By Corky Guenther

One of the “enhancements” added to our MGB is cruise control, using one from Rostra.  It is a “universal” kit electronically controlled and activated.  The speed sensor is a pair of magnets mounted to the driveshaft and a control module is mounted in the engine bay with a cable that must be connected to the carburetor throttle shaft.  The kit comes with a mounting bracket for the control unit and several alternatives for attaching the cable.  As you might suspect, I wasn’t satisfied with those.  I’m attempting to add the enhancements using existing holes and end up with a visually clean installation.  The cruise control is the last of the mechanical and electrical installations in the engine bay (I hope).  I determined that there was room to mount the control unit in the right rear of the engine bay and route the accelerator cable over the valve cover.  All that was needed was to make a bracket to mount the control unit and devise an attachment for the cable to the throttle shaft.

The control unit bracket was spaced off from and bolted through the blanking plate for the RHD steering column lower mounting bracket.  It is angled up and to the left allowing the accelerator cable to clear the valve cover.

The cable provided with the unit was several inches too long and had a 1/8” ball swaged on the end to allow attachment to a bead chain or one of several adaptors.  I just couldn’t determine a practical way to utilize any of them.  The cable pull distance is a max of 1-5/8” and some slack is required, normally provided by the pull chain.  Since I wanted to shorten the cable, there wasn’t any way to utilize that.  The solution was to use a lever on the throttle shaft short enough to clear the heat shield but have enough motion and cable slack to satisfy the 1-5/8” requirement.  The first three attempts used a cable stop but did not have the required travel and slack due mostly to the inflexibility of the cable and the centering of the cable stop.  I found a collet cable stop for 1/16” cable that did the trick.  The fourth lever was a prototype and the fifth, the final with a pin through the clevis end to guide the cable.  The cable stop bears on the end of the lever and allows adjustment of the slack.

The cable sheath is mounted using a threaded “P” clip (supplied with the cruise control) to a fabricated bracket clamped to the ferrule on the heat shield that holds the end of the accelerator cable.

Time will tell if this all works.