The first came to be because somebody pulled out in front of me, and I blew the horn at them. From the factory, the TD had two horns, but Beck was down to one, and it sounded like a faint, distant foghorn, or maybe the bleat of some animal. I bought a set of bright red, 110 decibel horns from Moss Motors. The only problem was that when that second horn disappeared from Beck, the horn bracket left with it. I cast around, and found a likely piece of scrap that could be turned into a bracket:
After some cutting, grinding, sanding and drilling, along with a bit of paint, I had a mirror-image pair of brackets. The thicker one is the new one:
The next set of fabrications involves the fuel system. Beck's Volvo engine runs extremely rich, even with the carburetors adjusted to the most lean position. I noted that the floats for the twin carbs were installed "backwards" to make it easier to plumb the system. Could that be part of the problem? I decided to change it, which meant fabricating a new means of getting the fuel to the carbs.
In conjunction with that, I decided to add a second fuel filter to the system, using a clear one in the engine compartment. That will help diagnose some problems, and just make me feel better. I used a piece of galvanized sheet stock, and cut, bent and painted a little bracket to hold the filter:
Here's the fuel filter in the bracket:
And here's both the new horn bracket with horn attached, and the new fuel filter mounted in the car:
At the carburetor end, I need a bracket to hold a hard fuel line. I used a piece of aluminum angle (seen at the rear) and made a pretty fancy little bracket. The slot and notch were cut with a 3/16" end mill, and the nice finish comes courtesy of my new sandblasting cabinet:
The bracket mounts to some existing fasteners for the throttle linkage. I bent the hard line from straight 1/4" pipe, using a small tubing bender. Here are two views of that:
But there was one problem - an obstruction that plugged the port on the rear of the intake manifold. You can see the open hole in the photo above. Once I removed the plug, I was astonished to see that it was an adapter that normally would be used to connect an air tool to a quick connect. It had been cut down and a blob of weld put in the hole to seal it. In the photo collage below, the top left has that plug next to a new adapter, to make clear what it was:
The other three photos show how I made it better. I found a low-profile adapter in my junk drawer, and turned a close-fitting brass plug to seal it. The lower right photo shows it in place - much better!
The final fabrication for this post was an assignment from Cor Engelen. He is helping me convert Beck to front disc brakes, and he stopped by to pick up the spindles so he could use his precise reamer and instruments to set it up correctly. He told me that I needed an adapter to marry the 3/8-20 BSF threads on the TD brake hoses to the 3/8-24 UNF threads in the MGB calipers we'll be using. He showed me one and gave me the specs, and told me to make them. It was all pretty straightforward lathe work to turn them to size and cut the 3/8-24 external threads (using a threading die) for the caliper side. Here they are:
The eagle-eyed will note that the female end isn't threaded yet, because I don't own a 3/8-20 BSF tap. Cor does, so he'll loan that to me for the final cut. I used the milling machine and a hex collet to cut the hex end for a wrench. I milled until the hex was formed, and then checked the size to see how close I was to a standard wrench. It turned out to be an exact match for 5/16 Whitworth, one of those obscure British sizes that the TD is full of. I decided it was some sort of omen, so I left it instead of trimming to a standard American size. Here an adapter threaded into a caliper:
I'm waiting on a set of gaskets for the carburetors before I can try my new fuel system, but all the heavy lifting is done. Good times at the Grant Street Garage!
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