After the last-minute calamities in the January issue of Classics Monthly when our MGB GT was coaxed back to Rob’s home with a sticking throttle cable, he had ticked off a major oil leak problem, but the engine was far from running sweetly. As you’ll see throughout the 17 investigative steps we’ve outlined on fixing the sticking throttle cable, it was caused by the outer sleeving being incorrectly located at the engine bulkhead, but it took an hour of working through several checks to finally get to this point. On the plus side, at least Rob now knows a little more about fixing sticking throttle cables. In fact, the last time he had to deal with such a problem was on the M25 in another MGB, so maybe he’s jinxed.
Other jobs this month have been equally frustrating. The tappets sounded a little noisy, so Rob got stuck into checking the valve clearances, only to discover it wasn’t quite so straightforward to turn the engine and watch for a valve spring to become fully compressed.
