Had to laugh when I saw your video. My first car was a 1963 MGB Roadster, which when I bought I knew nothing about cars. In 1972 I drove it to work for the first time. I was worried about it being stolen in London so I took the rotor arm out. I came back to the car at lunch time and refitted the rotor arm but it would not start. Desperate, I asked a new older and it turned out wiser colleague for help. When arriving at the car he asked me for a precise account of what I had done. After I told him he simply said look under the car! I did and guess what, there was the distributor cap centre electrode pin. I refitted it and the car started immediately. Whew what a relief and never to be forgotten. Later on my 2nd car a 1971 MGB Roadster I worked on the engine for many years but every time I refitted the distributor cap I double checked the centre electrode had not fallen out. . .

Just had my Mg BGT 2 days ago having long crank on start, and wanted to cut out on 1st and 2nd gear. standard engine with Hs4 SU carbs. Finally saw fuel leak coming from overflow pipe from front fuel pot. Had to rig a plastic bottle to catch the amount of fuel overflowing. Turned out the amount of grit/rust particles coming from the fuel tank was blocking the fuel pipe from bottom of fuel pot tube to carb jet. Cleaned up fuel pot and checked needle and spring inside Carb Pot. Car started first crank. Going to add an in line filter and eventually new fuel tank. Checked timing last night, out by 5 degree got that fixed, need to do valve gap at the weekend. Thanks again for a very informative video.

My first car was a MGB-GT. It's where I first started paying with building cars and repairing them. I replaced the floors and boot corners. It' didn't sound like yours though! I now have an MGB with a partial Sebring look, just the front and rear valances and not the flared wheel wells. I recently got my Riley 9 engine running and it was very rough. It wasn't until I made a tubular exhaust manifold for it I worked out why. One cylinder wasn't firing, I could clearly see the lack of heat on the headers. It was a valve not fully closing which a compression test then a visual check with the rocker box open confirmed.

Happy to see that the very educational and interesting car topic videos are back. Thanks 🙏

Always informative and well produced, I have a 63 "B" and your videos are very helpful in my quest to improve performance.

This is why i love your channel, just got my nans 74 mgb roadster and im starting the restoration project, you just keep motivating me! Thanks a lot

Great Video! It was nice to see you methodically go through the different systems, and the process of elimination to land on the DCOE carb. I Love my 69 MGB GT which has a stage two "Fast Road" . I considered a DCOE Weber but elected to install rebuilt HS4 SU carbs. Truthfully the DCOE's and all the jetting etc are like black arts to me. Thanks for sharing this very informational Video.

Very interesting detailed video Steve

Back when I used to run Webers and Dellortos on old Corollas I learned to disconnect the fuel pump and run the engine until the bowls were dry if I was going to leave the car sitting for several months.

My favorite renaissance man. 🤜

I’m surprised you didn’t inspect the sparkplugs in the beginning. Often it will tell you something. Keep the videos coming, very informative

Hello Steve very good video. My old Honda used to run very badly. Then i checked everything like you did. Then I tried an additive for the injection system and the problem was gone after a long, fast ride :)) A video about additives for engine, transmission and cooling would be a good thing. I'm sure a lot of people will find that interesting. Great video Steve. 👍👍👍

I also like the MGB-GT. Allways liked the look. The MGC-GT (3L 6 cylinder) was also fun. The Weber DCOE and the original SUs are may favorite ways to get the fuel air/mixture into the engine. That was a very good introduction to troubleshooting an MGB starting and running problem. I like your HT tester. I have had carbon tracking problems before and that would have been a handy tool for troubleshooting that problem. I made my own tool after I had three bad distributor rotors in a row on a VW bug. All were brand new Bosch brand rotors also! A handy tool for figuring out mixture problems (especially on multi carburetor or multibarrel carburetor engines) is the Gunson Colortune. They are sparkplugs with windows and you can actually see the fuel burning in the cylinder. Great video Steve. Thanks for posting.

Hurrah, one of my favorite cars,nothing special but great fun.

I expect that you'll find the center carbon electrode of the distributor cap laying down in the bottom of the distributor body. Also, when you do your fine tuning of the ignition, check the timing at idle, then observe it while increasing the engine speed. It should vary with speed. The centrifugal advance weights in the bottom of the distributor can get stuck giving you static timing (since you have no vacuum advance).

Great video and very informative. I’ll be checking out your Weber videos as I have a MGC in rebuild with triple carbs.

You are amazing. You’re videos are the best that I have found on diagnosing things.

Dad gave me his 71 BGT a few years ago and iv been in the process of restoring it. Having a similar issue with running rough and also have a Webber dcoe, and I think I know what I need to do now, same result if I pull #3 or 4 plug. Sometimes you need to listen to somebody talk about the same issues you have, and it helps bring you (me) to the correct conclusion. Anybody with a MGB or MGBGT is awesome in my book and I hope to some day build up another BGT like yours for the track. Now I'm extra motivated. Thank you!

Hi Steve excellent fault remedy process fantastic to watch well executed thanks.

that was a great presentation on checking things through

This is surreal, I just had the exact same problems a week ago on my own car. Button was MIA from the inside of the cap and made a huge mess of the cap and rotor by sparking across the gap- amazingly it did just about run though! Tomorrow morning I'm cleaning out my Webers to hopefully get rid of some idle stumbles.

22:03 Hmmm...I wonder which word was withheld? LOL I do sense self censoring at this moment of a piece falling at the moment of carburetor removal. Great video!

That was a good find troubleshooting the dizzy cap, it would have stumped me for a while. One thing that I found was the rotor arm lengths can very a lot, I found 2 in my batch that were 1mm and 1.4mm shorter than the rest. That's a long way for a spark to jump as well as jumping the sparkplug electrodes.

Clever to use Ties to number the spark leads.

good work Steve !

Nice vid showing your thinking and progressive testing. Well done! And, of course, it's always the last thing we check right? LOL... I was also thinking while listening to you that it's quite remarkable how good your technical English is. It's one thing to speak fluently with day to day conversation if you're not a native speaker, but another one entirely to be proficient with technical terms that most people in the UK or US would not even know. Impressive! And where did that part go while the car was stored?

I really love Your “B”… I use to have a 1967 “B” GT I really loved that Car!

Great presentation style. 👍

Very good as usual, thank you

Outstanding video and presentation.

Great lesson!. Keep on with the good work!!

Love that car

Awesome nice. Cheers Steve 👍

Great repair and it sounds mega

How strange, I've had the exact same issue with a distributor cap on my Mini before when it was running an old Lucas 25D points distributor, I could never figure out why or what happened but the spring-loaded stack had just completely disappeared! I wonder if it's a quality issue with the caps that are being made these days. Since fitting a programmable CSI electronic distributor (along with a rebuilt engine I should add!) I've had far fewer problems, you won't regret upgrading to the 123 ignition system on your MG, they are fantastic.

I have a similar problem on my Renault 5 and am investigating step-by-step…

Very good film as always but compression is in PSI !!😊

I want ole rusty vids

Mysterious things happen with a car, with no explanation!

Nice 👍🏻 video Steve 👍🏻🇬🇧

What are your thoughts on keeping carb's functioning with potential increases of ethanol in the future? Ever since ethanol was increased to around 10% my Dellorto DRLA's have been regularly playing up. They have developed an intermittent blocked idle/progression circuit and no amount of ultrasonic cleaning has resolved it. Main circuits still run perfectly and I have ruled out everything else you covered in this video. I'm guessing that the factory plug that separates the main/idle gallery has come loose and is moving around causing the blockage.

What happened to the distributor button and spring ? That's really weird.. goes under the 'mystery' category I guess

Very interesting 👌

are you running a Warneford or a TWM intake? What compression ratio? I'm getting 172-178

What do you think if you put an air filter on the carburetor? There are other options for that ignition. Check the Ukrainian engine control system SECU-3. In the carburetor version, only a few sensors and a waste spark coil are needed.😉

I’m wanting to build an engine for my 66 MGB and wondered what camshaft to choose. It will be a road car but I still want to get more performance out of the engine. Any suggestions?

Maybe a optical illusion but a 16:10 plus or minus a couple of seconds it looks like a voltage leak from the screwdriver to the rotor

Now

Carb would have been my first thoughts. The car has been sitting for a while so more than likely a fuel issue

Going to guess timing Hard to start Doesnt run good As long as fuel is in good shape Seems like youd be sacrificing some power to parasitic load of the double valve springs

are there better sidedraft carbs then webbers? or is there only American downdrafts, but it just doesn't feel right to use those.

Basically the problem was a bit of a dirty gas who caused a cloth

1950ccm, Stage 3 Head, Hot Cam, Roller Rockers but only one DCOE? With that configuration only one carb is a restriction. You should convert to two 45 DCOEs. 165hp with one carb is hard to belive for me. Also because you have only 101 hp wheelpower.

why did you buy that crap?