The engine bay is rapidly approaching a finished state, so it's time for a before and after shot. On the left is the engine bay pretty much as we pulled it out of the garage (the funnel was our addition!), still with the green ignition leads. Over the past (nearly) two years we've done a lot of work in it, as well as elsewhere on the car, having replaced wires, pipes, coil, plugs, points, filter, cylinders and loads of other parts.

The main visual difference has to be the removal of the black underseal / weatherproofing which covered most of the bay, but a bunch of other touch-ups have helped a lot - the main ones being painting the radiator and rocker, pedal and heater boxes.

However as different as it is, there's still more to do. Once the weather gets a bit warmer we'll take all the stuff off the engine block and touch up the bodywork where cables or pipes have rubbed the paintwork and paint the actual block too - I'm still deciding whether to go for the original-spec black or the older maroon colour - and rewrap the harness as it's suffered a bit over the years.

There are a few options for steering wheels out there - MOMO, Tourist Trophy and Mountenoy are a few, spanning a range of styles, materials and prices. Having had a good look through I'd settled on a Moto-Lita 14-inch 'Mark 4' wheel. These are really nice wheels with a chunky hand-stitched leather rim and polished chrome drilled spokes which I thought would suit the late-model B very well.

These wheels are really good quality, but are also pretty expensive, so I was very pleased when while chatting about wheel choices on the MGOC forums, I was offered exactly the wheel I was after at a fraction of the price. It turned out one of the other members was doing the exact reverse of me, replacing a Moto-Lita with an OEM wheel. A few emails and exchage of funds later and I received the wheel in the post, so thanks Brian!

The original steering wheel is 15 inches across, which enables the pre-power steering B to be easily manoeuvred. However a wheel that size can be tough to use on winding roads and restricts the legroom for the driver. The thin grip can also make long drives a little uncomfortable, so its replacement would hopefully solve all of these, as well as looking a bit more attractive.

The Moto-Lita boss seemed much deeper than the OEM one, but once on it fits very well and after a short drive to confirm alignment the wheel is much more pleasant to use than the OEM one. I was a little concerned that it might obscure the oil and temperature gauges, being slightly smaller and thicker, but while it cuts your view a touch it is still easy to read them. I was also expecting an increase in effort required to turn the wheel, but again the difference is not discernible.

Getting the old wheel off is by most reports a git of a job, made harder by the later models having a collapsible steering column. This means the normal method of giving the steering wheel nut a whack with a hammer cannot be used for risk of having the column collapse.

First up was to get access to the nut under the boss. The OEM wheel has an MG badge in the centre, held in place by a little ridge of the covering rubber material. A thin screwdriver (ideally a micro-driver) allows you to lever the disc out without damaging the surround. Now you'll see the nut which shouldn't take too much effort to undo. Chances are that the wheel will be stuck fast on the splines which keep it and the column aligned.

You now have two options to try and remove the wheel. The first is the 'just pull it' method. This varies from literally just pulling at it, through to applying alternating push/pull force to opposite sides of the wheel, to jamming your knees behind it. If you try any of these, please make sure that you leave the nut on a few turns as when the wheel releases it'll come off fast and could easily leave you with a bloody nose! We did all of these, including injecting WD40 down the splines over several days, without any movement.

The second method is to use a puller. Moss supply the proper tool, but you'll probably only use it once and it's pretty expensive. The other option is to use a hub puller, but the issue with the OEM wheels is that their spoke alignment make it awkward to get a purchase and the rubber coating can easily be damaged. We managed to borrow a two-armed hub puller and added a couple of spars of wood for it to attach to behind the spokes. After the first fitting we added some padding between the wood and the wheel to protect the surface.

The puller did the trick, revealing the splines on the column and the plastic disc which allows the wheel to cancel the indicators after cornering. The boss has two 'fingers' which fit into slots in this disc to turn it. Next up was to fit the new wheel, this one will be going on my garage wall!

This trip would test out a few things. It would be the furthest trip the car had taken since we'd put it back on the road; being done on the wettest weekend in Cumbria for about 1000 years it would also give all the seals a good test.

The route was 150 miles from Cleveland to Lancashire across the Pennines and then back again, along A-roads, B-roads and motorways taking in some lovely scenery along the way. I took it relatively easily on the way there, keeping to around 60-65mph pretty much the whole way. On the way back I kept pace with most other traffic at a steady 70mph, and it coped very well with the steep banks encountered along the way. Knowing it was going to get a bit wet I'd coated all the glass with RainX which did a great job of keeping the windows - especially the rear - free of rain.

The very good news is that it never missed a beat the whole way, didn't lose any oil or brake/clutch fluid and none of the seals leaked. In all it used a little under a full tank of Shell V-Power and using that fuel seems to have cleared any run-on issues.

With the weather getting colder, the so-far neglected heater valve needs replacing to allow me some heat in the cabin. At the moment it is jammed on closed (probably a rusted return spring), preventing hot water from the engine block from circulating through the heater matrix.

There are two bolts holding the cable in place (running from the dial on the dashboard), one holds the cable sheath in place, so allowing the internal cable to move independently. The other bolt has a hole in the side to accept the cable itself and tightening the bolt winds the cable around it. This bolt needs to be tightened fully, winding the cable several times around the bolt for the valve to be able to be fully opened.

Removing the valve is not too difficult as long as you have the right tools. The valve is held on by two bolts into the engine block. The top one is pretty easy to remove, but the bottom one is made much more difficult by the close proximity of the oil filter, dizzy and lower block, so requiring a short spanner or small socket set. We removed the top one and then rotated the valve to give access to the bottom one. However this is not possible to do in reverse else you might shred your new gasket, but luckily we managed to find a short spanner - the '60s toolbox coming to the rescue once more!

Interestingly, when it came to trying out the heating I found that the two dashboard vents are not part of the heating system and are only fed by the air-dam vent in front of the windscreen, giving only cool air. The heating is provided to the vents on top of the dash for de-misting and (once the lever is in the right position) to the foot-well vents. Still, the amount of heat being produced and the size of the cabin should mean the cabin stays toasty in the winter!