• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

MGB Valve adjustments?

Share this page

Y

YakkoWarner

Jedi Warrior
Country flag
Offline
I have had my MGB engine up and running several times now (just in the bay, not ready to attempt movement yet) - brought it through a few heat cycles and such. It seems to run rather nicely at least without load, develops good oil pressure (close to 80 at startup, still in the 60-70 range afteer warmup) and isn't seriously losing fluids anywhere. However, the valve train sounds noisy to me, even after going through and carefully setting each rocker to the 0.015 clearance as indicated in the manual. Is it normal to have some ticking with solid lifters (been a very long time since I had one of these running) - should I bring them in slightly to like 0.012 or so? Observing them while running doesn't show any odd things for concern, all the valves are depressing and springing back, none of the rockers seem to have any unusual motion and the rods all seem to move up and down properly. There is definately oil coming up to the top of the engine, but don't really have a way to measure for certain that is is the correct amount.
 
Sounds like your engine is just as it should be! Solid lifters are a bit noisy. If they aren't you're on the way to burning valves.
 
Agree with Joe - drive it a bit and then recheck. As for the oil, as long as you're seeing it along the valve train, it should be fine.
 
Appreciate the sanity check. Its just been so long since I had one of these actually running that I don't always trust my memory on what is normal vs. what is concerning. Its still a good way out from being able to be driven (as in the whole interior is still basically a bare metal shell except for the front panel now, need to do all the paperwork to make it legal, need to do tires, don't have the top ready yet, still need to finish assembling the front grill/air dam, check on the rear axle, put the driveshaft in, and whatever else I'm forgetting). I'm going to try to fire it up once a month or so to keep it alive in the mean time. It did scare me for a minute because it didn't instantly show oil pressure (it had been dormant for 4-5 months), I think going forward I'll have to remember to crank it some with the coil disconnected to prime the system.
 
Back
Top