Z & Farina Magnette Newsletter

Paul Batho
01 235 850488

Editorial

Chairman	Andy Brock	0181 699 6532
Treasurer	Malcolm Eades	01 883 722420
Secretary & SF! Scribe	Paul Batho	01 235 850488
Historian & Overseas Rep	Warren Marsh	0117 942 6338
Registrar	David Johnson	01 227 792126
Farina Rep	Neil Cairns	01 525 376770
Competition Secretary	Peter Moody	01 590 622241
Without Portfolio	Roy Smalldridge	0117 962 0679
	Peter Bonthrone	01 491 201316

Your last reminder!! A fun weekend based at the Herefordshire Traction Engine and Vintage Club’s Steam rally in the village of Much Marcle. This runs for two days and gives plenty for all of the family to see and do. The programme is:
Friday
2.00pm Visit to the Morgan factory (subject to demand)
Saturday
2.30pm Register AGM - the Walwyn Arms, Much Marcle
3.15pm Scenic Run departing from the Walwyn Arms
5.30pm Visit to Westons Cider Works in Much Marcle
Evening Natter, noggins & skittles - The Walwyn Arms
Sunday
From 10.30am Assemble at the Register parking or display area. Concours, spares for sale, and the chance to visit the steam rally
4.30pm Prize Giving and Departure

Camping is available adjacent to the site of the steam rally. If you would like a list of accommodation in the area, please call Peter Bonthrone on the number above.

Easter Saturday saw our first 1998 Magnette Register event at the Kent and East Sussex Railway at Tenterden in Kent. The Midlands and areas to the East suffered the worst flooding for 100 years and although it was damp in Kent we got off lightly compared with everyone else. However, Magnettes coming from further afield must have been put off and the attendance was probably 40% down on what it should have been. Still, 14 Zs, 2 Farinas, 4 M.G.s and 6 other classics was pretty good considering and most attendees enjoyed themselves and took a (discounted) ride on one of the five trains in steam on the day.

Carriages from different periods were in use at various times too, We were allowed to park and display on a prime site adjacent to the station buildings and much interest was shown in the our cars from other visitors. When it rained the Museum filled up with swiftly, as did everywhere else in Tenterden town centre. Train passengers with keen eyesight looking east during their journey will have seen a family of wild boars in the woods about one and half miles south of the main station. Thankfully we did not suffer from wild bores at our gathering!
The Railway will be holding several other special displays later in the year and our type of cars will be very welcome at their "Historic Transport and Bus Gathering" on 13th/14th June and their "Steam back to the 60s" event on 30th/31st August. Please contact the Kent and East Sussex Railway on 01580 765155 for further details and an entry form. Has anyone any suggestions for the 1999 Magnettes and Steam venue?

The last stocks of the Register grill badges ran out some years ago, and the recent requirements of Rover regarding the use of the M.G. logo have now resulted in the old design being outlawed. This, combined with the fact that the Register now includes the Farina cars, means that a new badge is needed. Peter Bonthrone has been working on a new design based on the Z-Type road wheel which incorporates the Car Club badge in the centre rather like the ‘F’ Register does with its filler-cap based design. A prototype design is shown, although the final version would have the tyre in black with chrome lettering and may be simplified slightly for production. What do members think? We would welcome any feedback before committing ourselves. If there is enough demand, we will commission a batch. Early estimates suggest a price of around £29 each - although there is the possibility of a Club subsidy that may reduce this somewhat. Call Andy Brock on the number above with your response - we will need a reasonable number of positive replies and a £15 deposit before an order is placed.

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This story begins on the magical Isle of Man, whose olde worlde peace and tranquillity is regularly enhanced by the roar of high performance engines. In June it’s the TT, while in September the tone is raised by the mellifluous notes of vintage and classic cars competing in the Manx Classic, four days of glorious period motorsport in just the right kind of setting. In 1996 I entered my MGA for the first time, and after a couple of runs up the Sloc hill climb course, I began to notice a curious whining. At first I put this down to the fact that Nigel Mansell lives just around the corner, but the noise was soon accompanied by a chattering and rattling coming from the vicinity of my feet. The gearbox was beginning to succumb to several seasons of abuse on the hills and circuits of merrie England.
It still seemed to work, but during the 1997 season it began to get embarrassing, so after the final event of the year I pulled the gearbox out of the car, chucked it in the boot of the Magnette and drove off to Twyford, near Bicester, where Peter Wood has piled his craft to the benefit of hundreds, if not thousands, of M.G. owners over the years. His premises alone are fascinating - a large hanger-like structure on the edge of the village, packed to the roof with every conceivable M.G. spare part.
Peter specialises in the restoration of MGA Twin-Cam models, but at least the bread and butter push-rod cars share a gearbox with their more exotic cousins. As he and I were engaged in the extracting the box from the boot (the fit, though perfect, is a little tight) he told me that he had run a Manumatic ZB Magnette when they were, if not new, than only fairly recently second-hand, and he invited me into his Aladdin’s Cave for a look around.
Manumatic transmission was a great idea. As the name implies, it is a half-way house between a manual and a fully automatic gearbox, doing away with the clutch pedal but retaining the gear lever. To quote the description in the manual ‘With the aid of the Manumatic Transmission System, a perfect gear change requires no other action than the appropriate movement of the gear lever’.
In principle the system was very simple. An electric switch mounted on the gear lever was operated when the knob was held and caused the clutch to disengage. When the change had been completed, the lever would be released and the clutch would be re-engaged.
But while the theory is straightforward, putting it into practice complicates the issue a bit. The trouble is that, when you change gear, it’s not just a question of banging the clutch in and out like a switch. Though, coming to think about it, there are some (Egyptian taxi drivers spring to mind as one example), who may not agree. But for the rest of us, some attempt has to be made to co-ordinate throttle and clutch to achieve a nice, smooth change, and this is the part that taxed the engineers in the 1950s.

Fig. SA. 1 gives an idea of the apparatus that was required to do this. It is reproduced from the workshop manual, which takes four pages to describe how everything works and a further 33 on how to mend the system when it goes wrong. The editorial blue pencil would undoubtedly be wielded with a vengeance if I went into detail, so I will try to be brief... For a start, the clutch is of the centrifugal type, so that when the engine is idling it is disengaged, but then steadily engages as the engine revs rise. This means that, to start from rest, you grasp the ever, which disengages the clutch, pop it into first and release the lever again. The car will not move until you pass down the accelerator pedal, which causes the centrifugal clutch to engage. and off you go.

When you get bored with first gear, you grasp the lever again to select another one. And here is the clever bit. This can be done with the accelerator pedal in any position - the system incorporates two vacuum operated throttle servos which control the opening and closing of the throttle independently of the pedal’s position. One of these is controlled by the clutch servo and closes the throttle when the gear change commences. The other is controlled by a solenoid operated valve in circuit with a synchronising switch on the clutch cover. If the engine speed falls below the driven plate speed, the throttle opening servo kicks in to increase the engine speed and ensure that nice, smooth take-up which all except those Egyptian taxi drivers aspire to. And to make absolutely certain, a pedal valve is incorporated in the control unit which ensures a progressive engagement of the clutch. Fig. SA.2 Shows how all these bits and pieces fit together and indicates what is happening when the car is at rest and in gear.

Back to the plot. Peter Wood led me past shelf-loads of exotic spares (including a complete Spitfire engine - the aeroplane, not the Triumph!) to a dark corner in which stood a complete Manumatic engine and gearbox assembly, fully restored and ready to go. This can be seen in the picture, which clearly shows the black control box mounted behind the engine on top of the bell housing, together with the linkages from the two servos to the throttle. On shelves nearby was what must be the biggest collection of Manumatic spares in the world. Peter told me that demand for these had not exactly been overwhelming. This is hardly surprising - in nearly 20 years of attending Magnette events I have never seen a Manumatic car, and the Register has details of only three or four that are know to exist, none being road worthy. Records show that a total of only 494 were produced, most of which were exported to North America.

So why was such a clever system such a flop? A clue is given by Peter Woods’ own car, which he bought for a snog from a main dealer in Oxford because the transmission was faulty. The cure was simple - two of the wires in the control unit had been swapped over by a puzzled fitter and when they were swapped back, all was well.
The basic trouble with the system was its complexity; it incorporated a large number of components of unique design, which had an almost infinite capacity for failing. This seems to have been combined with an inability of BMC dealers to diagnose the faults properly when they occurred. So it is hardly surprising that the system rapidly got a dreadful reputation, second-hand values plummeted and many of the original cars were converted back to standard form by frustrated owners.
Peter told me, when it worked well it was very good. Ironically, even his car, with a fully functioning system, had eventually to have a standard transmission installed just to make it sellable. But if anyone out there has the car, the ability and the patience, the spares are available and at the end of the day you’ll have a unique piece of motoring history - an evolutionary blind alley maybe, but so were the dinosaurs.