set that has a shaft/collar that fits snugly into the wheel rims lug hole, is long enough to get plenty of threads but short enough so it does not 'bottom out' on the top of the lug. After extensive measurements with a caliper and taking one of the rims to the local Advanced Auto Parts store we found the perfect fit, right there on the shelf! Note hard steel washers included. Dorman - Autograde Wheel Nut Chrome Std. Mag 2-Pc 1/2 Inch-20, Hex 13/16 Inch Length 1.664 Inch part number 711-208

I mounted the wheel with only two opposite lugs to test how well the centering of the wheel on the hub worked - and it's quite fine thank you very much! Quite happy now.

DORMAN Chrome Wheel Nuts, 1/2-20 threads for MGB and American Racing mag wheels (flat lug seats)

Mag Lug Nuts on American Racing 4x4.5 mag wheels mounted perfectly on MGB

A few great links:

The MG Experience: MGB Tire Sizes

http://www.mgexperience.net/article/tire-sizes.html

The MG Experience: MGB Wheel Cross Reference
http://www.mgexperience.net/article/wheel-xref.html

MGB Stuff.org 
http://www.mgb-stuff.org.uk/offset.htm#2
http://www.mgb-stuff.org.uk/wheelstext.htm

Steel Inserts for Aluminum Rim Lug Nut Holes 
http://www.prestigewheel.com/RetaiWheelInserts.asp

Race Report: Where the Elite Meet to Cheat 2011

Where the Elite Meet to Cheat at Charlotte Motor Speedway was a riot as expected. Plenty of this report snipped & edited from Driver Dave's email.

We finished the race with a blown head gasket; 53th place out of 66 entries; we were in the pits the last 4 hours with the engine ripped apart. A noble effort!

 

Rain. And more Rain. And no windshield wipers. And no RainX (plastic windshield).

Friday: set up day: Judge Phil comes over with a friend and says something like “this is my friend Randy, he’s a pretty good driver and your car really caught his eye… any way he could sneak a few laps in it sometime?” … Carl is in a great mood and of course said “hell yeah”… good karma and all that. Also - it's always a good idea to do the penalty-wielding judges a favor.

Tech Inspection: should move under-hood fuel filter closer to pressure regulator so it is more protected and doesn't flop around; brake light switch may need adjustment (woops - more on that later).

Paddock all set up Goldbrick style: XBOX, fridge, leather couch, snacks. We'll unload the car sometime... oh wait did anyone remember to actually bring the car?!?!?!

Saturday, Race day one: we finished the first hour as the top class C car.  Carl was driving in the rain and doing a great job.  Until he passed under yellow - scratchy plastic crap windshield with no wipers was almost ok until it stopped raining and muddy water coated it.... oops. Penalty: driver change *whew* Second hour we had a terrible driver transition and refueling.  Dropped 30 laps back of top C car.

Then Ray got the best black flag in the history or racing.  He gets stuffed by some other car on a corner and ends up hitting some cones (mandatory black flag here.)  His penalty was to sit out for an hour... OR...  Let Randy Pobst drive our car during the penalty. Randy is a professional car roadracer.  Check out his info on Wikipedia.  So, during that hour Randy posted 60 laps, one of the top 10 fastest laps on the track (1:21), got us back to within 5 laps of the lead!  He was doing stuff we didn’t know the MG could do.  UNREAL! It's written up here: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/09/randy-pobst-lemons-mgb-gt-handles-well-bad-brakes-low-on-power/

I had forgotten to replace my lucky stick-shift knob with a "real" one... sorry Randy!

Randy dropped the rear tire pressure to 2 or 3 psi below the fronts, so now Front 29psi, Rear 27 psi; also said the rear drivers side would "clunk" on the one hard left, and that we really should adjust the pedal travel.
 
Then the problems started....  While Kurt was driving, he got flagged for brake lights.  Took us 2 HOURS to fix the stupid brake light switch on the MG.  So, we were well behind.  Dave made up some of it and was having a GREAT hour.  Posted a 1:24 lap and was trying to emulate Randy.  Was gaining 1 lap every 4 laps against the 2nd place C car and 1 lap every 5 against the 1st place C car.  Then Dave says he turned into a moron and ran out of gas while on the track...  Lost everything he’d gained waiting for the tow truck.  "I’m advocating a gas gauge Carl..." We added 7.5 gallons... so that is our new volume (thanks for measuring that Dave!) Max went out... into the heavy rain... zero visibility.

We finished day one pretty well though.  160 laps even with none of Kurt’s last 20 laps in the rain registering - several transponders were not working in the heavy rain towards the end of day one.  We were only 30 laps out of 2nd C class car.We were 47th place, "good enough" with all that lost time.

I guess 43 is old enough to smoke, so what the hell was I supposed to say?

Sunday, Race day two started well.  Ray was putting in some good laps.  Posted a 1:28 lap time!  Then 1/2 hour in the car started overheating.  When we looking it over, discovered water in the oil... unfortunately AFTER we refilled the radiator.  We’ve driven it without water before, so sent it back out!

Exhibit 1: A major disadvantage of having a light colored paint job

Kurt was driving when he was black flagged for the oil pooring out of it... :( 

We cleaned it up (drained everything; replaced oil filter plus oil change) and let it idle for a good 15 minutes; revved it a few times. We were thinking of sending it back out with new oil and no water.  

Judge Phil drove up and so no f@(#)%^ing way. Probably a good call.

 

So, we had no choice but to try to replace the head gasket.  Judge Phil assured us it was an easy job... Then disappeared...  We had some generic too-thick cork for other gaskets and decided to go for it. With four hours left we tried.  Couldn’t get it done by the time they called the race 1/2 hour early with lightning.