Six Cylinders Motoring Notes

[Six-cylinder]

What’s Broken

• The rain makes the paint look shiny when it is a bit flat.
• The rear wheel arches have been home repaired with filler and an aerosol paint.
• The dash is badly cracked.
• I have not been brave enough to look under the seat covers.
• One of the rear fog lights is not working
• The fuel gauge and temp gauge are not working
• The choke is set wrong and over revs on full choke then does not adjust nicely as you push it in.
• I guess the worst bit is a vagueness to the steering and a different feel cornering left to right. Also the steering wheel is lop sided.

 

Thing is Slowsilver had to have a look at the non-working fog light in case it only had one anyway. Turns out to be a poor connection in the bulb holder. Flushed with success he decided to tackle the fuel/temp gauges not working and because it is both is thinking voltage stabiliser so is taking the dash apart sat in the car in the rain!

[Eyersey1234]

30 minutes ago, Six-cylinder said:

Thanks to Slowsilver for turning out on a very wet miserable day. The wet weather prevented lots of pictures and standing about admiring it.

The car started with a jump and we added some petrol, while I did the paperwork Slowsilver gave it a good look over and declared while it had been stood for 10 months everything worked except one fog light so I drove it home.

 

Chodtastic Maestro you have @Six-cylinder

[brownnova]

Winnar!!!!!

I’d love a Maestro!!!

[dollywobbler]

Excellent. City X is fairly miserable spec, but at least gets you a rear wiper denied to the City.

[HMC]

City X- excuse me whilst I have a crisis.

[HMC]

@Six-cylinder any names planned? I remember you called the white 220sli captain mainwaring- or was that @Mrs6C ‘s doing?

[hairnet]

All the insania has gone for a holiday to buckinghamshire

[Andyrew]

That is indeed Gert lush

[Mr Pastry]

1 hour ago, LightBulbFun said:

the very first fluorescent tube put to the commercial market in the UK was a 5ft 80W bayonet capped tube, made so as WW2 had just broken out and they needed to minimise the amount of new components they had to make for the new fluorescent tube, so designed the tube to run off an existing 80W Mercury vapour lamp ballast, and used regular bayonet end caps from the incandescent lamp production line, so the 5ft 80W bayonet capped tube was born, 5ft 80W Bayonet capped tubes are  quite rare on their own, (I have only just recently only managed to get my name reserved on a GLS

We actually had one of these things in the living room in my childhood home, just hanging on two bayonet sockets.  It looked a bit naff, really, even for the 1950s when nobody had any money.  The PO was (supposedly) an electrical engineer and got all sorts of odd things like that from work.  IIRC the ballast/starter was a hefty tin box about 6 x 6 x 6 inches, which was under the floorboards of the room above.      

 

 

[Fumbler]

1 hour ago, brownnova said:

Winnar!!!!!

I’d love a Maestro!!!

As would I. Suspiciously cheap insurance too...

 

Seriously, well bought @Six-cylinder. Looks well lush.

[LightBulbFun]

17 minutes ago, Mr Pastry said:

We actually had one of these things in the living room in my childhood home, just hanging on two bayonet sockets.  It looked a bit naff, really, even for the 1950s when nobody had any money.  The PO was (supposedly) an electrical engineer and got all sorts of odd things like that from work.  IIRC the ballast/starter was a hefty tin box about 6 x 6 x 6 inches, which was under the floorboards of the room above.      

in the living room? now thats ahead of its time a little  if he used a warm white or deluxe warm white tube it probably would have worked quite well tho, sounds like the sort of thing id do myself today if I had my own house LOL

 

but indeed a lot early installations where quite simple like that, or a simple trough reflector with the control gear bolted to the top

I actually have such a ballast box with @Zelandeth that @bobdisk very kindly gave to me during one of the FoD gatherings a few months ago

(although @bobdisk's "installation" had been converted to use a bipin tube at some point in the 1970's or 1980's going by the lamp holders he gave me with the ballast box, although you could buy/get Bayonet cap to bi-pin adapters to use a Bipin tube in a Bayonet capped fixture )

[Mr Pastry]

2 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

in the living room? now thats ahead of its time a little  if he used a warm white or deluxe warm white tube it probably would have worked quite well tho

It worked OK, but even as a small child I wasn't convinced that this was the domestic lighting of the future!

[Slowsilver]

1 hour ago, Six-cylinder said:

What’s Broken

• The rain makes the paint look shiny when it is a bit flat.
• The rear wheel arches have been home repaired with filler and an aerosol paint.
• The dash is badly cracked.
• I have not been brave enough to look under the seat covers.
• One of the rear fog lights is not working
• The fuel gauge and temp gauge are not working
• The choke is set wrong and over revs on full choke then does not adjust nicely as you push it in.
• I guess the worst bit is a vagueness to the steering and a different feel cornering left to right. Also the steering wheel is lop sided.

 

Thing is Slowsilver had to have a look at the non-working fog light in case it only had one anyway. Turns out to be a poor connection in the bulb holder. Flushed with success he decided to tackle the fuel/temp gauges not working and because it is both is thinking voltage stabiliser so is taking the dash apart sat in the car in the rain!

I did take a quick peek under the driver's seat cover at a couple of areas of the seat, including the right-hand side squab bolster which is usually the area that wears through first, and they didn't look too bad. Will be interesting to take them off if it ever stops raining. I think this is very much not only a one owner but also a one occupier car. The top hinge on the driver's door is quite badly worn, causing the door to drop and it needs a good slam to shut it. But the other three doors are still tight and I suspect the back seats have hardly, if ever, been sat on. It came with a HBOL which unfortunately only covered models up to 1987. This contained three different dashboard variants, none of which bore any resemblance to the one in this car. After much effing and blinding I worked out how to actually get it out and looked for the instrument voltage regulator but it doesn't appear to have one. Did find a 63 ohm resistor, which measured just that, and three diodes, one of which read about 0.8v in one direction and open-circuit in the other. which seems about right, and two which read about 30mV in either direction, which doesn't. At this point I lost interest and nailed it all back together again. More research required I think, but like the prat that I am, I completely forgot to take any photos of the back of the instrument panel while it was out, so I will have to rely on my memory, which is shaky at the best of times. Still at least it now has all its lights working and a (hopefully) charged battery. Small victories Godber.
P.S. What kind of person voluntarily spends 2 hours in the cold and the pouring rain sitting in an old Maestro swearing at the dashboard? Answers on a postcard please.
 

[beko1987]

I'd love a maestro... Car from my childhood and the seem to survive OK... 

Would love to have a go one day! A classic that I can drive and afford to fix if it broke under my steer! (that puts me off trying alot of chod at our various forum meet ups...)

[hairnet]

my old one

no idea where this pic was likely prev owner

mg.webp

[Six-cylinder]

14 minutes ago, hairnet said:

my old one

no idea where this pic was likely prev owner

mg.webp 124.54 kB · 6 downloads

I can't open it?

[bobdisk]

1 minute ago, Six-cylinder said:

I can't open it?

Neither can I.  Computer says "No Application Found"

[LightBulbFun]

21 minutes ago, hairnet said:

my old one

no idea where this pic was likely prev owner

FTFY  

[Mrs6C]

It is an HTML document. Click on the link once and select your preferred web browser from the list of applications to open it. It's a nice shiny black MG Maestro!

[Mrs6C]

24 minutes ago, hairnet said:

my old one

Nice!!!

[LightBulbFun]

3 minutes ago, Mrs6C said:

It is an HTML document. Click on the link once and select your preferred web browser from the list of applications to open it. It's a nice shiny black MG Maestro!

sort of  its actually google specific image format made for the internet

so I knew it would open in google chrome (my primary web browser of choice) then copy and pasted it back into the forum as a .jpg which is much more universally compatible  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebP

[bobdisk]

Nice car! ( I installed a new viewer called Deepin Image Viewer, and it shows it. Using Chromium for Linux for Autoshite now, problems gone!😁)

[Six-cylinder]

Just makes me a City X owner feel inferior!

[Eyersey1234]

3 hours ago, brownnova said:

Winnar!!!!!

I’d love a Maestro!!!

Is that to teach SMOLL_Brownnova to drive in? 😂

[AnthonyG]

@SlowsilverThe dashboard in all post 87 Maestros is a Montego one.
From memory by there was  a very half-arsed refresh of the Maestro in late 87 or spring 88 and the Montego dash was a major part of that.  I assume all switchgear, controls on this one is all Montego as well. 

I have a HBOL for Montego 2.0, if you need any scans. Or you/Chris can have it if it helps. Let me know and I will chuck in the post.

[hairnet]

32 minutes ago, Six-cylinder said:

Just makes me a City X owner feel inferior!

even sat for 10 years ours will have less electrical problems

it was nice when it ran

 

[Six-cylinder]

4 minutes ago, AnthonyG said:

The dashboard in all post late 87 Maestros is a Montego one. I assume all switchgear, controls on this etc is all Montego as well. 

I have a HBOL for Montego 2.0, if you need any scans. Or Chris can have it if he wants it.

Thanks but it came with a HBOL that does not line up with what in behind the dash.

[HMC]

Where do the body colour bumpers line up in the maestro range? My younger self remembers y reg models  on the road with them but I don’t remember late clubmans with them?  As ever leading the way but also going backwards in development terms!

[AnthonyG]

This is the picture in the Montego HBOL, which covers the dash and instruments in your Maestro; 

[richardmorris]

3 hours ago, brownnova said:

Winnar!!!!!

I’d love a Maestro!!!

Weirdo!