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These Cars Must Have Been Built By Midgets

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Jim_Gruber

Jim_Gruber

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I swear these cars must have been built by Midgets. Started work on replacing Choke Cable last night. For those who have never experienced this fun job imagine placing your hand in a vise, tighten, and then using razor blades to skin off any exposed flesh, all while standing upside down on your head. Access to the choke cable is at best difficult if you remove the radio console. If you want to save time and hassle and attempt it with just speedo being removed it is to say at the least challenging. I have avarage sized hands and getting the short enough wrench behind the dash and in place to loosen the nut on the choke cable took about every one of my tools to find one that worked and would fit.

Old cable is out, pull string is installed to pull cable through the firewall, and another hour or two will have this job completed.

Tips

Speedo needs to come out

Rt Turn signal needs to be unscrewed so you can get access with wrench

A short adjustable and I mean short stubby adjustable wrench works to get the nut loose on back of short cable.

Use tape to attach a pull string to Choke Cable as you pull back through firewall.

Attach lock washer and nut to choke cable

Use Pull String to pull choke cable back out through firewall.

Find a 10 y.o. child with small hands who is interested in things mechanical.

Loosen one side of speedo nut, use long, long, long needle nose pliers, 12"+. That $4.00 tools you can never find a use for, works well to loosen thumbscrew wheels.

Get second side loose as well but rotate speedo in the dash to get better access to thumbscrew wheels.

My goal of replacing the dash with a fiberglass replacement will need to wait until next year after my hands heal up.
 
Jim_Gruber said:
Find a 10 y.o. child with small hands who is interested in things mechanical.
Click to expand...

I presume this is to sacrifice to the gods for safe completeiuon of the project :devilgrin:
 
3 inch cresent wrench works just fine. If you are still haveing problems cut it in half and you have a 1 1/2 inch cresent wrench. You do have one don't you. You will.
 
JPSmit said:
Find a 10 y.o. child with small hands who is interested in things mechanical.
Click to expand...

hehehe, I have fat hands and they always all ripped up :wink:
 
Jack,

I do have a 4" adjustable box wrench. The one I keep in the car when the starter drive gear locks up. Wasn't in my tool chest was in the car. After a lot of swearing last night I looked over to the PS of the car and on the floor was the tool I needed under a pile of stuff.

Next time I see one of this $1 value bin tools I'll pick one of this up and make me a 1 1/2" adjustable box wrenches.
 
Jim

I keep one in my Jeep as the fix all tool :wink:

Pat
 
The adjustable wrench IS my metric tool set. :smile:
 
Hey Jim, work on motorcycles for a while and then Midgets will seem like a breath of fresh air. I remember the frustration of trying to get 4 carbs all in 4 rubber intake gasket tubes all at the same time. Of course they were built by the Japanese and they are smaller people. The most frustration with a midget has got to be working under the dash to fix wiring, istall the nuts on the back of gauges etc. or putting the stud in for the dang tonneau cover that goes on the dash.
 
There used to be a breed of humans that lived in the "middle" counties of England, like Warwickshire, Northants, Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, etc. and worked for Austin, Morris, MG, Standard, Vauxhall and the like. They were extraordinarily supple, and strong, with hands formed from the jaws of snipe-nosed pliers.

Today, their few descendants live in Norfolk and make Lotus cars.
 
Roger said:
There used to be a breed of humans that lived in the "middle" counties of England, like Warwickshire, Northants, Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, etc. and worked for Austin, Morris, MG, Standard, Vauxhall and the like. They were extraordinarily supple, and strong, with hands formed from the jaws of snipe-nosed pliers.

Today, their few descendants live in Norfolk and make Lotus cars.
Click to expand...
hehehehe....& what is this 'race' called?
 
New to this board and in South Africa.

Strange you had all that trouble, I renewed my choke cable of my 1500 Midget about 3 months ago, took half hour max. Hand up the back of the console hold the nut, pointed pliers to undo the front locking nut. Undid the lock/screw nut near the carb, pulled the cable out and hey presto. Reverse procedure, threaded the cable through the dashboard, through the fire wall, locked the front in again.

Some contortion in putting it through the firewall I admit but not much. I also have a radio console. The biggest problem I had was screwing in the tiny lock nut/screw at the carb side. Lost the [censored] thing in the engine/chassis/drip tray some where and had to buy a new one. Then I cheated, I had my car tuned at the local EMGEE shop and said "by the way can you just fix the choke cable at the carb end"
 
regularman said:
I think it was the strange race of little troll people called the Mowogs :wink:
Click to expand...

No, Mowogs were only the Nuffield lot. Didn't include the Rootes lot, nor the Stanparts, to say nothing of their descendant, the Uniparts. At least, not to begin with!
 
Yes I could have pulled the radio console as that's the way I replaced it before but it's such a PITA to get in / out as it has been customized it mounting to fit a Sony Radio/CD player that I didn't want to mess with it that way.Taking the console out would have meant more skin lost.
 
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