Promising New Products from Moss Motors

Promising New Products from
Moss Motors
By Keith Ansell
A few times each year the wholesalers give us the
opportunity to try new stuff for our cars, sometimes an
improvement, sometimes not. The following items
have appeared recently and I have tried them, here's my
report.
LED “Bulbs” for dash lights.
Do you keep the dash lights as bright as you can
and they are still too dim? Have you tried higher wattage bulbs and found they either burn out really quickly
or melt stuff (putting 6 Volt bulbs in our 12 Volt cars
was suggested a few years ago. They worked great for
about 20 minutes!!). Then we got quartz halogen bulbs
that were actually brighter and lasted a good long time,
only problem was that they melted the innards of the
gauges and were about $15 each!!!!!! So to date we
haven't had a solution to dim gauges, now we do.
Moss Motors now offers a LED “Bulb” that fits
our gauges. It's bright, it's white, you can really read
your gauges. Actually it is a bunch of surface mount
LEDs on a base that fits our gauges. Just don't try to
dim them, they just go out. I've found that around town,
or early evening. They are great.......a dark night road
they may be too bright for some. Cost $8.95 Each.
Cold Air induction system for MGB.
Our cars take their air for the carburetors from just
above the exhaust manifold, under the bonnet. This
area is hot, the air is thin and it just doesn't help our
cars run well. “Them Tuner People” spend mucho
money for cold air systems and claim they add lots of
horsepower. Well we now have a cold air system for
the MGB.
Now offered by Moss Motors is the “MGB Cold
Air Intake“ air cleaner and manifold. First is that it uses
a large, cleanable cone filter that should reduce air flow
restriction, probably increasing horsepower. Second it
sits forward of the exhaust manifold in cooler air, more
horsepower again and lastly it will easily fit Rubber
Bumper cars that have been equipped with dual S.U.
Carbs to improve performance without banging on the
brake servo.
What I like about this thing is that it can easily be
set forward of the radiator, behind the grill. Coolest air
possible for the best performance. The other really
good part is that when we are stuck in traffic or on a
hot day it will not be sucking HOT air from under the
bonnet, which is really hot! I'm hoping that it will reduce the boiling of the gas that causes our cars to sput-
ter and miss every time we get stuck in traffic!
I'm installing one on our baby-poop yellow, MGBGT and can't give you a report yet. I'll get dynamic
horsepower numbers before and after and report. Cost
$199.99......a lot of money but might be worth it.
“Scrubberblade”- Windscreen wiper blades
Mixed results on this one. We haven't been able to
buy a decent wiper blade for years, what has been
available looks correct but the rubber is awful! Moss is
now offering the “Scrubberblade,” “The ultimate highperformance scrubbing wiper blade”. It is a plastic
frame with double blades, one conventional blade with
an additional “scrubber” blade with about a quarter
inch gap between them. I put these on tour B-GT and
got a good test during the April Flowers Tour. They do
clean the windscreen a bit better than my blades that
had modern inserts. The downsides are that at end of
each stroke the water from between the blades is
thrown in front of the driver reducing visibility at
slower speeds. Another big drawback is that as the
windscreen dries the drag of the two blades is quite
high and really slows down the speed, they park way
higher up the windscreen and it reduces the total wiped
area. I have to guess that they would also reduce the
life of the wiper mechanism. They do fit our original
wiper arms but don't look very good. End report: they
work better in heavy rain but otherwise don't match
putting modern inserts in vintage wiper frames. Cost
$11.95 each.
Brass Fuel System Float
A new Brass float to replace fuel sending unit is in
your future. The alcohol in the fuel likes to dissolve the
plastic floats used in the later cars and it makes the solder on older brass floats fail. The result is initially having your gauge tell you that you have less fuel than you
actually have, eventually it doesn't matter how much
fuel you have, the gauge will read empty. The float is
full of fuel and won't float! It can be replaced when the
tank is almost empty by jacking the car up on the side
the sender is, sending the gas to the far side of the tank.
Remember to buy a gasket before you start this job.
Many fuel sending units could use replacement at the
same time. The new sending units come with plastic
floats so be prepared to buy a new sender, gasket plus a
brass float. Cost of float $11.95.
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