Roundtail Restoration: Cooling System Re-Fit Starts

Been a busy few weeks for me. Unfortunately, I haven't accomplished as much on the car as I wanted to, but I did do some fun stuff.
I started ripping apart the cooling system to back-fit the Mk 2-style water pump housing.

Water pump housing (Mk 1-style) and associated items.

Mk 2 on right. Notice the outlet port for the water-supplied intake manifold.

I loosened up the dynamo, pull off the belt and moved the dynamo down and out of the way. Then, I drained the coolant and removed/trashed all of the hoses.

The "cooling circuit". Not quite to plan. Note the back of the heater return pipe here only has one outlet.

Mk 1 heater return pipe on left, Mk 2 on right with the T-outlet. You can see where the PO bent the heck out of the mounting bracket to try to make it fit (it didn't work).

Another thing I found interesting. After cleaning up the new heater return pipe, I found that they used to braze these things with brass. Pretty cool.

Brass braze joints of piping and mounting bracket. Old school.

Then, it was on to unbolting the radiator (only two bolts) and it's cradle. The radiator, though functional, is shot. Though it is a Stanpart radiator, it is not a Spitfire one that I can figure because the radiator cap is in the center of the radiator vice offset to one side.

Ummm, yeah, pretty sure it's not supposed to look like this. Doesn't seem to leak...so it's got that going for it.

Next, I removed the bolts holding the water pump housing and off it came. I was worried there would be some significant rust/corrosion, but happily everything was in pretty good shape. I have no idea when this engine was swapped into this car, but I'm pretty sure there was some work done to it before it went in.

4-bladed fan, as fitted for exported cars. Interestingly, British cars had two blades...cooler there?

I then pulled the cooling fan off of the water pump pulley, and then popped the pulley off the pump itself.

Pulley removal. Popped right off and I didn't even spill my beer...well, it was empty, so I didn't knock the bottle over.

The water pump looks like it's seen better days. I'm soaking it in some Purple Power, so we'll see how it cleans up. Hopefully that doesn't destroy the bearings.

Water pump. I'll clean this up and see what it looks like.

After that, I cleaned up the rest of the heater return pipe, taped it off and painted it with high temperature Rustoleum which seemed to come out fine. I used the high temperature stuff because of the hot-ish water that runs through the pipe but more so for the fact that it runs right next to the exhaust manifold.

You cannot tell in the picture below very well, but I taped off about 1 to 2 inches from the ends of the pipe to prevent interference with rubber hoses.

All nice and pretty. Need a new olive nut for it.

Other than that, I cleaned up the new water pump housing a bit more. I haven't decided if I am going to paint it or not, but I probably should. It won't be flat black, though. I'll probably do the black that I painted the transmission with. I also cleaned up the thermostat cover. I'm going to get a new temperature sender for it as a matter of course, though the old one worked fine when I last ran the car.

I also finally got around to painting the transmission rear mounting brackets with VHT Self-Etching primer. I haven't used this stuff before and, after some not-so-intense research, it seemed that this was best since the alternative for good corrosion resistance (not that I have that problem on my car...wink-wink) is epoxy primer and that is a two-step mix process and therefore does not lend itself to home (at least not my home) use.

Primered up. I'll be putting a coat of black on top of this.

Tomorrow my and my oldest will be attending the British by the Sea Car Show, hosted by the Connecticut MG Club. I've spent some time at Harkness State Park, where the show is being held, flying kites with the boys and just hanging around. It's a beautiful place and, with good weather on tap for tomorrow, I'm sure it's going to be a great time. I've already touched base with a few people from my favorite forum and I plan on looking them up when I get there. I hope to get lucky, unlike the last car show I went to, and find some round tail Spitfires that I can study and take pictures of.

On a side note, last weekend my father-in-law and I took the boys to the NASCAR race at Dover International Speedway, otherwise known as the Monster Mile. The last two years we went up to New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the Sylvania 300 and we'll probably go this year, too. It was fun to see a different type track, even though it was pretty hot. There was a good breeze and just enough clouds to keep it bearable and I think I put sunscreen on everyone about 30 times. But, a good time was had by all!