What's British, Partially Designed By Pininfarina, And In My Driveway?

Apis Mellifera said:

Yes, just loosen the two nuts and rotate the shaft.  Make sure the fingers on each end engage the slots in the carb throttle shafts at the same time.  Also make sure the throttle plates fully open and close.  It also looks like the idle set screw is in pretty far; the spring looks fully compressed.

Thanks for the input. I am finding that this car is much more suited to my severely limited time and motivation. It's nice to be able to fix things with simple tools and without taking half the car apart to get to something. I re-clocked the throttle shaft after dinner today. I did have a little scare because I somehow managed to bump the choke (or mixture adjustment, actually) while fiddling with the throttle, so when I started it up it ran like E36 M3. I was like "Oh E36 M3 what did I do??" But I poked around and was able to move the "choke" back into position and all is well. Now I can actually get to full throttle! And the pedal has longer travel and a more positive stop, so it just generally feels better now.

Yeah the throttle cable is a bit frayed. I'll be replacing that. And I really don't like the single-shear cable attachment. I'd like to come up with some other solution there.

In reply to JamesMcD :

Yup, I figure that the guy who designed throttle linkages for biit cars also ran the rope-handled wheelbarrow design effort. That said, it is in keeping with the "parts traveling in close formation" theme that applies to most brit classics.

Here is the win for the throttle linkage, LOCKAR universal throttle cable. Replaces the floppy cable attach with a proper ball stud. Easy to adjust the slack and no more frayed cables. Bonus is the cable diameter is larger, the sheath is Teflon lined and it looks a lot better than the bicycle cable. 

Have not found a similar replacement for the choke.

That's cool. I will have to get me one of those.

I'm doing things a bit out of order, but I just purchased a set of these tail lights from the earlier cars. I used that 15% off coupon that Ebay was running recently:

I wish there was an aftermarket set exactly like this but without the rectangular sticky-out portion.

Honest question and not a criticism...I've been out of the sports car game for awhile. I don't recall that there ever was actually a connection with Pininfarina and the MGB. That was a theory I remember from back in the day but don't recall there ever having been a proven connection.

A lot of the British cars that weren't dowdy looking were penned by Michelotti, not Pininfarina.

It was a joint effort with MG and Pininfarina.  MG designed the GT version, but used the roadster windshield dimensions, which is quite short, to build a scale model.  The resulting shape did not look right, so they contracted Pininfarina to fix it.  They added 2" to the windshield height and racked it back more and sprinkled on a few other Italian aesthetics to produce the final shape.

Right - MG did a great job on the basic design but couldn't quite nail the windshield height.  I was told by an old factory hand that the low down on it at the time was that the bean counters wouldn't approve the creation of a unique windshield until Pininfarina suggested it.

Trivia - Pinin was the nickname of Battista Farina.  All cars before 1961 were Farina designed until in 1961 he turned the company over to his son and got government approval to change the name to Pininfarina.  BMC had been using them since the early 1950s and the Austin A40, for instance, started before the ame was revised and continued after that to the end of production as the A40 Farina.  The last generation of Austin Cambridge etc. were also Farina designs, as were the larger Westminsters.

Really like the black on tan combo. Great car congrats.