Rebuilding Valleri

That's what I call Playing to the Gallery

2010-01-13T00:00:00.015Z

Here then, are the results.

24kg of Mig welding wire
9,200 litres of shielding gas
9 electric drills
6 angle grinders
12lbs of lead
5l Glacier white
1 pint of my blood
A stack of used grinder discs over 2ft high.

Everything just turned out fine. No breakdowns, few problems, and she looked rather good at the end of it.

Eventually most of the things got done, and I was happy. Still no bonnet straps, and thse photos were taken before I finished the new sunroof. Oh well.

Here then, is ANU333L.

And possibly the only example of a BGT with peaked, composite rear wing tops?

Now she is done, she will be kept in the garage and only taken out on dry days.

Or not. She is protected well enough to withstand a good ragging, which is what she gets. Hard use, with thorough and careful maintenance will cause no problems. What is the point in owning the thing and not using it?

She will do.

Deft Needlework

2010-01-12T23:59:00.000Z

It had always been very tatty, but I thought I’d leave it be until it was too bad to go on. It needed tidying up every time it was closed, and was a bit of a pain. Then on the way to meet on the ledge with Richard at Cwmorthin in the summer, the Webasto sunroof let go on the M4 and started flapping about annoyingly. The vinyl tore and at certain speeds made a very loud noise which was a tad irritating. It was much better when closed, as the loose torn parts could be tucked in, however, I very rarely have the roof closed. Eventually while touring in the Lake District, the braided tensioning wires tore through the stitching down each side of the roof, and flapped around with the loose vinyl, wrecking the still-soft paint on the C posts as they bashed against it.

Enough was enough, and I set to making a new roof. A length of correct fabric-backed vinyl of the correct type, thickness and pattern was bought from Woolies trim, along with some high strength adhesive and a curved upholstery needle. I sourced some rot-proofed black sailmaking thread, and set to making the roof for a few days over Christmas when I was drinking and not using the car.

The old roof was disassembled, and the headlining repaired. The locking mechanism was also repaired and overhauled, then the vinyl was removed from the frame, and stretched out to form a template. The pictures show the rest.

Nailing it around the Lake District, sadly quite often with the roof closed and needing constat tweaking and tucking in. At every photo stop. Bahh, that's not impressive.

First step- a big piece of cloth-backed vinyl. The outline and features of the old roof was chalked on, and with a lot of courage the new roof was cut out with dressmaking scissors.

The rear rail positioned correctly, new tensioning wires routed down each side. This showed where the vinyl had to be sewn together to make a length of piping to hold the tensioning wire. I used PVC-coated electrical cable, instead of the wire rope used originally, this had a habit of cutting through the stitching allowing the roof to fall apart. The front and rear frames were cleaned up, and the sharp edges at the front were sheathed in the outer insulation of mains electrical cable. This gave a softer, rounded edge to wrap the fabric around, so it would be less likely to wear through.

Scary 2" curved needle, and a cunning stitching technique learnt from me mother (thanks mum)

At the front, the front rail is put in place and the tensioning wires looped through the U-bends. It can just be seen that the sunroof fabric has had an exra layer glue to the underside in all the places there is a lot of load on it. Where it is folded over the edges of the frame, the double-thickness should make it stronger, less prone to wearing through and tearing.

The vinyl is then glued onto the front and rear rails, and pegged in place with lots of pegs. LOTS of pegs! At each corner, the vinyl was folded over itself several times to produce a smooth curve around the frame, hopefully this will be less prone to falling apart than cutting slits in it to allow it to be curved.

The finished roof, with the frame and repaired headlining in place. Will it fit though?

Oh yes! It works, smooth as you like. And fits a treat, and looks like the original did when new.

And it shuts, locks and seals perfectly. Note the stitched piping should be flush with the roof to give a seal, but it is slightly higher at the moment. In about a year, the vinyl will have reached its full stretch, and the tensioning wires can be tucked under the transverse frames, rather than alongside them, giving the correct chape to the finished roof. Better too tight for a while, than have the vinyl stretch and give a loose-fitting roof.

What a complete and utter mess

2010-01-12T23:23:00.005Z

Test runs were conducted up and down the drive, all 30 feet of it. The aim was to floor it up the slope, and try and hit 15mph going into the garage before jamming on the brakes to avoid clobbering me Mum’s deep freezer. That was a rather limiting source of entertainment, so I took her down the road to the MOT place, and things were not fun. The pillock came in after five minutes and told me she had failed. Apparently she needed a door or wing mirror on the nearside, and after I pointed out the correct place in his rule book, he realised he was wrong and went back out there in a huff. She was going to have an offside mirror anyway, I had not had time to fit it yet as it was not necessary for road legalness.

He eventually failed her on an insecure brake pipe which was actually secure, I returned for the free retest with the cable tie done up two clicks further and she was passed. Hurrah! Next few sentences altered, in case they piss off the wrong people. I don’t seem to get on well with the few “Motor vehicle technicians” I have had business with so far, despite being polite. Case in point, the MOT inspector, who insulted my car, welding and was thoroughly rude. He seemed very unhappy to be at his chosen place of work, and took a hostile attitude towards me seemingly for no other reason than the fact I do for pleasure what he has to do for a living. Same with every motor vehicle technician I have dealt with to date. I am not sure what I am doing wrong, I haven't annoyed anyone else in another profession, as a customer. Prehaps there is a garage somewhere in the county with polite staff? I will seek it before MOT time next year, I think. He then decided to be friendly, and told me he liked my new brake pipes but I should put coppergrease on them to stop them rusting. I hadn’t the heart to tell him they were quite clearly made of copper, and therefore rather unlikely to corrode…..!

One of the early test drives to Wellow, in Somerset, to drive through this big ford. The water level was a bit low sadly.... I did most of the test driving at night, to avoid embarassment of the the unfinished Valleri.

The rest of the car was hastily put together, and she was taken on longer and longer drives, although there were very few problems really. Then it dawned on me I had to go up to the Lake District to see Richard for some touring, then down to Lancashire to see Calum, for some touring. And there was still a lot to do…

I did my best, but I still ended up setting off up North with no chrome trim strips on the doors, I did the front and rear wing strips but then I had to set off. These eventually got done in Richard’s garage the third day I was there. Oh how fantastic to be driving her again, but rather annoying that so much had not been done, like fitting the remaining two driving lamps, wiring in them and the reversing lamps, finishing the headlining and many other little jobs. But I finished her on time… sort of!

Valleri and Meg together at last amongst the Western fells. Yes, there's certainly something missing, oh and the other two driving lamps as well!

Meet on the Ledge! Valleri and Weelet somewhere around the Lancashire and Yorkshire border. You can just about see the sunroof starting to fall apart too.... bahhh.

Just some little finishing touches to do now.....

My MGB GT She's a runner now...

2010-01-12T20:02:00.009Z

All that was left to do was reassemble the entire car, from every single component. And quickly, too. Summer had arrived long ago, and I would soon be leaving for University, leaving the car at home of course. I did very much want to get her done, and use her for a bit, after all this work. The YGC road trip had taken place, which I should have been on, and I had to catch a lift to Fairport Convention’s Cropredy festival with Richard and Meg, due to not quite having the car done on time. I was working flat out though, all day and every day, I had been working at weekends up until now to fund the project but now needed time more than ever. So it was out in the garage until the early hours (and sometimes not so early, working until 3am many nights) to get her back in one piece.

Sadly, there was no time even to photograph the reassembly. I have a few photos of bits and bobs, then my photos jump straight to the car on the road and done. A bit of a shame. BUT- there isn’t much point in writing a lot about the reassembly. The bodywork was the unusual and interesting part of this restoration, anyone can strip and reassemble an MGB, it isn’t exactly difficult. So I will only give brief details, and note where things were done differently from usual.
The first stage was to get everything in place so the engine could be fired up. Then, if the engine worked, the next stage would be making the car ready for an MOT. Then at least it could be run in and tested, while everything else was put back on. Onwards!

The clutch master cylinder was bolted to the pedal box, then the new brake master cylinder. This was an old stock metal reservoir Lockheed job. I eventually managed to find a good one, after buying several and finding the bores corroded in all of them. This one was in the original packaging, and still had the original protective oil in the bore, which once removed was absolutely perfect. There are very, very few metal master cylinders left in good nick, so I was glad to have found one. The plastic bodied cylinders are hideous. Don’t you hate pathetic legislation. I wish someone would get the metal type back in production, claiming they are an alternative high capacity clutch master cylinder or such. Then everyone could fit them in their braking system, and the retailers would make a small fortune selling them, even at a reasonable price.

Anyway I had my brake master cylinder, which got new seals, along with the clutch master cylinder. I was going to try out silicon brake fluid, seeing as almost the entire brake and clutch hydraulics had been replaced. The higher boiling point, no damage to paintwork and no need for frequent replacement was a bonus, the main reason to use silicon was for its non-hygroscopic nature. Having found one of the last good brake master cylinders with a nice bore, hopefully the silicon fluid will prevent it from corroding. The pedal box was then bolted to the bulkhead which I had built from scratch in that area, it fitted beautifully. The banjo unions which connect to the back of the cylinders would be bolted up from behind, through the hole in the bulkhead. Why the Haynes resto manual states this cannot be done is beyond me. Did they really fail to realise that the huge rubber plug you remove from the hole behind the master cylinders is to allow you to tighten the unions easily from inside the car? Duhh!

The wiring loom was next. I had sorted this out during the summer evenings back in the paint stripping days. The rear loom was a bodged mess or random wires and a conduit box, so this was binned. The main loom was thoroughly cleaned, checked over and any areas of loom tape that were chaffed or damaged were repaired. Heatshrink tubing and more layers of tape were added over the vulnerable areas of the loom where it passed through or rubbed against metal. All the connections were thoroughly cleaned, and I went through and soldered every single connector on the loom. I do not trust crimped connections on a car. They are a major cause of electrical faults and failures. Soldering is the only way to make a lasting joint, in a harsh environment with strain and vibration. All spade connectors were tightened slightly with pliers, so they would grip the male connector more firmly, and a dab of Vaseline added to keep the dirt and moisture out. All the double connectors for bullet terminals were treated in the same way. All terminals on switches, gauges etc were thoroughly cleaned for good contact. So it was put into place, and retained where necessary. All wiring loom P-clips, brake, clutch and fuel line and hose clips were of the rubber-lined sort, to ensure there was no metal-on-metal contact.

A new rear wiring loom was around £45, I decided to make my own because it would be slightly cheaper, and also because I wanted to. Borrowing the one of Nigel’s car to use as a template, I ordered the correct gauge wire from Autosparks, along with the correct terminals, heat shrink tubing, insulation tape and proper non-adhesive vinyl loom tape. I used tent pegs in the lawn as a former, and made a copy of Nigel’s loom, which ended up looking identical. Later I planned to make an auxiliary loom, to run the extra rallying electrics, relays, instruments, switches and lamps.

The dashboard was due to be fitted, and it was in a bit of a state. The old crackle-black paint was removed, and the reverse side painted gloss black. I decided to have a go at repainting the front in crackle black, despite the issues many people have had. The key is heat. Thankfully it happened to be a very hot, sunny day, so the dash was left in the sun to warm up. A heat gun was borrowed, and played over the dash to try and bring the heat up evenly. Once hot enough, doing about half the dash at a time, the wrinkle finish paint was sprayed on, the heat was continually played over it. The head causes just the right depth and type of wrinkles, but it is a difficult balance. The whole area has to kept hot evenly, and at the right temperature too. It is a narrow band, too cold and the wrinkles will not form, too hot and they will become huge, and the paint will bubble and burn. Overall it worked, I was relatively happy with it and to do a better job I think a temperature-controlled furnace would be required, which I don’t really have.
With the dashboard in place, the steering column was added, and aligned accurately with the steering rack, to take the loads of the bearings in the rack. The resultant steering movement was light and easy, no problems there.

The dash looked very bare, so it was decorated with the new crash rail I had bought, as the vinyl was torn and the wood had rotted in the old one. The dash top vinyl was removed from the decayed biscuit board, and glued over some suitable thin board. Instrument and switch time, the switches had all been serviced and cleaned, and were plugged into the loom and put into the dashboard. The instruments were added, and I made up new retaining plates for the speedometer, as the only place which seemed to sell them, that daft parts company called Moss, wanted the usual extortionate price of £9 for two bent pieces of steel. Rear light clusters were added, the heater was plugged in and so was the wiper motor.

People who have known this car for a while will remember the dodgy 12v battery installation under the boot floor. Having a single 12v to my mind is a good plan, the modern 6v batteries cost a lot and last a couple of years at the most. Just not worth wasting the money. I decided to put the battery in the offside battery cage, to free up boot space. It would also leave room in the nearside cage for a box to be made to store spares. I just about managed to get the battery into the cage, it is an 075 which is enormous. Once you have the hang of it though, it can be got in and out without getting any scars. It’s a very tight fit but worth it. The cranking power and duration from this size of battery is incredible, very handy when you are young. If you decide you want to stay overnight at a lasses house, you just need to kick out the wire to the fuel pump, then sit there on her drive cranking the engine over and over for minutes at a time. Sorry, car’s obviously broken, can’t get home and it’s freezing cold. Ha ha.

I wired in various ingenious electrical systems to help prevent little pikeys thieving the car. The battery was restrained in its cage, and the positive and negative cables run to the correct places. Ignition on…. Wa-hey! No smoke. And all the things that were plugged in worked! Heater, wipers, rear lights… we’re getting somewhere now.

Time to dress up the engine with all its ancillaries. The new water pump went on, the correct rocker cover, the new uprated alternator, the pushrod cover and crankcase breather and the starter motor.

Late evening sun on the engine bay.... coming together nicely now, with old parts and new. The piece of paper on the manifold side engine mount was there to remind me to connect up the earth strap before attempting to turn the engine over, to prevent fried accelerator and choke cables!

And from the other side, note the earth strap has now been bolted on! The polished and laquered inlet manifold with its core plug brackets is fitted, along with the exhaust manifold and downpipe. The heat reistant silver looks a bit daft, but will disappear in a few months anyway.

My garage is a strange, surreal place, like my mind. You have to expect the unexpected, like a hedgehog coming in then getting stuck under the fridge.

Awww! The hedgehog, after extracting it from under the fridge. It also got into the offside floorpan, daft thing.

Next came the fitting up of the exhaust. Not just any exhaust. The other defining feature! Along with those peaked rear wings…. The prototype cherrybomb exhaust system.

I was told that the particular exhaust system under Valleri was the first ever to use a cherrybomb centre box, developed to give more ground clearance to the car and the prototype to the MGOC club sports exhausts, and it was thought to be made in the 1980s. It certainly is different to any other exhaust system I have seen, and could well be the predecessor to the modern centre cherrybomb system, rather than using a smaller rear box to enhance the sound, this was welded in place of the standard centrebox to avoid grounding out on speed bumps. The system is the standard bore, with a cherrybomb in the middle which is barely wider than the rest of the pipework. The pipe bends upwards before joining to the hefty straight through rear box, protecting it from damage by rocks or other projections. The tailpipe is standard bore and fairly long, going almost to the rearmost point of the rear over riders.

And Holy Mong does it sound good. Not like anything else, not even remotely like modern cherrybomb centre systems. The idle is hollow and rough sounding, much like a vintage tractor, in fact this is one of the things which drew me to the car in the first place. Accelerating she growls, and I mean a real growl, not a crappy monotonous droning like fuel injection gives, not even the usual sweet MGB growl, but far more aggressive and tuneful, amplifying the full beauty of the exhaust note carburettors give. Then when you get to 1950 revs up to about 2100rpm, it becomes a snarl. I’ve never heard any other car sound quite like it, people have likened it to a Chieftain tank, and a radial engined aircraft pulling out of a dive. Utterly fantastic, trust me. The finer details of the snarl vary with temperature and humidity, it varies slightly in volume, pitch and hollowness, and one occasion the sound waves actually flapped my clothing. It is rather loud through that rev band, and can clearly be heard from over 3 miles away on a still night. Over 2100 revs it goes back to a growl and becomes progressively quieter, to the point that in Overdrive at 60mph there is nothing but a little bit of wind noise, and quiet conversation is easy, even without any soundproofing whatsoever.What more could you ask for?

A piece of history, this exhaust system! Sounds unbelieveable too.

The radiator was carefully flushed, repainted and put into place with new hoses, and the cooling side of things were done. I then rebuilt the distributor, it was found that although the centrifugal advance plates were fine, the weights were worn, so a scrap distributor from a Series III Land Rover wielded new parts to keep the timing happy. No crappy electronic ignition here, of the sort favoured by old people. A well maintained distributor (And I mean well maintained, you can’t have a piece of tosh and then call it a piece of tosh, or maintain it badly then call it unreliable) is far superior to a computer thing under your bonnet. What do you do when that fails for no apparent reason, like they do? You’re stuck at the side of the road. If you do not have the time and skill to look after a set of points, why have a classic car? What can go wrong with a mechanical distributor… the points can fail, and the condensor can fail, both of which can be replaced at the roadside in five minutes, and cost a few pounds each at most. Having said that, at Beaulieu I bought another distributor for £1, rebuilt that too, fitted new points, condensor, cap and leads, replaced the earthing wires inside and timed it to the car before pinching up the locking plate. Now, if there is any ignition problem whatsoever, I can remove the whole thing at the roadside with two bolts, and put the spare ignition system on. It cost less than £10 too.

Fuel time, and the copper pipe was run from the tank to the boot, and the other pipe from the boot to the bulkhead. Finally I could pit the grommets and straps along the underside of the car to retain the wiring loom, positive cable, fuel line and brake line. Then one of the double ended SU pumps was fitted into the boot, wired then plumbed in. The intake manifold was fitted with metal angle brackets, bolted into place by the large threaded plugs at either end of the manifold. The angle down and rest against the core plugs, which were Loctited in place and have a mechanical fixing too, ensuring they cannot come out which would obviously destroy the vacuum in the inlet manifold.

The lovely twin SU HS4s, which I had rebuilt on getting the car home after buying it, went back on. No braided fuel hose in sight though, the modern reproduction stuff is all that is available, and the rubber perishes very quickly, but of course you cannot tell due to the braiding. High quality black fuel tubing is far cheaper and safer, so that was used. The Filter King pressure regulator was mounted on the flat part of the bulkhead via a home made aluminium bracket.

Mmm all clean and fresh.. The inny manni core plug retaining brackets can be seen, and the newly sprayed rocker cover.

With the loud pedal and choke cable connected up, and the engine filled with oil, there were fewer and fewer excuses left. The fuel pump was filling the float chambers, everything was looking good. The coil was disconnected and the engine spun over on the starter and oil pressure built up. A bit of choke, I turned the key and the engine turned. It did not fire, so I tried again with a bit more choke and nothing happened. Getting out and shuffling sadly to the engine bay, I realised that the coil was still connected. Durrrrrr. She fired up instantly and settled down to her old rorty growl running fast with the choke out. As the temperature came up, she would then idle perfectly, just as before with that smooth unevenness only Valli has. The carburettors and not been adjusted since they were removed from the engine at the start of the restoration, and did not need adjusting. She was running, charging and would shortly be moving, once the brakes and clutch hydraulics were finished.

All well in the engine bay. I do like that engine, the emo red was perfect in the spray gun as well, so I sprayed the rocker cover. Look at those reflections!

Everything necessary to legally drive the car on the road was then fitted, so I could get her an MOT and start to run her in and iron out any problems while finishing her off. The front wings went on, then the doors, and here I learnt how to paint cars properly. Which, in future, will be done with the doors and wings already finished, so when fitting the doors I do not ruin the paint on them and the wings. I resprayed the damaged areas, sadly the paint was a slightly different colour, so I am going to have do another smaller respray in the near future to get everything right. It was unfortunate as the paint turned out rather well, a beautiful gloss, and I am going to have to do all that polishing again. Ah well, at least I know now.

Up and over

2009-12-03T19:09:00.008Z

A new Borg and Beck clutch kit had arrived in a red, black and white cardboard box, containing at least 40% recycled fibres, and labelled Borg and Beck, 1 clutch kit MG MGB 4cyl. Well, I have to include some obvious and irrelevant detail to pad it out a bit, don’t I?

I have bought a clutch alignment tool, which made getting the pressure plate central very easy. The clutch casing was bolted to the flywheel, and a new release bearing clipped into place in the gearbox. The release bearing arm had been fitted with a new bronze bearing, and the bolt on which it pivots was replaced to ensure slop-free de-clutching. Hurrah! A new gaitor was fitted to the release bearing arm to stop water getting in, and the split pin in the drainage/breather hole in the bottom of the bellhousing was removed. I was going to put some flexible tubing through the hole, and extend this up inside the car, to stop water getting in when fording. The same will be done to the rear axle breather, so it can breathe air rather than water.

The first motion shaft splines were carefully greased with the AP clutch parts lubricant, as well as the release bearing pivots. Then the gearbox was sneaked towards the engine, and shoved on the back. Bolted up, the drive train was ready to go in!

New friction plate on the flywheel, with the alignment tool.

Mmm a new carbon release bearing. I had heard a few stories of newly fitted release bearings breaking up after a very short time, so either there are substandard parts out there, (very likely), or idiots have been buying “New old stock” perishable parts off the internet. A fanbelt that has sat around for 30-40 years? Erm they degrade with time as well as use, so do cooling hoses…. Ah well, there are plenty of idiots out there, who sadly managed to buy a classic car. Why buy a release bearing which could have sat in the damp for 30 years, then fit it to your car, knowing it is a major job to remove the engine and gearbox to access the clutch? Anyway I bought new, and genuine Borg and beck, so things shouldn’t go wrong.

And there we have it. Most of the engine, minus the fragile bits. The rebuilt gearbox, and overdrive. The rocker cover is a spare, while the proper one is being painted, and the sump was removed and painted once the engine was in the car. A stupid thing to do really, but there was a reason for it, which I cannot remember. Time to put it in then...

Engine, gearbox and overdrive all in as one was to be the way. Either that, or the box and overdrive then the engine, however it was easier fitting them together first. This would involve a silly angle to get the assembly in, as it is rather long with the overdrive and all, and the B series is extremely high. Oh well, just get on with it.

Sheets and general padding were draped over the panelwork in an attempt to avoid damage in a collision with the engine. A hefty tow rope was deemed enough to take the weight, and taking it slowly and carefully, it all just about worked.

Valleri waiting expectantly. The engine is supported by the green strap, with hefy rope as a backup as I was not keen on dropping it.The rope could also be adjusted to gain the silly angle required to get the whole lot in. The front wing splash guards can be seen in the background, hung up to dry (They had been there since painting the underside!)

Ha-harr! Victory!

Back down from the stupid angle, getting closer to being in... note the protection, thankfully it was not needed and nothing got bumped.

And there we have it. How beautiful. It fitted perfectly, and looks rather nice against the white and black paint.

Mmmmm! There is still a lot of car to put back together though!

Once the engine was in, it was bolted to the mountings at the front. Perfect fit! Underneath, the gearbox crossmember was ready to go on. This had the bolt holes elongated to allow it to be physically fitted, a major design flaw. New mounting rubbers had been fitted, with some difficulty and sore hands! It was still an awkward job fitting the gearbox crossmember, but once done, she had a power unit and drive train at last.

Continuing the number-based titles... 1,2,3,4 Overdrive!

2009-12-03T18:18:00.005Z

Time to fiddle with the gearbox. This had been working very well, but there was a lot of play in the first motion shaft bearing, it could be wiggled well over ¼”. So it seemed logical to strip the whole gearbox down for inspection, cleaning and replacement of the dodgy bits.

The first motion shaft bearing housing was removed, along with the selector tower, the overdrive and the rear extension. I spent a bit of time playing, to determine exactly how everything fitted together and worked. Disassembly continued, until the entire thing was in pieces. Despite having not done a great deal of gearbox work before, if enough photos, drawings and notes are taken, things are much easier, gearboxes are very simple really.

Gearbox casing cleaned and scrubbed... The overdrive has been removed, leaving the rear extension and main casing.

Yours Truly. Purpose of this photo- remember to find out what this little bracket does, before reassembly. (it turned out the be the bracket that a clip is bolted onto. The clip holds the overdrive and reversing light switch wiring in place).

The rear extension has been removed now, and the selector rods are being withdrawn.

The big nut allows the third motion shaft to be disassembled. The big, double roller bearing seen here is just about indestructible, and has very little force exerted upon it from any direction.

Removing the bearing from the first motion shaft proved difficult, due to the lack of a ring spanner of the correct size, and a vice not big enough. A hilarious afternoon of going backwards and forwards to Matt’s house then mine ensued, as we attempted to use his man-sized vice, but forgot various vital tools. Eventually, the reverse thread nut was removed, the bearing replaced and the first motion shaft was ready to refit.

The baulk rings were in good condition, however I fitted some with even lower mileage. I also fitted a slightly less mashed reverse gear, not that there was much between them. All other gears were in perfect order. The second motion shaft was in a bad way, with severe damage to the shaft and one of the needle roller bearings. This looked to have been cause by water in the oil, rather than just severe wear, but thankfully I had a spare second motion shaft, and a new needle roller bearing was ordered from Moss. Being Moss, they sent one with a missing needle roller. Brilliant. The one part I was relying on to get the gearbox back together, and they send one with a fairly obvious manufacturing defect. I am glad I only use them for bits I cannot source elsewhere… Thankfully, I managed to find a spare needle roller bearing, and I fitted that.
The second motion shaft had a little bit too much play, and for some unknown reason, the selective thrust washers necessary to take up this play are no longer made. Why? This is a MGB four sync gearbox, common and popular? Oh well, the endfloat required was 2 thou, there was 7 thou, and 5 thou crankshaft thrust washers thankfully fit.

The outside of the gearbox had been cleaned with the paraffin gun before disassembly, and now the inside was cleaned as well. All components were thoroughly cleaned before reassembly, bearings were washed in meths and all was good. The gearbox was put back together with new gaskets, the selector rods refitted with the interlock, and the overdrive was bolted on the back. Botheration.

Ahh, the gearbox has been cleaned and reassembled. it is a thing of utter beauty. The small gears in the bottom right are the reverse gear, behind them is the second motion shaft, up top is the third motion (output) shaft. Mechanical genius and awsomeness, I need to rebuild another as an ornament.

Lovely syncro hubs, first gear is nearest the camera, and fourth is furtherst away.

Don’t you hate that sickening moment as you gently tighten a UNC bolt into alloy, and it suddenly goes all loose? I wasn’t over-tightening it, honest. That meant that the overdrive had to come off again, the rear extension on the gearbox had the corroseponding hole drilled out to take a ½” bolt rather than a 7/16”, and the overdrive had to be drilled and tapped to take a ½” bolt cut down in length.

At the same time, the overdrive valves were disassembled to check no tapping swarf had got inside, and all was in condition. The overdrive then went back on, and all was well.

One Three Four Two

2009-12-03T17:27:00.008Z

Ho-kay. Time for some clean, precision work on a big lump of cast iron which when assembled correctly, should be torquey, long of stroke and fantastic in the exhaust note department. B Series engines are as simple as they get, this was the third time I was taking one apart so there were no major challenges.

Having very little money, and not much time now either, no machining work was to be carried out. The engine is in good condition and the bores, crank and cam bearings were only slightly worn, so there was potential for many miles left without spending a fortune. A full strip down and reassembly replacing all the expendable items was therefore sensible.

Eventually, I would like to get the block relinered, line bored, get the crankshaft straightened, reground, have the liners bored and fit new pistons, get the whole lot dynamically balanced, add new camshaft bearings and get 3-angle valve seats cut. When I can afford it. Mild tuning will also take place, that does not compromise her usability on the road. So a mild road cam, and a cylinder head which I will port for torque rather than higher revs, with bulleted manganese bronze valve guides, but probably fitting 1.56” inlet valves to keep the torque where I want it.

The block was stripped and parts were inspected. New bits were ordered, meanwhile the paint was removed from the outside of the box and the inside was thoroughly cleaned with a paraffin gun, which was very effective at removing oil and sediment and re-depositing it over the stupid modern car which the father insists on driving. The oilways seemed clear enough so I decided against removing the brass gallery plugs, there was no build up of sediments . The waterways were poked with long pointy objects until there were no limescale deposits left. This is obviously a major cause of engine overheating, causing uneven cooling and blocking the passage of the cooling water through the block. The final step in the cleaning process was giving the block a thorough cleaning with a lot of water and soap and washing powder. This works well as long as all surfaces are kept wet at all times, and the whole thing is dried as quickly as possible then soaked all over with rust preventative, or in the cast of the exterior of the block, the first coat of paint was brushed on as quickly as possible.

In the absence of a pressure water, a stiff bristled hose brush was used to supply water and scrub away dirt. Lots of soap, a lot of water and cleaning every nook and cranny in the block, paying particular attention to the webbing and reinforcements where the dirt had accumulated and was difficult to dislodge. I was extremely pedantic about cleaning the engine parts and maintaining all was sterile, out of necessity. The worst engine wear happens after a rebuild when specks of dirt wreck the new bearings within seconds. All the oilways and waterways were flushed out thoroughly, and I was only happy when I could run a clean tissue anywhere inside the block and have it remain spotless.

WD40 a-plenty on the inside, the engine was moved into the early summer sun to dry quickly, with more WD40 as it dried out. This was done very carefully as it is incredible how quickly corrosion will kick in, and it’s already happening long before the naked eye can see it.
Time to get some paint on the outside of the block to stop that rusting, too. Finest BMC Emo red was brushed on, 4 coats in all and it dried lovely and glossy. Yes, I know that black is correct for the 18Vs, but with a red engine it is far easier to see oil leaks at night, so red it was. I also love the colour.

The new main bearings and thrust washers were fitted, the crankshaft added and the main bearing caps torqued up one at a time.

One exceedingly clean block, with the first coat of paint done, and the new main bearing shells and thrust washers fitted.

The crank endfloat was fine, and there was only slight resistance to rotation at each stage. Perfect. The pistons and old rings were re-used, they had plenty of life left in them for now. New big end bearings of course, everything still turned over smoothly.

The crankshaft and camshaft in place, awaiting the pistons and connecting rods, and the oil pump. This photo gives a false impression of how carefully the engine was rebuilt, keeping it spotless inside.

As the engine appears to have been rebuilt for hillclimbing, then rebuilt again for use on the road, is consisted of a strange mixture of parts. The nicest being duplex timing gears in good condition, and these, with a new timing chain, tensioner and camshaft thrust plate, were fitted one the camshaft was inserted. The cam was timed and was near enough spot on, on the nearest tooth, verified using a dial gauge. A new oil pump was fitted, this had a little bit of porting carried out, and all sharp edges were removed. The distributor drive was inserted, the sump fitted and that was the bottom end done.

In the meantime, the cylinder head was being tackled. The waterways were carefully being cleaned, to prevent the head overheating and cracking. The ports were thoroughly cleaned out with an air die grinder, then the valves and seats were ground.

Grinding the valves, whilst on the phone to Richard. Good times.

New stem oil seals, and the valves were fitted. The rocker assembly was practically unworn, so that went back on, and the same went for the pushrods which went back in the block. A nice Payen head gasket was fitted between the thoroughly cleaned mating surfaces, and the head lowered onto the new head studs.

Valves in place, and a top quality head gasket from Payen. Resin impregnated, and with an extra line of sealent to cope with the dodgy seal which can sometimes occur along the ignition side of the engine. The chap around the corner from me who used to rally a late 60s GT told me of the times he used to go for long distance motorway blasts, and lost a fair bit of coolant water out the ignition side of the gasket!

Torqued up, the timing cover was fitted, and the engine was ready to go in as soon as the gearbox was done. I decided to spray the tappet chest cover and crankcase breather casing emo red, along with the rocker cover, for a smoother finish.

Got a brand new Salisbury axle!

2009-12-01T22:53:00.007Z

As my original rear axle had destroyed itself, and the car in the process, I required a new one. Mark gave me a new one. Good on him, I was very grateful and he didn’t want payment, only the halfshafts back for, for racing. Which is why he bought the spare axle in the first place.

Here’s a lesson though…. Never interfere with the differential of a Salisbury axle. All sorts of stuff is involved, way beyond what you are expecting, and to carry out adjustments requires axle stretchers, service tools, collapsible spacers and lots of dial gauge and depth micrometer stuff. So when someone with limited mechanical knowledge comes along, (such as whoever rebuilt my differential last), you can see why there is potential for it to fail. In spectacular style, locking one halfshaft and putting the drive through the other, making the car not the easiest thing to keep between the hedges. And entirely unexpectedly too, there was only acceptable play in the diff, which was checked regularly alond with the propshaft joints whenever greasing of the latter took place.

Anyway, I had my new rear axle with un-messed-up diff. I set about rebuilding the bits of the differential which are rebuildable, after removing the halfshafts to give back to Mark. I gave me halfshafts to whichever Land Rover and Marcos garage that was nearest home (alright, it’s probably the only one in the country) along with new wheel bearings, which they pressed onto the halfshafts for dosh. Next I removed the roll pin then pinion pin from the differential, removed the diff gears and cleaned everything up. All was in good order, the axle looks to be a low mileage unit. So new thrust washers were fitted to the sun and planet wheels, the half shaft bearings were packed with grease, the halfshafts fitted and the whole thing was back in one piece. I did the old trick of putting a slit pin throught the roll pin and opening the ends, to prevent any chance of the roll pin coming out of the pinion pin. Hurrah, a nice diff at last, ready to go back in.

New bearing on te halfshaft, ready to be shoved in. They were wound in using the bearing caps and a couple of long bolts, until they were in far enough for the proper securing bolts to be used.

The rear axle was painted in Tetrosyl with all the other black parts. Having been thoroughly cleaned up inside and carefully inspected, the new thrust wahers were fitted, which can be seen here as they are so thick, compared to the old ones which are always wafer thin.

At this point Matt reappeared from University, and was promptly recruited for helping my get the thing finished. So began days of working hard on the car, stopping for pizza and chips, then returning to the car for the rest of the day, and getting a lot done quickly, too. And he managed to put up with my bad moods as things did not fit, were the wrong type, or vital bolts and fittings frequently disappeared just for fun. Good work Sir.

Again, it's superb to be working from a complete kit of parts, all new, recon or refinished to as new condition. New bump stops were fitted, now they could actually be fitted, the original bmp stop mounts had corroded away and were plated over, I repaced them while repairing the rear chassis rails. Polyurethane suspension bushed went on the back as well, along with uprated dampers. One day, the springs may be uprated or the ride height tweaked, who knows...

Our first task was to get the axle attached to the bodyshell. Onwards with the rear suspension then, the reconditioned uprated dampers had been bolted in place, and the leaf springs had polyurethane front eye bushes fitted. They were then bolted into place at the front, and the struggle began to get them fitted at the back. This is easy once you know how, difficulties arise getting the polybushes wedged into the holes in the chaissis rails, then not coming out when the shackle plate is pushed through. They are in a fairly hard to get to position, so leverage is difficult. The main problem though was having too much paint in the holes in the chassis rails, further reducing the clearance. With this cleaned out, much trial, failure, then eventual success got both springs in place at the back.

Dampers and springs fitted. Note the special white grease for the polyurethane spring pads.

The axle could then be brought beneath the car and raised and pulled one way, then the other to get itsitting on the springs. With he U-bolts, spring plates and polyurethane spring pads fitted, the drop links to the dampers and check straps could be bolted on, and the axle was in place.

Axle on! Droplinks in place... U bolts and spring pads in place, bump stop pedestal on. The only remaining object is the axle check strap.

Despite the brakes not being fitted, the rear wheels went on. The car could now roll… she was on herwheels again!

Boing!

2009-11-26T20:35:00.016Z

A mobile vehicle was an attractive prospect, so the front cross member was the first bit of spannering. Even that needed some dodgy old arc welding removing, and a repair section welded in. I swear this car must have spent several years submerged, for the front crossmember to require serious welding repairs in three different areas. Anyway it was fine now so I attacked it with a twisted cup brush in the grinder until it was shiny.

I had a methodical stage, and found every single component on the car which needed painting black, readied everything for paint and derusted it all at once, then painted it all black in one go. Several coats of Tetrosyl Black Chassis Paint should provide the best possible protection, this paint takes a long time to completely harden (a few weeks really, but it dries quick enough to handle and assemble in the same time as most paints do) but once it is dry, it is incredibly strong and impact-resistant. It is superbly glossy as well, and looks great when dry. It is a bit prone to running though, so care is needed. It brushes on very well, and does not leave brush marks. It can also be sprayed, I did this on a couple of things and it worked equally well.

Loverly glossy Tetrosyl black chassis paint. Hard to find, but well worth it! All metal which needs to be black was painted with this. The resiliance of this stuff outweighs the fact that some things should be satin or matt black, not gloss.

I now had a complete kit of parts to make the front suspension, along with the reconditioned uprated dampers, the new uprated springs and the dark blue polybushes. Many new nuts and bolts, the top fulcrum pins, dust excluders for the lower pivot, and new bump stops. The stub axle assemblies were reused, as the kingpins were replaced shortly before the rebuild started. The photos tell the story of the assembly.

Ahhhh life could not be better! A complete kit of clean, painted, and new parts for assembly. Add a large amount of copper grease into the equation and it's time to get spannering (Of which I have done none for months, just metal mashing and painting).

All the stuff for one side. Dark blue polybushes were chosen as they are subtle, should last a lot longer, are easier to remove, and will hopefully keep the suspension geometry near where it is intended. Nice Stainless crush tubes, too.

Lots on nice new high tensile bolts ready to be torqued up. The old bump stops were wrecked, one was missing and the other one a corroded mess. The trouble is the alloy spacer and the steel... I made up gaskets to go between them, which might help. The bolts will still conduct though, so it might not.

Fitting polybushes to the wishbone arms. First step, put one in each side. Easy, then add the correct grease to the cross hatching inside. The difficult bit is pressing in the stainless crush tube....

I got a bit more leverage using a socket which was a tight fit inside the crush tube, and an extension for more force!

Shove thee in, with some more grease....

Place it in a vice! Or G clamp, with a couple of large washers or similar either side.

Woot. There you go.

Building up the wishbone arms and pan. Note the epic amounts of copper grease, essential. All photos of the underside of the car show it filthy and covered in copper grease and hand prints. Don't worry, these were cleaned off but at the very end!

Back inside because the rain came! Oh well, it stayed dry and hot all the while I was spraying the car, so I can't complain really. I was very lucky with that. Here the dampers are being bolted on.

The stub axles were fitted at the bottom pivot, and the polybushes fitted into the top pivot. The crossmember was then transferred to the floor, and the springs put into place. Using a combination of thick rope, leverage, strength and cunning, the springs were compressed enough to get the top fulcrum pin in.

The whole assembly was bolted up to my beautiful new chassis rails, using polybush crossmember mounting pads to limit the movement of the crossmember. The steering arms were fitted and torqued, and the new track rod ends were fitted to the steering rack, which had also been fitted with new gaitors. The rack was loosely bolted into place, its final position to be determined by the steering column. With the brake disc stone guards fitted, the new hubs were fitted with new wheel bearings and shimmed to give the correct end float.

That's the front end done then!

Rally Valli

2009-11-26T19:38:00.002Z

Due to her competition history, I think it would be flipping rude not to get her back out taking on other inferior motor vehicles. So I am rebuilding her for road and Historic Endurance rallying. No huge changes really, and nothing which cannot be undone or removed easily, as I am fed up with the amount of hacked around classics which have been modified for the sake of being modified.

So the alterations are subtle, based on ironing out any chances of breakdown or failure, based on common vehicle breakdown causes, research into MGB weak areas both in normal use and in competition, and making the car slightly more responsive and giving it the ability to use rough roads without problems.

All of which had to be done in such a was as to:

-Make no alterations to the standard vehicle which could not quickly and easily be undone or removed, so I could return her to dead standard in a few hours.

-Make the overall appearance and design of the car, and any extras, look like a period amateur rally car of the day. So only additions which could have, and would have, been made and fitted to an MGB owner in his workshop to give his car a better chance at rallying. Using materials, equipment and methods of the early 1970s and before.

-Still be useable every day. That involves driving everywhere, town use, a lot of night driving and speed bumps. No alterations could compromise the usability of the car on the road.

-Protect the car from sustaining damage which would render it unusable. Most clubman’s rally cars we used daily, like mine. Taking the exhaust off on a rock, then not being able to drive the next day is not a good situation.

-Make the car legal and eligible for use in rallying. Anything which contravenes regulations would need to be removable or attachable quickly and easily.

So a big list was made, items were considered, debated upon, researched and decided upon. The current list of rallying tweaks, which either have been or will be undertaken, are below.

-Strengthened and seam welded body shell, with adequate protection for wet, muddy and rough road use… this is what I have been making so far! As well as spot welds in the original places, much seam welding has been done in the areas required to give the bodyshell more strength without affecting the corner-to-corner flexibility required for good handling on bad roads. The underside is more than adequately protected, and as the topside is painted in cellulose, stone chips and hedge scratches can be easily repaired.

-Driving lamps fitted to the front, with fog and spot lenses. An additional auxiliary wiring loom will supply power, and a bolt on alloy plate in the engine bay will hold the relays and fusebox for the lamps.

-Higher powered reversing lamps, utilising the original mounting holes.
-SU double ended fuel pumps- two of these will be fitted, with each pump being individually switched.

-Wiring loom to has all connections soldered, all lengths of loom at risk of abrasion damage will be reinforced. Sidelight clusters will have separate earths, and dipped and main beam headlamps will be wired through relays.

-Potti map magnifier fitted

-Fire extinguishers

-Navigator’s footrest

-All other navigational equipment and aux switching will be mounted on an alloy panel on the dashboard. This will hold the map reading lamp, stopclocks and their lights, pacenote lamps, trip computer, and switching for aux lamps, fuel pumps, navigational equipment and the navigator’s horn button.
-Accelerator pedal extension for the old heel and toe

-Leather bonnet straps to keep bonnet on

-Copper brake pipes, for corrosion resistance

-Battery cut-out switch mounted within reach of driver

-Single 12v high capacity battery, in one of the original battery boxes-Exhaust system mounted higher to reduce risk of damage.

-Decent heat reflecting material applied to underside of heat shield, to prevent fuel vaporisation-Fuel filter & pressure regulator, to tame the SU double-banger pumps, and filter out the fuel efficiently.

-Spare coil mounted above first

-In addition, a spare distributor will always be carried, rebuild and working, in case of any ignition problem it can be fitted in minutes far more easily than points or condenser.

-Sump guard

-Higher output alternator

-Waterproofed distributor, and all grommets and holes into the bodyshell sealed effectively.

-Intake manifold core plugs fitted with straps to prevent them coming adrift.

-Polyurethane suspension bushes, the closest colour to black as possible.

-Uprated dampers

-Slightly stiffer front springs

-Possibly a thicker anti-roll bar

So there we go, all this needs to be incorporated. It will hopefully be a capable and reliable machine once finished…

Liquivalli

2009-11-26T17:18:00.005Z

Immediately after putting a coat of paint on, I made a habit of scurrying out for some fresh air. Then once the paint had dried sufficiently, it was time to start the long process of sanding it flat, ready for the next coat. This was made a lot quicker and easier by getting a good finish from the gun in the first place, with no orange peel or runs (admittedly there were a couple to deal with over the 9 or so coats, both occurred right at the very end of the spraying session when I was loosing judgement fast).

Still, the sanding process was important, and a perfectly smooth surface was required ready for the next layer of paint. 800 grit was used for all but the gloss coats, and this was used on a rubber sanding block for large flat areas, and by hand on delicate bits and edges where the risk of sanding through was high. Lots of water and soap (not washing up liquid, that is full of salt) and just a case of getting down to it! The panel area is quite large, and it takes many hours to complete the car. Fairport Convention in the tune machine, and rock away into the early hours, to be ready for the next coat a few hours later! With all smooth, all traces of soap were removed, the compressor and filters were drained, and all ready to repeat the process again! The overspray and sanding dust was not a problem, as long as the walls and floor were dampened it stay put.

This was repeated for the five coats of high build primer. All was well, the only point worth noting is the care required so as not to sand back too far on corners or edges.

High build primering in process... the interior is all sheeted off, and the sunroof frame has been masked with paper.

Another hazard when sanding these areas by hand, is not to sand through your fingers. You don’t notice it until too late, then it hurts. Oh well, wrap fingers in duct tape and carry on.
Any tiny flaws in the paint finish were filled in using paint stopper then sanded back, to give a flat uniform finish. Once the five coats of high build were on and flatted, she was really beginning to look the part. The last of these grey coats was sanded with 1200 grade wet and dry, and all was ready for the gloss.

Looking good at the back... light apatures have been masked off to stop overspray getting in, then getting blown out all oven the place once dry.

Ahh, note the cunning plan to allow the scuttle to be painted right up to the edge, while still having the wing in vaguely the right position...

All Bondaprimered inside, and grey outside.

Glacier white, mmm nice. It’s actually very light green! All whites are off white, but I hadn’t realised just how greeny Glacier white is until I poured it through the filters. These are white paper, the paint looked worryingly green! Very careful preparation was necessary, and mixing the paint with the high gloss thinners had to be done precisely, taking into account the air temperature which makes a big difference to how the drops atomise and dry as they travel through the air, let alone how they build and amalgamate on the panel.

Logic time. The engine bay and boot area would be painted white first, then onto the outer panels. That way I could get used to the thinned out gloss, quite a difference after the user-friendly high build primer. These areas of the car had been painted in red Bondaprimer, any imperfections were sanded out and the gloss was just blown over the top. I was not too concerned about getting it perfect, after all they are not often seen, however two coats of gloss and the engine bay and boot were looking rather smashing.

The boot area, engine bay and door frame/top of sill after the first coat of white. At the same time, the doors were being painted around the edges.

With the bonnet replaced, I moved on to the outer panels. As soon as the first coat of white was finished, she was starting to come to life again, after all this time as bare steel and primer. The gloss coats were flatted in the same way as the primer, only this time using 1200 grade wet and dry until the early hours. Five coats of white were completed, and I was happy to leave it at that.

Most of the interior was left in primer. A waste of expensive paint, that would not have been seen anyway.

Chrome bumper wings! You couldn't tell any different.

All looking rather good now.

Have a look at the reflections in the bonnet... this was straight from the gun, after the paint had dried and the fumes left the garage.

Cutting and polishing then began in some areas, but as reassembly commenced, there was less time for this and it happened as time allowed (often late at night, when noisy jobs were antisocial). Farecla cutting compound was used, by hand with a damp cloth. And a lot of effort. It did a splendid job though, the depth of the gloss was impressive and the paintwork looked liquid.
The wings and bonnet were then removed, and put into storage for later.

Because now at last, it’s reassembly time!

And the first coat of primer!

2009-11-23T21:51:00.005Z

The first coat of paint was the yellowy etch primer, to chemically anchor onto the steel and give a good basis for further coats of primer.

The bare steel was given a blow over with the air line, then a wipe down with panel wipe. Once this had evaporated, a tack rag was wiped over every inch of the bare shell, to pick up and fibres or dust particles.

Clothes tucked in so they couldn’t drag across the wet paint. Sister attacks me with a plant sprayer, so my clothes and hair are damp and collect rather than shed dust. Floor dampened, but not too wet. Paint measured accurately, and mixed very carefully, mask on, compressor charged and shut down. I have run out of excuses. Apart from that Matt is due to turn up in a couple of hours so I can go and weld his Landy together. Oh well, better get on with it! Outside, I test the fan shape and density on a bit of scrap metal. A very minor adjustment and all is well. Back into the garage, time to paint the car!

I had never spray painted panels before, nor had I practiced, I just assumed I would be able to. Turns out I can. It’s a simple matter of getting the mixture right for the consistency and type of paint, then balancing speed and distance, and always keeping the correct angle from the surface being sprayed. A bit like welding really, just do it and don’t think about it.

I painted the nearside, topped up the gun, then did the offside. One litre of etch primer was just enough, thinned 50/50. The only issue was that by the time I got halfway through the second side, the paint fumes were affecting my judgment and in was entertaining to sit on the floor and grin a lot. Still, I managed it, and it turned out well even once I was a bit wasted. And yes, I am wearing the correct respiratory apparatus. Fairly expensive it is, too. Not very effective, oh well.

All is masked off and happy. You cannot begine to realise just how I felt at this sight, all one colour again, all smooth and beautiful. The extreme lamp can be seen on the left, the bonnet is in the right position with the front wings shifted foward.

Oh those composite wing tops. Oh yes. OH YES!

Painting is far more dynamic than I was expecting, especially in an enclosed space. It is a lot of fun, keeping the gun moving at the same rate can prove difficult in some areas, and in others keeping it at the correct angle and distance means rolling around on the floor, ducking, kneeling, diving and various other flexible moves.

The boot area has been given a dose of paint, after reshuffling of the masking.

I was a bit shocked with the end result. The whole car was a uniform colour. There was no orange peel, there were no runs. There were no faults in the paint. The etch primer, although just a primer, was smooth and glossy, I would have been exceedingly happy to take her out on the road just in that, even without sanding or polishing.

I am happy now.

That will do for a first attempt, I think.

Painting- the theory

2009-11-23T20:55:00.002Z

“They” all said not to try and paint the topside myself. Certainly not the gloss coat. But what’s the point in doing all the metal work then chickening out of painting it? That would be taking someone else’s credit, as well.

I had decided even before starting that I would spray the car myself in the garage, and did not worry about it any more. I started planning many months before, as with anything on the car. Leaving the decisions until the time came meant further delays while stuff was sent for.
I had read and thoroughly enjoyed John Day’s series “A twin cam called Ratty”, a real craftsman restoration of a beautiful machine. Having seen the finished car in the flesh, I decided to adopt the same procedure and materials he detailed, as the deep gloss and period look of the paint finish was truly beautiful. Cellulose of course, none of this 2-pack tosh which gives a modern plasticy finish. Eurgh. Not to mention the difficulty of repairing and blending in paint chips, scratches and things, of which there will be plenty given the rough intended use this car will have.

A good a plan as any, if it worked for him, it should work for me. Hey ho, let’s go.
The rather fantastic paint company, called Nu-Agane, were contacted, and lots of stuff was purchased.

1 litre sand coloured etch primer, and 1 litre special thinners for this.
5 litres grey hi-build primer
15 litres standard thinners, for thinning the primer and cleaning the gun and other things.
5 litres of high gloss Glacier white top coat. Wooot!
5 litres high gloss, anti-bloom pure virgin cellulose thinners, for thinning the top coats.
1 litre of panel wipe
A lot of tack rags
A huge stack of paint filters
An even huger stack of mixing cups

And this lot came to about £320. A lot? Erm NO!

How much would it cost to get someone else to pay you car? Not only that, I was more than happy with this price. The quality and standards of these products was absolutely superb. The service from the company was of a standard rarely found these days, with friendly and knowledgeable advice which was of real help while determining the order.

The next consideration was how to apply the paint to the panels. I particular, the compressor, spray gun and air line and filter set up. This is of vital importance to give good results. A cheap, naff spray gun, or a set up with allows water to condense in the air line will give an abysmal finish that looks home-done. Like this particular car used to have.

I bought a Clarke SP14C spray gun. What a good decision that turned out to be. It was fairly cheap, it is very well balanced full or near empty. They quality is superior to anything else at the price, and it is easy to clean. It is also just about the only spray gun that will fit my stupid hoooge hands. All in all, it’s ideal and used correctly will do the same job as something costing £200, which I do not have at the moment.

At the risk of sounding a little strange, I adore this gun, it is superb and reliable and effective. Machine Mart do sell some good stuff, in time you end up being able to tell the difference between good and bad.

The compressor was not an issue, I borrowed one. At 2.5 horse power, the motor and compressor were up to the job, but it had a small tank for the power output, I was very worried with how it would keep up especially on the larger panels. No need to worry though, I never had to slow down or pause to let the air supply catch up, it worked out ideally.

Getting air from the chuggy whirry thing to the hissy thing was the next issue. Everyone puts a filter on the compressor, then fails to admit one from the back of the gun. DURRRR! Basic science here folks!

Air gets hot when it is compressed. When it leaves the tank, the water and oil from the tank is filtered out by your tank-mounted filter. But as the air travels from the air line to the gun, it cools down. The water condenses out. The water gets into the paint, and gives a shoddy finish. Even if all looks well, when you get the car out into the sunlight for the first time, the water heats up, and leaves the paint, cracking it or making blisters and craters.

The answer to this problem is cheap and simple. Fit a small in-line filter between the air line and spray gun. And regularly check and empty it while spraying, it will improve things so much. Please go and do it, please.

I went for a filter-regulator on the compressor, a decent 15m length of rubber air hose, both to reach both sides of the car, and to allow as much water to condense out, before it arrived at the next item, a small inline filter just before the spray gun. Simple, and worked perfectly.
Right, one last area of decision making. The garage, having been home to major bodywork for over 9 months, had thick layers of grinding dust all over it. This had collected everywhere, over everything and was 1/16” deep. It had even got into the loft. So how to turn this into a sterile environment for spraying? Firstly get it as clean as possible. Perfect timing, a windy day. Open the back door of the garage. Open the big front door. Air blow gun… compressor… good, no one is watching. Blow the dust up, then out of the garage. Great, it’s someone else’s problem. The process was repeated until less and less dust settled after each time.

Still nowhere near clean enough for painting. There should be no dust, no loose particles, no fibres, nothing. The garage floor was plain concrete, I had considered sealing and painting it before starting to strip the car, way way back months before. ( A LOT of thought went into every stage of this project!) but it would have cost a bit, and I hardly had any money. So I decided to thoroughly clean the garage ceiling, shift everything over to one side of the garage (The side with the opening to the loft, still a big dust trap) and make a room within the garage. The spray booth.

Three packs of thin, translucent polythene dust sheets did the job. Three 9’ x 12’ sheets in each pack. These were pinned to the ceiling, each pin going through a duct tape patch to spread the load and avoid tearing. The sheets made up a room around the bodyshell, as large as the garage would allow to give me adequate working space around the car, vital when spraying. The sheets were taped together where they met, and weighted at the bottom with large smooth rocks from a pile in the garden, each one cleaned first (this kind of attention to detail is vital). The garage door had to be opened slightly for more room to spray around the back of the car, and to let a bit more light in. This meant that the slightest breath of wind would flap the entire spray booth terrifyingly, but it held together. Ripping it was another pain, but it was very successful. The sheeting covered the floor, and up to the underside of the car, any of the underside paint showing was masked off. The interior of the car was masked off as well, however a cunning system meant I would be able to open the tailgate and get some paint in the boot area without disturbing the masking. Access to the fridge and freezer in the garage had to remain, so more thought was required, but in the end I had a dust proof enclosure, masking off absolutely everything except car body panels which were to receive paint. Apparently it was of some interest in the local area as to whether I was going to try and paint the car myself, this was confirmed by me with the garage door open rigging up the dust sheets at gone half two, one night!

Lighting had to be considered, with side lighting as important as overhead lighting. The fluorescent tubes in the garage were joined by several cunningly placed inspection lights, and Nige’s huge floodlamp on a tripod was positioned prior to painting an area. Well thought out lighting is highly necessary, otherwise you cannot see how much paint you are putting down.
I had decided to temporarily fit the doors and front wings, for painting. This was a huge mistake, as we shall see later. I was keen to ensure that where the scuttle joins the front wing, both the entire scuttle and wing were painted, otherwise bits would be missed at the join. (They would still be in primer, just not as much). For that reason, the wings were temporarily fitted but too far forward, bolted on using the next hole along on the inner wings to keep them forward of the scuttle. This meant all of the surfaces got paint, and the wings were done at the same time as everything else.

All set, then.

2009-11-14T21:35:00.006Z

Well it has been quite a long time since I have written anything here, most posts were written about a couple of weeks retrospectively. But things got hectic, I am now writing about events which happened half a year ago..!

While I was painting the underside, I realised I had to get a move on, so I could get her finished and actually use her a bit before going off to University. And so began the long days and night shifts, getting up around 9am and working on the car until about 3am the next day. Then grabbing a few hours sleep and getting back out into the garage!

With the underside painted and ready for the worst the British (and hopefully foreign) roads could throw at it. So she was rotated upright, and lowered back to the floor so the final metal mashing could take place, then she would be ready for paint and reassembly.

I am not going to say much about the panel fitting, and getting the doors adjusted properly. It is a boring process, a great deal of hard work so it’s best to just get on with it. It is equally irritating when the bodyshell is SO close to completion, and so close to looking good, with the underside finished. So nearly there, but so much yet to do…. It was always going to be especially difficult, I had replaced the rear wings, B posts, outer sills, reskinned one door and bought another which had been reskinned to replace the one which got mangled. But the front wings needed sorting first before I could start aligning things.

Oh joy. The wings to be used were 1980 rubber bumper wings. Rotten 1980 rubber bumper wings. I’m not going into too much detail of the hellish process of firstly making them sound, then converting them to chrome bumper wings such that it is impossible to tell them apart. Let’s just say it was frustrating, took a couple of weeks of solid wing work and I ended up making and replacing a headlamp ring, many sections needed cutting out, new repair panels made and welding into place then leading, plus panel beating new sidelight apertures. Then there was the not-so-simple matter of making the wings fit the scuttle and replacing the beading at the top. Each front wing was tailored to each car in this area at the factory, and I ended up completely replacing most of the top rear corner to fit the scuttle and replaced the heavily corroded steel at this point. Hopefully, once I had applied a thin layer of lead to the complicated beading area with several layers of metal, it should last for many years without rusting, we shall see.

This is the better of the two rubber bumper wings that I was to be using. Here I have began to convert the wing to a chrome bumper type, panelbeating a new section to weld in, then cutting a hole in the right place for the sidelight unit. A new piece is required in the top right of the picture, one of the many areas which had rotton (examples in this picture- headlight ring, and the front of the wheelarch). Any rotten and thinned metal was cut out, and repair pieces fabricated and welded in. Much panelbeating.

Then the door and wing fitting began on both sides, getting the door in the right place both horizontally, vertically and sideways in relation to the other panels. Again, the less said about this process the better, patience is required but a good, even door gap is the result.

The wing, looking much better now, after the corroded areas replaced and lead loading as required. The areas most prone to corrosion were painted in the red Bondaprimer, for a bit more protection. The underside of the front wings have yet to be painted in Jotun white, the glorious stuff used on the underside. The result of the first of two VERY long nights of seam sealing the engine bay and bulkhead can be seen.

Starting to fit up the wings and doors, a very, very long process. The interior has been primed in Bondaprimer, while the boot area will be sprayed white, very little of the interior will be top coated, to save money, it cannot be seen anyway. The transmission tunnel and centre console will be done though, as this can be seen where the carpets join.

Hang on.. That’s the bodywork done. However, as I was removing the doors again so I could start cleaning the outer panels back to bare metal, I noticed that the replacement door I had bought was a 3-sync 1960s door. Oops. Thankfully it did not take long to cut the differing areas out of my old door frame and seam them into place on the new one. Ahh, a 4-Sync door. With the windscreen winder mechanism recesses and interior door handle in the correct place. Wonderful.

Whilst fitting the doors, Richard mentioned that Meg's door skins were suffering from the cracking at the quarterlight. Strange, this is very common with roadsters, it's due to the pressure put on the quarterlight from the hood when the door is closed. I have never heard of it happening on a GT before though. Still, I decided it was not worth the risk of fitting new door skins, painting them and having them split. That would be quite annoying. So I welded plates inside the door at the stress point, to spread the load out into the door skin.

Holes were drilled in the door skins at the pressure point, and a piece of steel was cut and formed to fit snugly up against the area from inside. The Cleeco welding clamps came in useful yet again, while plug welding the plate to the door skin. The welds were ground down, and all was well. It was extra hassle, but worth it for the peace of mind. Of course both parts were prepared in weld-through primer, then the plate was seam-sealed afterwards to prevent corrosion.

Scrubbing of the outer panels began, with wire brushes in the drill to remove flash rust, dirt and such. She looked lovely in completely bare metal. Wonderful.

A spring day, late evening sun, and shiny metal.

Steel is beautiful! The headlamp ring, now repaired and leaded, has been painted in Jotun 2-pack so it is invincible, the cellulose paint can just sit on top.

Finally, after 21 kgs of MIG welding wire, 9,200 litres of shielding gas, and probably half my bodyweight in angle grinders, electric drills, discs and wire brushes (I might actually work it out!) the metalwork was done. Oh yes. It has been extremely enjoyable, I can’t think why I love the part of the restoration which everyone else hates.

Clearing out the accumulated junk in the garage happens regularly. These are just a few of the wire brushes used, most went in the bin but as some wore out I chucked them aside, got a new one and carried on. These are just the ones which missed the bin!

Also of note is one of my shoes. Rather burnt and melted. I tried welding wearing hefty safety boots, however when a molten blob of melt burns through clothes and down into the boots, they take ages to remove which it painful. I much prefer my loose, burnt shoes and old socks, so when it rains white hot metal I can shake it straight out.

Right, onto the paint. Summer is nearly here!

Painty!

2009-05-23T23:20:00.011+01:00

Applying stuff to the steel underneath! Yes at long last, she’s ready to be painted underneath, and the paint system and protection technique had been troubling me since before I bought the car in the first place. And after a huge amount of research, discussing the subject with many people, I ended up doing something which I am now fairly happy with.

Nothing which is usually done made me happy, yet I could not come up with anything better. Without going into very much detail as I don’t want to bore everyone, here are the brief outlines of my findings.

Disadvantages of common underside systems.

Underseal: There are two main types of this. The stuff which sets hard-ish, and the stuff which stays sticky. Both are absolutely awful to remove from a car, trust me. So once you have a newly-repaired underside, there was no way I was going to cover it in ming again. Also, you cannot see what is going on. It’s all hidden under dreadful black stuff, how do you know the spot welds holding the chassis rails on aren’t rotting out? The sticky stuff is not easy to keep clean either. And the stuff which sets is worse than useless. As I have seen time and again on many cars, It traps water underneath and accelerates corrosion. As I found out and mentioned much earlier on when I was removing underseal, there are areas which ad been wrecked by the underseal, water collecting underneath it rotted the old footwell/floor pan/transmission tunnel area. Also, repairs from about 5 years previously, “”protected”” by paint and underseal, had fared worse in many cases than the original 1972 metal.

Stonechip: The older sorts of stonechip trap water underneath them. Like underseal, they were (and some types still are) a liability. The idea is to have a flexible layer of stonechip, with paint over the top. Hang on, how does this work, a tough layer of paint floating on a flexible surface? Surely this needs very flexible paint to be effective. Again, it hides what is actually protection the steel.

Paint: Just paint underneath? Hmmm, an effective primer then tough 2-Pack over the top might almost work, maybe for the types that only bring their cars out on dry days for a trundle around the local villages. It just doesn’t have the toughness to withstand a battering from stones, while it might just about work for some people’s cars, it won’t work on mine, which will get used and ragged.

Oh and underwing shields: Do I even need to mention these? Well suppliers keep listing them, so I presume people are still buying them? Well yes, they protect the paint from stones. But you are also creating a double thickness inside your wheel arch, and the accumulated muck and water is going to accelerate corrosion like nothing else apart from driving up Bristol channel every day.

A couple of the most important things learnt were that the flexibility of paint used underneath is not of paramount importance. Yes body shells do flex (A lot more than you’d ever imagine) however the amount of movement in a given area is far less than the upper limit of flexibility of most paints. In other words, the steel flexes very slightly, most paints flex a lot more.
The other thing is where exactly corrosion starts. Yes, if the coating chips of flat panels, they will start to rust. However, about 85-90% of corrosion on these cars starts off at the joins. Yes, those double thicknesses of any sorts, where two panels are spot welded together and moisture gets in the flange. This is where rusting starts. And once it has eaten away the flange, it starts out dissolving the panel. And it happens faster underneath as this is where most salt and water is, although of course anywhere where air can get to will rust as well, so nowhere is safe on a body shell. So the flanges underneath are the most prone to corroding and are the biggest hazard. This is where seam sealing plays an important part.
Then came some interesting correspondence with Robin Gell, who was having the similar thoughts about how to protect the underside of his Factory V8. And I do believe he has hit on it. I was a bit apprehensive about “copying” someone in this way, in case it seemed I was following something unproven or taking someone’s word without giving it enough thought. But no, after hours of blahhing on about paints with various classic car restorers, those in the trade, and plenty of sleepless nights, I decided this was the way to go. More than worth a try, it seems far better than anything commonly used.

Over bare steel, it works as follows:

Bondaprimer. This is zinc-resin primer, which apart from getting to your head very quickly, is a fantastic primer for steel. The resin formula means the adhesion to steel is excellent, indeed trial pieces left to harden for long enough showed impressive resistance to battering with hard pointy things. High zinc content means corrosion resistance is extremely good, I have been shown steel fabrications made over 20 years ago which have been treated with BondaPrimer and kept outside, and when I was given permission to remove small areas for inspection of the steel (as long as I repainted said areas myself!) the metal looked fresh like it had only just been overpainted, on flat areas and over joints as well. This stuff has been used by a local garage for many years to good effect. It seems the best primer for underneath, it is very easily applied by brush and while it does not have as high a zinc content as the Electrox I used in the box sections, then smooth finish and similar corrosion resistance make it ideal.

Jotun HF Marine 2-part gloss: This is a real test as to whether Stephen actually reads this, if so he will make a lame quip about MGBs handling like boats. Paint designed for use on the superstructure of boats, the resistance to road salt should be good then! It is highly resistant to water, a very tough 2-pack which looks good even when brushed on, and will protect the primer from damage as well as giving the underside the correct colour as it can be had in a large number of colours, one of which will be near enough for the underside. Testing on scrap steel, over Bonda primer, again shows great adhesion and chip resistance, I am confident that this very high quality paint will last a very long time.

Plasti-Dip Soft Coat: This is going on over the top. To act as a sort of underseal, but not quite. While the Jotun HF is very tough paint, it still really needs another coating over it to protect from damage by stones. I would be very unhappy just having the paint underneath, it needs something to protect it. Plasti-Dip is a solvent based rubber, which can be applied by brush. It dries quickly so layers can be built up to give a thick coating in the areas which need impact resistance. The best part is that clear Plasti Dip can be bought, which means the white painted underside will still be visible, the condition of the paint can very easily be monitored incase any area are starting to corrode, and the condition of the Plasti-Dip layer is very obvious so it can be recoated easily if any areas suffer worse than others. All in all this layer will protect the paints without looking awful or hiding the condition of the underside.
Ok then, enough wordy stuff, loooooook!

The first coat of Bondaprimer drying. To coat the underside is a lot of work, I started about 8pm and was out there until half two. Blarrrgh those zinc fumes! What a relief to have everything protected from flash rust, and looking rather nice if I say so myself.

Seam sealing! The next important stage. And I know it looks a mess, but it's all smoothed and blended in. The trick is to dip your finger in white spirit so the seam sealer does not stick, then it can be spread and smoothed easily. Everything was sealed underneath, to block up any microscopic pores in my seam welds, and to seal the few remaining original spot welded flanges. No air or water is getting to the metal now!

More seam sealer, and a bit more to do. I spent a lot of time and attention to detail doing this, bearing in mind the yearly floods around here sh will have to cope with.

And then it was all covered in the second coat of BondaPrimer. I'm glad I diddn't spend ages grinding down all the plug welds, it would have made little difference really. And yes, after all, this is the underside!

I am confident this stuff will protect my new floors, sills, crossmember, chassis rails..... Spare ROStyle holding things up! Lovely thin well spreading primer, it gets into gaps very well.

And the first coat of 2-pack! Does that make you MOIST? Yes I'm glad I've saved that (admittedly innapropriate) word until now, it's the only one to describe the smooth, glossy, pale white underside. The Jotun HF is a joy to use, creamy and easily brushed on in a thick enough layer. Rememeber this is one coat of gloss white over deep red! I have to admit, brushing the white over dark red, I can see the attraction of the Works MGBs. However, I would have a darker red with the white if I ever make a works-ish car!

With the second coat of Jotun HF on, she's now looking like she's worth something. No longer lots of panels melted together by a mad man with a MIG, but a proper bodyshell which will soon become a car!

And there she is after the first coat of Plasti-Dip. It is very painful applying this matt-finish rubber over the beautiful gloss. Most depressing. Arghhhh! But even so, it still looks rather fetching. That is one thin coat over the entire thing, just for some added protection. Then the real impact resistance treatment started. Anywhere most at risk of flying stones (and this took a lot of thought and planning!) got many more coats of Plasti-dip layerd up to build a thick layer. The front inner wings, footwell ends, fronts of the sills, chassis rails, fronts of the floorpans, front face of the crossmember, the rear wheel arches, the rear valance were the main areas for serious protection. When I have finished the metalwork mess that is the front wings, their undersides will get the same paint and Plasti-Dip treatment.

It's impossible to see, but there is about 1/8th inch of clear rubber over this lot. I am fairly happy this will give the impact resistance required, I would like more everywhere but literally cannot afford any more of the stuff. I shall see how it fares after hard use on a few road trips, and maybe apply more over the winter if required.

Oh, I will have to do the bits underneath the spit brackets later of course...!

I am very pleased with how it has turned out. Very pretty and very solid, if you hit the panels they now don't really go clong. That's the Plasti-Dip taking up the impact!

2009-05-20T23:54:00.003+01:00

Just in time, the new rear panel turned up. Admittedly just a rear valance would normally have done, but someone had replaced the valence in the past so everything was a complete mess and it seemed more logical to replace the rear panel whole. This consists of the valance and the area between the rear wings below the tailgate.

That morning I had drilled out the spot welds that held the rear panel to the rear wings, and cut off the old valance. I had cleaned and primed all the remaining flanges, and adjusted and repaired the flanges on the ends of the rear chassis rails. Holes had also been drilled in the rear of the boot floor for plug welding to the new valance, so all was ready.

Yip-Yay. Fully repaired inner and outer rear wings, leaded at the top. The rear panel has been removed, it's obvious what it welds onto. My new rear axle has just arrived as well, note it's made a huge puddle of oil all over the floor already, so it's a good'un. Actually it's nearly new, to replace my old one which shredded itself. And the car too, nearly.

The panel turned up and it was quickly unwrapped and the Heritage paint removed and the edges primed. A bit of tweaking and fitting and it was possible to slot it into place, a bit of a fiddle because it goes behind the rear wings sandwiched between wing and boot floor extension.

There it is in place, all new and lovely. The interior still looks an awful mess with the flash rust etc, although it won't be long now....

Weldy time, most of it was attached apart from the seam welds between valance and wing which I decided to do once the car was mounted on the spit again for painting. Final grinding of the welds, will take place later, as more work was required making the small panels which fit underneath the light cluster.

Now the rear panel was on, she was starting to look very car-like again. Some lead loading would be required, to make the joins between rear wing and rear panel seamless (some cars had a visible vertical line at the join each side, some had them filled in, including mine) and over the rear wing/valance join, which also needed to be seamless. This was also to be done when the car was on the spit, as it is a lot easier lead loading on a horizontal surface than a vertical one!

This is the rear wing to rear valance join. It has a small overlap which would have been spot welded originally, but I have seamed from the outside, flipped her over, and seamed rom the inside. Smoothed down, it's time for some lead. Nothe the area under the rear light cluster still needs more work, this will be done later as the spit brackets get right in the way.

Solder paint....

And some lead. After all the practice, I can use the minimum of lead to get the right shape, meaning less has to be filed away. Filing then sanding will still be required of course.

In the evening, with the rear end now as solid as it had ever been, she was hoiked up and put on the spit again. Careful placement of the spare wheel and a couple of blocks of wood meant I could tip her over 90 degrees from horizontal and rest the top of the A post on the wheel and blocks to keep the shell from rotating any further. It was then easy to roll the shell up to horizontal again, kick the spare wheel over the other side, walk around the car holding it steady all the time, then lowering it down on the other side. Thus in less than a minute I could single handedly roll the whole lot one way or another, resting on whichever A post was downwards. This was safe and sturdy enough, there is not a great deal of force exerted on the A post and indeed the shell could be lifted up and over easily and comfortably. If shoving, hammering or other such violent activity was to take place, the locking bracket provided with the spit could be bolted on for added safety.

The spit proved its worth over and over again. Firstly there were the last repairs to make to the rear chassis rails, and the rear axle check strap mounts to weld in place. The plate at the back of the transmission tunnel between the floors had been removed so I could chisel off some of the layers of rust, and now I could weld it back on then cut off the temporary spacer I had welded beside it to remove the possibility of anything shifting. Final welding of castle rails to floor and rear spring hangers took place. More grinding, then the removal of underseal, paint and rust from the rear battery boxes, which was a lot of work. Deeming it a waste of time trying to get the battery boxes perfect, due to their intricacies and difficult corners, I removed as much rust as possibly then used Rustbuster’s rust converter, and when dried I removed any excess from clean steel. The rust converter chemically anchors to any remaining surface rust, stops further corrosion taking place and can then be overpainted. It is very effective over rust, and grips very well.

The entire underside was now bare metal, apart from small areas in etch primer which would do no harm. I went over the whole thing with various types of wire brushes and poly wheels in the drill, followed by a going over with a coarse twist knot brush in the grinder to give a slightly less-than-smooth surface for the paint to key into. Ready for paint underneath, at flipping last.

Oh yes. I wish I had had the time to get some better photos of the bare metal underside, however time is not for wasting at this stage.

Looking almost liquid.... Everything seen here is my work, apart from most of the transmission tunnel.

All work listed above was immensely easy once I had the car on the spit. It must have been turned over a lot more than 100 times while finishing off underneath, so I could weld or grind from above, or get into difficult areas far more easily with the drill and brush. And if it was useful then, it was to prove a blessing during painting the underside.

Rear wings part two. A bit healthier on pictures!

2009-05-15T22:29:00.006+01:00

So to fit the rear wings. The entire area of the car about to be hidden by the outer wings was painted in zinc resin Bonda Primer, along with the inside of the rear wings.

Mmmm would you look at that! Some paint getting on the car at last! The bottom of the C Post, and inner rear wing look almost perfect from this angle, despite all the hacking about. That's without paint or even lead yet.

All painted inside and ready to go. The edges have been weld-throughed, but overpainted just a tad with the Bonda Primer, oops! It won't matter though.

And the inside of the outer wing. There are a lot of holes drilled in that, which amounts to a lot of grinding after the welds are done.

Once this was dry, another coat of Bonda Primer followed, but not all the way up to the edges which of course were painted with the weld through stuff. Positioning, fitting the door and wings to check the door gap, adjustment, tweaking, altering the lower B post replacements, more adjustment and the offside rear wing was ready to be welded. I had removed most of the flages from the outer and inner rear wing tops, they were not going to be used as I was not going to spot weld them together and it was just a rust trap. I left small amounts though, which would be melted into the weld anyway, just to thick up the area being welded and to reduce the chance of blowing holes, as well as increasing strength. Clamped in place with holes drilled for plug welding, I welded first to the wheel arch, then to the rear of the sill, then to the rear light area, and then to the B post after necessary trimming, adjustment and alterations (Steelcraft lower B Posts, which as you may have guessed only bear a slight resemblance to the real thing) to the B post as well. Then to the outer sill, running a seam down to leave a slight gap. This will be filled with lead, then filed out to make a neat even gap. Finally the long seam weld along the top was done, a fit at a time to keep the heat distortion down. Despite my best efforts, the outer wings are a little uneven at the top, this was unavoidable really due to the stop-start heat of seaming a little at a time. No matter, the rear window trim piece covers most of it, and some careful tapping will sort the rest.

Rear wing welded in all round, apart from the top. I am leaving the Heritage paint on until later, flash rust is very annoying and it makes her look awful!

Tacked in place along the top at 1/2 inch intervals, ready for seaming a bit at a time. Join the dots!

The offside wing was done much the same, fortunately I remembered before welding it on to drill a hole for oil/wax injection into the outer sill right at the back near the wheel arch. The nearside (Heritage) outer sill had the hole already, the offside (guess what) did not. At least they are even on both sides, this hole is important as it covers the sill to wheel arch join with many flanges and therefore double thicknesses which need protecting from the inside.

She looked rather splendid with rear wings once more in place. I still had no rear panel, so I made a start on the front wings and in the evenings I did the lead loading on top of the rear wings. The idea was to make lead peaks, exact replicas of the original composite peaks. But could I remain sensible throughout the process? I admit being tempted to make sharper points to the peaks, so I would own the world’s only Razorback P47-esque BGT. Another idea was to make fins like a Peerless GT, because sadly I can’t afford a real one (YET!)….. Control yourself boy!
No the peaked wings are one of a kind so they will stay that way, how they were originally. I took plenty of photos of the sound metal before I added the lead, I know people will tell me that she’s rusted out there and been fillered otherwise. And yes people will tell me it’s “wrong”. Nope, not this car!

Clean shiny metal, a good coat of solder paint and time to wake up the Primus blowlamp. With the wing tinned up, half a pound of lead was deposited along the wing top and weld.

The wing has been "tinned" with a thin layer of lead as can be seen, the solder paint is lead dust suspended in flux so a coat of that on the steel, when heated, will give a thin layer of lead. The excess solder paint and impurities can be scrubbed off, then it is ready for what I am doing here, melting some chunks of lead on the wing before I can start shaping.

This is a lot of lead though, so full throttle and with a delicious roar from the Primus I worked from the rear to the front gently melting the mess and smoothing it into shape. The difficulty is getting the heap of lead hot enough for most of it to be mouldable without the outside turning liquid and running down the wing. It is a very narrow temperature band, especially when varying the heat is done solely by moving the flame in relation to the work, the same flame has to be heating up a wide are at differing rates to allow progress along the panel. At the same time the lead itself needs to be shaped and more melted in or some removed and placed elsewhere. Easier done than explained!

Once both sides had lead ‘approximations’ the filing could begin with the course body file, catching the shavings for re-melting as it is expensive stuff. Coarse emery paper is the next step, then I left it there for final sorting when I get near the painting stage.

What do you think, it’s identical to how it used to be but a lot stronger and it should last a lot longer too. I likes it anyway!

Sorry about the contrast, it's the only photo I have of a finished rear wing. While there is a clear boundary between the lead and steel, you can't feel it!

Just a nice shot of one f the B Posts. She's beginning to look like a car now!

Underneath the arches

2009-05-15T21:36:00.003+01:00

Things are now moving fast, mainly due to myself putting in an enormous amount of work. And I need to. Summer is screaming out of nowhere like a Helldiver trying to blow a Japanese battle cruiser out of the water, and Valleri is still not finished.

Repairs to the C-posts were necessary both sides, as the rear corner of the rear window frames had dissolved on both sides. This is a fairly complicated area, with several panels joining here, and complex curves and tricky to reach areas. But I have a strange love of looking at something, breaking it down into smaller parts and working out how it can be made. Which is exactly what was done, one side at a time using the other for reference, all rotten or thinned metal was removed, cardboard templates cut, altered, adjusted, then steel cut, beaten, folded, trimmed, and finally welded, to give C-posts made of metal rather than thin air, with metal in the correct place as per factory build.

With rear chassis rails now in the correct places, and a nice new boot floor to support the petrol tank, spare wheel and fuel pumps, it’s onwards to the rear wheel arches. But first, the rear chassis legs required more repairs which I could not do until the arches were removed. And there will be even more repairs when she’s on her side again for paint. By repairs to the rear chassis rails, I mean removing the bad bits and replacing them with new, so many areas have needed replacement that, despite seaming and using heavy gauge steel, I added some internal reinforcement to make up for any strength which had been lost after the repairs were carried

out. Even that wasn’t simple, I had to ensure there were no rust traps or areas which would hinder wax injection later.

Nice boot floor and rear chassis rails in the right place at the back. Good. The outer wheelarch has been removed, the inner wheelarch is about to be hacked off as well. I will replace them with full complete wheelarches both sides. The outer rear wing has been removed, everything left I shall refer to as the inner rear wing later on, Ok?

And as the rest of the wheelarch was cut away this was the state of the rear chassis legs on both sides. Nasty. They required new bump stop reinforcers, much replacement and fabrication of new sections, some internal reinforcement to increase strength and they were only considered done when all steel was clean and satisfactory. As an aside, note the penetration towards the rear from welding on the new boot floor, it appears I had the power exactly right to join to this thicker grade of steel.

Finally they were both in the correct shape to accept the new rear arches. As usual all the attachment areas and flanges were cleaned to the rustless spotless finish, I’ve been using Jenolite for quite a while now. A quick note about this.

Mark and Nigel swear by this stuff, but I don’t seem to get on very well with it. I presumed that being acid based, it would eat away the oxide, but even after applying it then wire brushing there are still areas of rust left in the pitted areas. Am I being stupid, is it only intended to stabilise the surface rather than actually remove the “dead” rust? The more expensive and not so nice to use Bilt Hamber Deox gel completely removes all traces of rust and gives a shiny clean steel surface, which is what I am after. However it then needs washing off with water, which I don’t like the idea of. I have still to find a completely ideal rust removal system. A big compressor and shot blasting set up will probably be used next time. However, several cycles of Jenolite and wire-brush-in-the-drill eventually clean the flanges, although this may well be due more to the wire brushing than the Jenolite. It tastes quite good too I must admit, but a bit sharp. Oh, that would be the phosphoric acid…

The sill end fillers were welded into place at the back. Then all contact areas were primed, and one side at a time the new wheel arches were welded on, plugged then seamed., to the rear chassis rails, the inner panels below the C posts, then to the sills at the back. Despite being very large and ungainly, they fitted in without further ado. Excellent.

The offside had been done, now the nearside has as well. Don't you just love all the fresh steel?

Meg's legs & Valli's lean

2009-04-13T23:33:00.005+01:00

The last major chunk of bodywork requiring attention was the rear end. All metal aft of the heelboard counts as the rear to me, and it was in a bit of a state. The logical thing to do was to replace the boot floor first, or so it seemed, so the spot welds holding it at the front and sides were drilled out and the bodged seam welds were ground away. And the boot floor was gone, leaving me a big space to work in preparing the areas where the new one would fit.

I thought I would try and ascertain the cause of “the lean”, the slight list to port of about ½ an inch which the car had always had. I was not really worried about it, I had learnt to live with it and it made little difference to the handling, the only time it became apparent was when lifting of hard when cornering, on left-handers the back would be out marginally quicker than on right-handers, but not by a great deal due to the rather tame MGB handling.

It seemed a shame not to try and sort it while I was taking things this far though, and while there was no obvious cause before, with the boot floor out and squatting in the back the problem suddenly became very apparent. The rear part of the rear chassis rails (a box section) forms the rear rear spring hanger. Read that through a couple of times. Like most of the car, and especially as it is a box section, it is a rust trap, and they often end up being replaced during the lifetime of the car. I knew for a fact that one side had been replaced, and the other had been repaired well, however the one which had been replaced was welded in the wrong position, and one rear chassis leg/spring hanger was either higher or lower than the other by about 7/16ths”, but I could not work out which side had been replaced, so I was unsure which spring hanger was in the correct position. The nearside hanger was 7/16ths higher than the offside, but for the life of me I could not work out if it was 7/16ths too high or if the other side was 7/16ths too low.

The boot floor has been removed, note that the small panel at the front has been cut away an dbent upwards, which is necessery when removing the floor. Shortly afterwards, when work started on the rear spring hangers, the axle stands were relocated to the foward rear spring mounts for obvious reasons.

No wonder I couldn't spot the problem before... what a complete mess it was in! Stong, yes, pretty, erm prehaps not.

And a bit of a motivational shot.. once the boot floor was out, there was a lovely view foward of my new floorpans, sills, footwell ends, upper and lower A posts, dash sides, bulkhead, windscreen frames and repaired transmission tunnel and centre console. The outline of the chassis rails, crossmember and front inner wings can be seen where the weld has penetrate through.

Thankfully help was at hand, in the form of Richard Craig who was a great dependable help as always and promptly sorted out the mess.

Meet Meg.

One delicious 1967 Overdrive MG BGT. With rear chassis rails in the same (correct) place on both sides, which I used to determine which of mine was incorrect and from then how far to alter it. I will never tire of staring at those rear lamp lenses!

Yes judging by Meg’s legs, and using the few vantage points on my car which had not bodged or corroded to the point that they were useless as references, I found that the nearside chassis rail was spot on 7/16ths inch too high, meaning the spring was mounted higher on the nearside which then leaned over compared to the offside. Brilliant, now I knew what was wrong so I set about fixing it. I cut the nearside chassis rail from the rear valance, then cut the boot floor extension from it, along with the much of the rear wheel arch. It was clear now where the replacement chassis rail had been fitted and the change of angle could be seen.

The very end of the nearside chassis rail had to be moved 7/16ths" downwards. Free from the boot floor and the reinforcing panel above it, it could be cut from the valance and boot floor extension in preperation for "adjusting". The reinforcing panel was subsequently furnished with a new bottom.

It was cut at the bottom and up the side (It was no longer a box section because the rear wheel arch, most of which I had removed, forms the 4th side of the box). It could then be bent into the correct position and tack welded into place, the alignment was checked, I fitted the rear spring to check the alignment around its axis had not been lost, and all was well so it was seam welded back up. Fantastic, both rear chassis rails were correctly aligned. Thank you Richard and Meg.
The new boot floor, stripped of paint and primed, was plug welded into position then thoroughly seamed. I also had to repair the lower sections of the reinforcing panels which run either side of the boot floor welded to the chassis rails.

And there you have it, still with some Heritage paint as I was running low on painstripper at the time. All seam welded, just awaiting that strange reinforcing panel at the front to be primed, bent back down and welded into position.

Steelcraftwerk

2009-04-12T23:03:00.004+01:00

Das Autopanel hacken mitt dem angelgrinderen und ein big hammer cos es ist zu big und zu Klein or das wrongbloodyshapen.

The inner wings were on, but there was a lot more to do before they were finished. The trumpets, (or wheel arch reinforcers) and the inner wing extension pieces were still to be fitted. The extension pieces are simple holed rectangular panels which fit between the inner wing and the bulkhead, (the bit next to the pedal box, well it is on the offside at least!).

First I decided to repair an area I had left until now, the bottom of the offside A post windscreen pillar and the scuttle and windscreen frame. The area around the screen frame, A post and dash side, was a complete mess and it took a couple of full days to basically fabricate a new chunk of car to the original design and shape. Then I cut out the outer area of the scuttle, all the way back to the windscreen frame along with a fair bit of the bottom corner of the windscreen frame, and much welding and panel beating as per the nearside had it pretty much done, ready to be lead loaded.

What an awful corroded mass of chaos. All the bad bits have been replaced with new steel, as you'd expect.

Then it was back to the inner wings, starting with the offside I welded in the inner wing extension piece to my new dash side, my new bulkhead and my new inner wing. Fortunately it fitted very well, so it was on to the reinforcer. I was not looking forward to this.
I tried my best to get hold of Heritage reinforcers, but no one would send me them and they just sent Steelcraft ones instead. I really did not want to use Steelcraft reinforcers, whereas heritage ones fit, Steelcraft ones do not. They are completely the wrong shape on so many different levels, evidently the work experience lad at Steelcraft designed them and failed to look at the inner wing they are designed to reinforce. Steelcraft ones had been previously fitted to Valleri, the bottom edge is the worst to make fit and whoever fitted them just gave up and patched them to the inner wing.

The nearside as it used to be. The bottom edge of the Steelcraft trumpet/wheelarch reinforcer is a smooth curve, it lacks the complex angles required to allow it to fit around the changing shape of the inner wing at this point. So it was just patched to the inner wing.

And the offside was just as awful too....

Once removed, yes suprise suprise, it was a Steelcraft product (Note the complete lack of any protective coating, it's hard to make out but the inside ot the panel is very rusty and it was far worse at the seams. This was done 3 years ago).

Hence why I was unhappy to use them. As with many of the Steelcraft panels, (not all, but many), even those which are intended to be replacement panels and not just repair sections, they are more of a basis from which to create your own panel. Hence the name Steelcraft I presume. But their wheel arch reinforcers are so utterly pathetic it would be far easier to fabricate your own from sheet rather than trying to adapt them. But I had spent money on them, far more than they are actually worth, so I did my best.

Ready for a new wheelarch reinforcer... Note the outside seam welding on the inner wing is yet to be done, this will be when she's back on the spit.

Just to give an idea of the amount of work involved in what should be a simple task: First of all the flanges at the back of the trumpet had to be trimmed down to size and then made the correct shape. Then the trumpet would fit into its correct position at the back, and I could gauge what would have to be done to make it fit. I cut along the fold then trimmed the vertical sheet down, so I could bend the top sheet down and give it a remote chance of being in the correct position. Then I had to temporarily fix the back and the top sheet into position, bend the bottom of the trumpet into a slightly better shape, and tack weld the vertical sheet to the top sheet again. Next it had to be removed from the car, and several long and strategically placed cuts made into the bottom sheet to allow it to be beaten and bent into a shape which would actually fit the inner wing. Back onto the car, shaping, temporarily fixed into position, the cuts tacked back together in different positions, off the car, seam welding and grinding to give it back some strength and then make it look a bit better. Whereas if it had been a panel of the right shape, I would have just welded it on. The nearside got the same treatment with the inner wheel arch extension piece then the trumpet once that was adapted as well. Phew, what a load of rubbish, but at least it is as strong as it should be.

This is what I made, from the Steelcraft panel. The original shape and outline of the Steelcraft panel is shown by the dotted line.

Ready for welding into place at last. The bottom seam will be done later, though. Note the Cleeco fasteners, they were dead useful here.

Just a note here on “Cleeco” fasteners, they are also referred to as skin pins. I bought some, and the pliers required for fitting and removal, and what a brilliant way of temporarily fitting panels together. For small things like this, they are much quicker to use than bolting the panels together, and require a smaller hole in both panels which can easily be welded up. They don’t have a great deal of clamping power and will not pull panels together like bolts will, but if the panels are a perfect fit they will hold them tightly and they are very effective. They were brilliant during the trumpet work, I had to fit and remove the trupmets many, many times while I “adjusted” them, and I could clamp more and more of the trumpet into place as I made more and more of it fit.

And there is the front, with the trumpets and extension pieces in place. Loverly!

The bonnet lock platform and its support were required at the front to finish it off. These two panels were reused as they were fine after rust removal and minor repairs. The support was welded to the underside of the bonnet lock platform to give it the correct height form the oil cooler tray, and it was clamped into place, then I refitted the bonnet again to check that the catch would fit in the hole. All was well so the support was welded to the oil cooler tray and the bonnet lock platform was welded to the inner wings. The amount of strength in the whole assembly is unbelievable, magnified by the seam welding which I am hoping will still give the body shell around 80% of its original cross lateral flexibility.

Absolutely delicious if I say so myself. And when you hit it, it goes "clong" most delightfully.

Compare it to what it used to look like.

One more job to do at the front was to fit the engine mounts. These are not fitted to new chassis rails, so I reused the ones of the old ones. Removing them while keeping them exactly the same shape was challenging and requires careful grinding but I got there in the end, and after a lot of cleaning up they were ready to be fitted. But where? Well before I cut the front end up, I had remembered to make an engine mount jig based on the original chassis rails and engine mounts. It was fortunate that I thought about that beforehand, otherwise I would not have a clue exactly how to position the mounts.

Marking out holes to be drilled, to precisely match the bolt holes in the engine mounts, on some scrap metal.

Pilot drilling, then drilling out to 1/2 inch. Then this section of the steel box section was cut from te rest, and cut in half, to give two plates with holes in precisely the same place on both.

The plates were bolted to the engine mounts before I cut all this lot off. The a piece of steel tube was welded between them, and i had myself a jig.

The mounts were bolted to the jig, placed on the chassis rails and tacked into position. While my Mig welder may have had just enough power to properly weld them in, I decided it will be better to borrow a bigger welder and get more heat in and make a good strong join, as the metal in the chassis rails and mounts is thick, and I can clearly recall the whole car rocking when the B-Series was mildly revved, there is a lot of weight and load on those mounts.

Cleaned up engine mounts bolted to the jig and positioned on the new chassis rails, ready for final welding.

When that happens in a couple of days time, that will be all the inner front end work done. Onto the rear then!

Inner wings and things

2009-04-12T00:56:00.005+01:00

Things have been moving quickly at last, due to a great deal of hard work. And of course I have little spare time for writing things like this, and if I am not careful I will start to forget what I have done. Not good.

So I had replaced the cross member and chassis rails, and I was feeling pretty good about the project as a whole. The sills were done, the fancy structural stuff was done, but I was still a long way off having a car which looked like a car. And the chassis rails were looking lonely and vulnerable at the front, so it was obviously time to finish the front end!

The new oil cooler tray was first. This tucked into place nicely, and I just drilled the holes for plug welding, primed the relevant parts of it and the inner ends of the chassis rails, clamped it into place and plug welded it. Then I seam welded it. This may or may not have been a good idea, as although the seam welding was done from the underneath (well from on side, as she was horizontal) of course the weld penetrated through to the top side, and even when ground flush it was pretty obvious and uneven. Still, the paint will cover most of it, and the oil cooler sits over a lot of it, and I doubt I will notice even if it does not end up completely smooth. I’d rather have a stronger seamed front end and peace of mind, to be honest.

Still spaced at the front by the spacer, the new oil cooler tray is clamped into place and plug welded.

Then seamed all round as usual.

Underneath the oil cooler tray is a supporting piece, which nestles between the chassis rails and helps to space them at the front. As soon as I fitted it, I could remove the last piece of bracing left over from fitting the chassis rails, then I could stand back and admire it all… however, nothing is that easy, and despite the support being a simple three-sided folded steel box of sorts, one side had been thinned by corrosion to the point which I cut it out and fabricated a replacement along with flanges, and new flanges to repair rusty ones elsewhere. It’s never as easy as it sounds, but once primed and welded into place it looked good and was stronger than before so I couldn’t complain.

The frotn end is starting to have some meat to it now! The oil cooler tray and support are in place. By this time I had run out of Electrox primer, so I was onto the red Bonda Rust. Just visible in this photo is the way I have applied it, close to the edges inside what is now a box section, with weld-through primer on the edges giving better protection. I will also paint the seams agian from outside as best i can, before injecting whatever i will inject to stop rust.

On to the inner wings! With the help of Nigel the GT was returned to the correct way up and put on ramps under the chassis legs at the front, and axle stands under the spit beam at the rear. (the spit beam was still bolted to the rear chassis rails all this time, it was a very handy grab rail when turning the car on the mattress). It was good to have her the right way up again, and I was a bit relieved she was off the mattress, which had caught fire a few too many times for my liking. Molten blobs of metal rolling down the floor pans during cross member and chassis rail welding had a habit of falling onto the mattress, burning through it, and setting fire to the inside. Of course I had a bucket of water, hose and fire extinguisher at the ready (to be used in that order) but flapping with welding gloves worked just as well. So there’s the safety bit, be prepared in case your mattress catches fire. Cough.

Of course I know a fair bit about being on fire by now.

The inner wings were the only ones Heritage do, the later rubber bumper sort with the additional dishing in them to give room for the V8. Good, the lads said, it will make it easier when you put a V8 in her. Well I am not going to, if I have a V8 it will be a factory original. If I ever made my own, it would be from a completely rotten late rubber bumper car and I would build it purely for racing. If I am ever ‘into’ racing.

I was mildly annoyed at not being able to get new proper inner wings. The originals had corroded along the tops, and had been bodged at least twice in the past. They were corroded in other areas, and although Steelcraft repair panels for large chunks of the inner wings are available, they had already had these fitted. All in all they were beyond repair, so I cut out the important areas, the dishing of the earlier sort, with a view to graft those sections into the new wings. I really couldn’t justify the time and effort at this stage, so I will store them carefully in case I feel the need in the future. I will get welding sickness shortly after she is done, I just know it.

Back on the floor... everything foward of the heelboard is pretty much sorted now in terms of rust, although there is a large chunk of the car still missing!

Yes, there should really be something here.

Again, the inner wings just slotted into place. I did the offside first, Drilling it for plug welding, priming it and the chassis rail, then I clamped it into position, drilled holes through it and the chassis rail for small bolts to hold the two closely together, then set about plug welding it into place, then I welded it to the dash side. Then it was seamed to the chassis rail inside the engine bay, I will do the outside when the car is on the spit again before painting as decent seam welds upwards are about as likely as me not eating this piece of Battenberg I have here. Had here.

The nearside inner wing was clamped into place. Then I got one of my bonnets (the main one I will use, rather than the spare) and tried it in place. This was very important, I had been advised to return the car to the level and check visually and check the measurements with the bonnet, as a friend had made a tiny error on his BGT which was magnified hugely once the bonnet was in place. Thankfully, all was well, so the nearside inner wing was welded into place, and hey ho all was good.

How about that? The front end was strong before with the new chassis rails, but the inner wings do add an incredible amount of strengh to the assembly, even without the bonnet lock platform or wheelarch reinforcers (trumpets). Which will appear next time!

Bravery, or stupidity?

2009-03-19T22:09:00.004Z

To anyone else, the chassis rails would have been fine left alone, they could have been repaired then they would have beene fit for a good 10 years more service before they got dangerous. But they were dented, holed, and fairly well rotten from the inside out, and holes in these vitally important structural structures was not what I wanted. I suppose I could have repaired them, in fact that is what I suggest most people do. But with the amount of thinning of the steel and rust cornflakes inside them persuaded me to replace them.

It is quite difficult, if you have never studied the structure of your body shell, to understand just how important the chassis rails are, as they carry most of the load from the front suspension, not to mention that the engine is mounted on them. I had to replace them, but it was not going to be easy as there was a very real risk of getting it slightly wrong and utterly wrecking the whole car, making the entire project so far a complete waste of time and money.

No pressure, then.

This sort of thing was heppening everywhere- corrosion from the inside out, and the outside in, severely weakening what are really quite complex and important steel structures.

I did some repairs to the worst area to give enough strength to allow me to use the spit earlier on in the restoration, but alreay alarm bells were ringing at the sight of this much rot.

The inner wings which are fixed to the chassis rails also carry a lot of load, and these had been removed at the back for the replacement of the footwell ends. So all that was holding the chassis rails to the rest of the body shell were the tack welds along the floor pans and footwell ends, as well as the oil cooler tray and the support underneath it, which spaces them at the front. So how the hell to replace them without getting it wrong? Their alignment is paramount to not only the handling but the entire safety of the car. Food for thought was the fact that when the car was built, and indeed even when new body shells are put together by Heritage, they are just placed in jigs then twatted with a big hammer until they fit in the correct place. And the front cross member, which carries the steering and suspension and attaches to the chassis legs, is mounted on rubber pads. It’s not as precise as it all seems.

But this is no excuse not to get things perfect. It all needs to line up correctly, and it all needs to be in exactly the correct position. It there was even the slightest problem along the way, I know I would feel bad even when the car is finished and back on the road, I would not want to drive something distorted and dangerous.

I could not find any literature relating to the replacement of chassis legs. The only reference I have ever seen is in an article from “Enjoying MG” from several years ago, when during a restoration a chassis rail was found to have been bent and it was replaced be a specialist. But surely this has been done before, after all Heritage do make replacement chassis legs, but I wonder how many they have ever sold??

The logical thing to do was to replace one at a time. That way, I could go by the position of one original leg to space the new one correctly, then the second new one could be spaced by the position of the first. So I made some jigs to allow me to do just that.

Meet the jigs!

The first is a copy of the front cross member. I was considering using the cross member, stripped bare and bolted to the chassis rails. However, it still weighs a fair bit even when stripped, and this might have interfered with things. The second problem was that the bolt holes are oversize, and the protruding parts of the cross member mounting pads/bushes fill in the gap so the bolt fits correctly. And even with my new polyurethane bushes, it still did not seem precise enough for this level of things.

In a freak turn of events, the frame of Nigel’s old treadmill came to the rescue, with a vast amount of steel box section of various sizes, all heavy gauge and ideal for what I was doing. So a substitute for the cross member was made, with two long lengths of steel box with holes accurately drilled for the cross member bolts at each end, which were bolted tightly into place on the chassis legs, then two short pieces of box section were welded across them to space them correctly. Full throttle on the welder, plenty of heat and I had a lovely jig. This was removed, then refitted, then removed, and refitted quite a few times, to check it fitted perfectly, and also that when it was bolted up tight it would not try and rotated a new unsecured chassis rail in any way. It did not, and it was a tight and precise fit into place with the bolts. Ideal!

This is exactly like the crossmember... but it is lighter, and more manageable.

And here it is in place on the old chassis rails. It really is a very precise jig, this.

That held the chassis rails in position in the cross member area. At the front, a length of box section was bolted to the holes in the very ends of the chassis legs, to keep them spaced correctly. This would also held keep things in shape when I was replacing the oil cooler tray.

At the back, where the chassis rails run parallel to each other underneath the floor pans, two spacers kept them spaced. These were made from steel tube, also from the old treadmill, with a 90 degree angle section welded to each end, cut from a piece of large box section. This would keep the legs the correct distance apart, and were a nice snug fit.

A couple of these held things together further back, Again, very precise, even if it does not look it! The second got cut up as soon as it was no longer required, and became something else. I can't remember what though, so it can't be important or worthy of note and is not relevent to this, why do i bother so arghhh I'm just going to bail out of this pointless sentenc

Once of the spacers in place, the other went further back closer to the new crossmember. Note the piece of steel tube welded in to the front of the transmission tunnel to keep it correctly spaced. Probably unnecessery but I'm taking no chances. And the other piece of steel tube ensures no movement of the old chassis rail.

At the rear, a couple of small clips made again from box section fitted over the cross member and located the chassis rails laterally at the back. As it turned out, these were unnecessary, but you can’t be too careful with anything!

And that was enough to correctly space the new chassis rail from the other. Lines were scribed onto the floor pan to show the position of the old chassis rails, as a visual alignment check. The rest of the body shell was certainly adequately braced, it was stable on the mattress, I had plenty of grinder discs in stock…. I had run out excuses. Off with a chassis rail. The top one first, which was the offside.

The tack welds which held it to the floor pan and footwell end were ground down, then it was cut away from the oil cooler tray at the front, and the spot welds which held it to the oil cooler tray were drilled out. A bit more careful grinding, and it was off. What a relief that there was still a great deal of strength in the other chassis rail, I was a bit worried about it keeping in position once the other was separated from it, but it couldn’t have been better.

Then the cross member jig was bolted to the remaining chassis rail, and the new one lifted into place. The bolts were slotted in, and the two spacers quickly slotted in further back. The front spacer was bolted on, and hey-ho, it fitted perfectly inside the scribed lines all the way down, and it was in exactly the right position. So it was quickly tacked into place, then every other plug-welding hole in the chassis leg was extended through the floor pan, so the two could be temporarily tightly bolted together while the surrounding area was seam welded. This of course was done a little at a time, to avoid heat distortion and burning of my nice zinc primer which had replaced the Heritage paint at either end of the box section (the central area of the chassis rail is box section, so I left the Heritage paint alone as there was no way I could effectively strip it then repaint it). The holes were then filled in with weld, to act like a plug weld. All was well, so the rear of the chassis rail was welded to the cross member, one down, one to go!

The bottom chassis rail (nearside) had the tack welds ground away, then it was unbolted from the cross member and front jig. It fell away with the oil cooler tray support (to be re-used) and the remains of the oil cooler tray (to join the big scrap pile). The new chassis rail was lifted into its place (after cleaning up of the remains of the tack welds and the floor pan had been painted with weld-through primer in that area, of course) and bolted to the other chassis rail via the jig. Of joy, it all lined up, and it was in the same place as the original chassis rails. So it got the same welding treatment, which has turned out to be incredibly strong, as required. And that was that. The chassis rails done. The cross member jig could be removed and replaced with the same precise fit that it had with the original chassis rails. The rear spacers could be fitted and replaced with the same snug fit as before. The front spacer was temporarily welded between the chassis legs, to hold things steady while I fitted the new oil cooler tray.

Hey hey HEY! Look at that! Two new chassis rails, without and movement or damage! It looks flimsy at the front at the moment, but it is not by any means.

I did all of this, apart from the transmission tunnel. And it's all kept in the correct shape. Woooo-Yeah! Lots of mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm groovy new steel!

What a relief, I had not ruined my little car, and I feel a great deal happier now those nasty old chassis legs have been replaced by clean fresh steel, which will be adequately protected inside and out. It just goes to show, with careful planning and a lot of care, most things are possible, even if people scoff at you when you order your new chassis rails. Surely that’s the most difficult part of the restoration over….?

Bed time!

2009-03-16T21:47:00.004Z

Time for the bits I had been really looking forward to. That’s right, some serious structural surgery, and now I had the sills and floors and footwells as solid (and actually a lot stronger) than they used to be, I turned my attention to the crossmember.
This runs beneath the floor pans, and is welded to them, the transmission tunnel and the castle rails on each side. Jacking points are usually fitted to the cross member, but Valleri did not have them when I bought her and she won’t get new ones, they look bad, are a moisture trap, and the original jack is lethal and ineffective at the best of times.

The Chassis rails also needed replacing, but I wanted the cross member done first to give plenty of strength to the shell before I removed anything else. Also, the chassis rails are welded to the cross member at their rear ends, so I needed the new cross member in place (and in exactly the right place) to aid with the correct location of the new chassis rails/legs/side members (whatever you want to call them!).

I have a rather lovely spit for attaching the car to, which is brilliant for most work on the undersides. However, seeing as the next area of work was the cross member and chassis rails, and the spit attached to the front ends of the chassis rails… erm.. Houston….
Fortunately Rod of the “Oooooh I’ve got chrome ROStyles” fame had a mattress handy, and it was decided that the car would be laid on its side on this, similar to what Nigel has done with his car. The tendency for the car to wobble around makes some things very difficult, I am very glad I have the spit rather than having to use a mattress all the time. With Nigel’s help, we rolled the car off the stands onto the matress, as simple as that, with the roof leaning against the floor/cupboards and the whole thing fairly stable. The mattress prevents damage to the nearside panels, it’s not a bad way of doing things really as long as care is taken not to wobble the thing too much!

There she is on the mattress. Not quite as precarious as she looks, and oh dear the Lister's float chamber looks a bit scruffy.

There we have the old crossmember and chassis rails, note how they have been patched together. The new floorpans look delicious I must say, lots of nice new metal to weld more new metal too!

Before cutting anything out, thought must be given to the residual strength of the surrounding area. So this bar was welded in to keep the transmission tunnel the right shape and size....

And this one was welded next to it to keep the chassis rails in place, seeing as they were only tacked to the floorpan at this stage. Look at that nice new heelboard extension....!

Unfortunately, the chassis leg/cross member area had obviously rusted away in the past and had been patched. Therefore I could not tell exactly where the rear of the chassis legs were, which was going to make things a bit trickier when positioning the new cross member. Still, I took some measurements and scribed some lines into the floor pans and Newcastle rails and seat about lopping off the old cross member.

Nasty awful yucky welding, whcih looks to have been doen with an Arc welder from underneath by a frightened guillemot. This is better gone!

The flat plate which seals off the top of the cross member while it travels under the gearbox tunnel had seen better days, so I quickly made up a new one seeing as it was very simple and not worth not doing.
Then I decided to do a slight modification to stop the new cross member becoming a rust trap and corroding again. There are two holes in the cross member which allow the wiring loom to pass through it, along with mud, water and all sorts judging by what was inside the old cross member. So I sealed it off by rolling a piece of steel into a cylindrical shape, trimming it to size and welding it in then welding a seam to make it waterproof. So the crossmember now has a tunnel instead of holes, which should reduce water ingress. I’m not too fond on completely sealed box sections though, and the floor pan will be drilled in several places to allow injection of some sort of anti corrosion substance, and whether the holes will be plugged with plastic plugs or left open to allow it to breath is yet to be decided.

A bad photo admittedly, but you can see where there is a tube for the wiring loom instead of just a big hole in each side of the crossmember.

Afterwards I did the usual paint stripping of the new one, drilling the holes for plug welding, weld-through then zinc priming, after which it could be offered up to the body. I had it in precise vertical alignment due to the spacing between the castle rails, it fitted in perfectly. But fore and aft alignment was harder, as when I cut the old cross member off all I was left with were dodgy patches. I decided to go by the rearmost gearbox cross member hole, and space the cross member the correct distance back from that, which would be as precise as any other method. I measured the distance between the rear gearbox cross member hole and the rear chassis leg on one of the new chassis legs which was waiting to be fitted, and used this to space the cross member the correct distance back from the remains of the chassis legs still in position on the car. All was square and lined up properly, the new cross member also fitted into the lines I had scribed on the floor pans around the outline of the old cross member before I removed it.

With the corssmember gone, everything was taken back to shiny metal and the flat plate (bridging the transmission tunnel) was replaced, then it was all weld-through primed.

The crossmember got the usual two-tone treatment.

Then it was welded into place, a small area at a time in a completely different place each time to minimise heat buildup and burning off of the nice new primer. As usual it was plug then seam welded, and to ensure a perfect fit to the floor pans, every other plug weld hole was drilled all the way through and a small bolt were used to hold the floor and cross member tightly together while the surrounding area was welded, once it had cooled the bolt was removed and the hole was welded up, like a normal plug weld. This was very successful, and I will use the same technique when fitting the new chassis rails.

Yay! Shiny or what!

And there I had a new cross member. Well that was very promising, so the next thing to do is replacing the chassis rails. Death or Glory awaits!

2009-03-11T20:58:00.003Z

Just in case you think I’ve been slacking, well I have. In updating this, not in terms of metalwork malarkey. And as last time it was very long winded and complicated, just like the real thing, this time it will be more condensed with just the interesting bits noted. Not that it has been any less complicated though….!

I started cutting the floor out, which was in a complete mess. It was a replacement floor pan on this side, however it had been seam welded to the original cross member and chassis leg from underneath, and it was awful. So was the patching between the floor pan and the original inner step sill, it had been plated over in a bizarre way, resulting in many thicknesses of metal. All of which were rusting, as will any metal surfaces in contact with another with no protection from corrosion.

Erm.. Ok then. This is the offside spring hanger, not the complete lack of heelboard extension piecse and lots of nasty little patches instead. And I have no idea what was going on in front of the spring hanger, with 5 thicknesses of metal where there should just be one, the floorpan...!

What a stupid amount of metal. The finger gives scale (it's a very long finger admittedly) but you can see just how much patching remnants had to be removed, a lot of work in total!

No random hand this time, but there's my foot, look. The last time the floor was replaced, they followed the advice shown in the Haynes restoration manual and just cut out a fair bit of the floorpan and welded the new one over the top of the rest. Resulting in double thicknesses, you can see the way it has been patched to the heelboard....

And suprise suprise, underneath the patches it was rusting badly!

And The A Post needed a bit of work, the bottom two inches diddn't exist.

The rear chassis rail ready for the inner step sill, which is an open C-Section at this point. It's mildly perforated, from drilling out the holes from the old spot welds, and the holes will be used for plug welding. the bottom flat part (without the holes) had to be fabricated from scratch, due to much rot.

I described last time how I hacked the sill out, I did this after the floor but included it in the last post. And with the rear chassis leg and A post/dash side all ready, I fitted the new inner step sill, including temporarily tacking it to the cross member which was due for replacement.

The new inner step sill clamped into place for welding. Note how it fits snugly inside the rear chassis leg. At the front, it is welded to the dash side, but only after the inner and outer sill have been attatched, these go between the step sill and dash side (inside the dash side, not on the outside as per Haynes). Note also the A Post has been repaired, and has been plug then seam welded to the dash side, the welds are yet to be cleaned up and ground down.

Then the Newcasle rail was lined up, clamped into position, tacked into place and the seam weld between it and the step sill was done a short length at a time to avoid heat distortion. Next I welded in the triangular plates as jacking point reinforcesr, not that I would be fitting jacking points but incase I even needed to jack one side up using the cross member. All this was given the usual coats of zinc primer and weld-through primer.

Newcastle rail in place, and primed. The door is in place, for checking alignment. The garage floor is unusually tidy. Fantastic.

Then the inner sill was drilled and plug welded into place, the welds ground down and painted again ready for the outer sill. The outer sill proved to be a bit tricier than the other side. Throughout the process I had the door on and off many times, checking everything was still in alignment.

The inside of the inner sill primed in the usual 2-tone scheme! All of the many holes drilled for plug welding, then the lips created by drilling have been ground away.

The inner sill is in place and the welds have been ground back. Then the outside of the inner sill has been painted, and the inside of the outer sill. Do you see now where all that paint went?

When I lined up the outer sill with the door, and the rest of the sill panels, all seemed well, until I welded it into place and could not get the lower rear edge into place. It seemed to have been badly bent during transit, but I could not correct it and after an hour or two of trying to panel beat it into shape, I eventually gave it up, cut it off and bought another. This fitted perfectly. Wooo! At this point I must mention that about 4lbs of high zinc primer disappeared into the sills! That should be enough protection for starters, it will be added to later by oil or wax injection. The combination of the two types of primer has worked very well, looking into the sills from the rear (The sill end fillers have yet to go in, these will be added when the rear wheel arches are done) very little of the paint has burned off, meaning I have most of 4lbs of zinc paint inside the sills. What a great feeling!
The heelboard extension went easily into place, now I know the trick of how to fit it, but cutting it, altering the shape, then welding it up. It was welded into place at full whack, banging a lot of heat into it and the spring hanger to make a good strong join. It was then neatened up with the grinder, ready for the new floor.

All ready for the floor... look and that nice new sill, loverly new heelboard and lots of weld through primer.

The floor pan, which I accidentally binned and saved at the last minute from ending up at the dump, clonked nicely into place. I tacked it then seamed all the way around, I will also seam it from underneath at the outer edge of the flange for optimum strength and minimum water ingress. All welding from the underside, however, will be done with the car on its side, as welding upwards does not seem to do much for weld quality.

New sills... New floors.... time to take it to the next level! just visible is the third cylinder of Argoshield light, and the heater. Which is sitting on top of the Lister, because it like it there.

And there… hang on…. That was it done! Blimey, a lot quicker than the other side!

One Door Opens, Another Shuts Behind....

2009-03-08T22:59:00.003Z

The offside dash side (The outer footwell side) was the next new panel to go in. However, seeing as this is welded to the A Post, amongst other things, the A Post had to be in exactly the right place, and it wasn’t…..
New sills had been fitted to the car some time ago, along with a new lower rear wing panel on the offside. However, this, like all of the other work, had been done badly, so not only was it rusting at the seams, it was in the wrong place. The door gap must have been a lot less at the lower rear edge, and there was no adjustment left on the hinges, and it seems that the whole A post had been bent slightly out of shape whilst the sills were being replaced, to try and gain more adjustment and get the door gap a bit better. Of course, at the front, the gap was wider at the lower edge, cheating doesn’t work! And add to that the fact that the outer sill was too far forward, and too far out, the front wing was too far forward and too far out, giving a huge door gap at the front and a wing which got nudged by the door whenever it was opened. All in all, a complete mess.
This is the sort of thing you have to cope with when working on a car which someone has had a go at before. More often than not it will have been done badly, and there will be a great deal of work involved in putting right what has been done before, let alone sorting out rust, hence the need for so many new panels to replace the ones which have not only rusted, but have been hacked about several times before making them beyond repair. It would be much easier working on an original, unrestored car, which may well be in an advanced state of decay but at least everything should still be in alignment, in the correct place, held together in the correct manner, and of the correct sort. Sometimes the hardest part is working out what bits of the body shell looked like originally, and what has actually been done to it in the past to make it the mess it is now, let alone working out how to go about sorting it.
But then, and major restoration is an enormous amount of work. In comparison, it’s not a great deal more effort to rebuild a badly restored, bodged, crashed or seriously rotten car than any other, and you’ll be saving a car which may well otherwise end up scrapped or as little pieces on the ebay thing in a few years time.
Besides, the one I love is a bodged mess, but a beautiful bodged mess, which will be even more beautiful when she is no longer a bodged mess. There we go, I think I’ve justified it in my head at least…!
I removed the remains of the rear wing replacement so I could see the correct line of the B Post. If you consult the photo, you can see how the door had been altered to fit in with an incorrectly shaped rear wing, so now the door was incorrect for the B Post and therefore the new rear wing.

The door had been twisted clockwise by moving the bottom of the A post further back, to close up the gap at the lower rear of the door where the lower rear wing half had been welded on too far back. Does that make sense? Oh, and the front wing was too far foward, due to the outer sill being too far foward, hance the huge gap (filled in) between the rear wing and outer sill, and the even huger gap between the door and frotn wing. Add to that the fact that the outer sill was too far outwards at the front, due to the membrane and the outer sill being welded to the outside of the dash side (as per Haynes MGB resto manual, which is not really very good) instead of being inside the dashside. Which makes the door skin to front wing clearance virtually nil. And that all makes a fairly complicated mess.

The outer sill and dash side were cut away, and the A Post moved back into the correct position, which was very convenient. It was quickly locked into place with a diagonal piece of square steel tubing, then the front wing fitted and the door compared to everything. It all lined up perfectly, although the front wing was still too far forward because of the dodgy outer sill.
Then I removed the complete sill. It’s easy enough to day that, but not so easy to do. It’s hot, painful and tiring work, hacking out such a vast amount of heavy gauge steel, and welds consisting of many seams piled one on top of another until they are about half an inch square. Even when the sill is gone, removing the last bits from the rear chassis leg takes another full days work. Replacing sills is fun, removing the old one is not.
The rear chassis leg had corroded where it met the sill, and a fairly large section had to be replaced to take care of all rotten and thinned metal. Banging plenty of heat into the welds and using the correct heavy gauge steel makes for a sound rear chassis leg, there is no point in replacing the sill if the points where it attaches to the body shell are severely weakened!
The step sill is fixed to the rear chassis leg at the rear, the cross member in the centre and the dash side along the front, so the dash side had to be fitted. The awful Heritage paint/powder coat?? was removed, all the holes for plug welding were drilled in the correct places, the panel was checked in case any distortion had occurred and then the edges of the holes for plug welds were ground flush, otherwise it would not fit flush with the neighbouring panel. Pieces had to be cut to allow from it to allow it to be fitted around the stiffening bar which runs between the A posts, once it is in place the small pieces can be welded on the other side. The flanges on the A post were cleaned of rust, repaired, all traces of the old dash side were removed and the A post was cleaned up inside and given a good coat of rust converter. Only then could it be tried in place, thankfully it fitted perfectly, ready for a couple of coats of weld-through primer anywhere it would meet other metal, and the other areas of metal it would meet were primed too. Without further ado it was plugged into place and seamed throughout.
Blimey, what an awful, wordy, complicated piece of writing. I think it captures the spirit of that particular job!

Same again!

2009-02-19T22:54:00.004Z

Well the nearside bulkhead, footwell, floor and sill was done, so it was the turn of the offside. And all the same again, however things were easier having done it all before…
I had a door to work around, which was the starting point. I put it back into place, and fitted the wing, and examined the door gap. It was awful. As it always has been. The nearside door had always seemed too far back with no adjustment left, so there was a big gap between the door and front wing. Looking at things closely, it seemed that the lower rear wing half replacement panel had been welded on too far forward the last time she was rebuilt, and the outer sill had been welded on in the wrong place so the door did not fit properly in the gap. The outer sill was also too far forward, which meant when the front wing was bolted on it was also forward hence the big gap. The A post seems to be twisted very slightly, no doubt from when the sills were done the last time.
So there would need to be a bit of adjustment later, but I set too and welded in a piece of hefty steel tube between the A post and B post, as per the other side, to brace things in shape while I started cutting panels out. (The braces will be left in place, even once both sills are done, to keep the shape correct when I am doing the chassis legs and cross member and front inner wings).
The footwell end was cut out, along with parts of the bulkhead.

Now you see it...

Any moment now.....

Excellent!

The new footwell end was primed at the flanges, and welded into place. That was the first bit done, and it was very easy which was reassuring. Then it was bulkhead time again.

Done! Simple as that!

And time to remove a section of the dash side so bulkhead work can commence!

The nearside bulkhead needed a lot of work, and I grafted in the outer third from another car, and with some fabrication work it all went in nicely. However, the offside needed a lot more work, and seeing as this is where the pedal box is mounted, it needed to be really strong and I was taking no chances.
As with most MGBs, Valleri had corroded around the pedal box where leaking and spilled brake fluid had taken the paint off, and then the metal had rusted. Due to its double skinned design, the water getting in between both of the upright pieces (from the fresh air intake) also rots that area from inside, and the pressed steel plate which the steering column passes close to is a rust trap, and that area needed attention too.
I decided to treat the two sections differently. First, the upright sheets, which create the box section behind the dash. Then the flat sheet which the pedal box mounts to. The upright sheets would be repaired, while I would make a new panel for the pedal box to attach to.
I removed the steering column avoidance plate by drilling out the spot welds, then cut out all of the horizontal panel, including a patch repair it had had in the past, leaving the front and rear upright sheets. Despite missing most of the bulkhead and dash side, there is still a lot of strength in the assembly, thanks to the scuttle. The rear upright needed the section along the bottom replacing, so it was cut out and a new piece made up and seamed into place. It had to be shaped so the steering column avoidance plate could be fitted against it. Look at the photos, it’s impossible to describe! Due to the nature of the bulkhead, repairing the front upright would be easier after the horizontal panel was in place, otherwise it might end up a little to high or low for them to meet up easily.

The "Steering column avoidance piece" as I call it. Note how much of a rust and twig trap it is! A couple of dustpan fulls of rotting foliage were removed from the double skinned bulkhead this end, which when damp retains moisture and rots the metal. Note also, where there has been a double thickness of metal, it has corroded. Never mind, it will be cut out and replaced...

And here is that area in context. Note the lovely shiny new footwell end in place, and a bar welded to the A Post to keep everything in shape. Here, I have cut away the lower edge of the rear upright sheet, ready to weld a new strip along the bottom.

And there it is, the new piece welded in place. it's the bottom half inch or so along the right hand side, and about a half inch around where the steering column plate goes, completely replacing the rusty sections.

Ahh, snow. This is the first lot, there was MUCH more to come. I kept on working though....

THIS made a tremendous difference to the project. Fed up with freezing in the garage and having metal almost sticking to me, I bought this paraffin-fueled Bialaddin bowl fire. It is amazing. I can have the main and back garage door open, to give a draught to carry away fumes/grinding dust, yet have this close by keeping me toasty. I got it a few weeks before the snow, and it has been absolutely brilliant. And you can make "garage toast" with it. Just look at it... you can almost feel the warmth its beaming at you!

The horizontal plate, I had decided, would be replaced by a new one fabricated by myself. I measured up the old one before cutting it out, and made some accurate drawings. Then I made a cardboard version, to check it would still fit properly after the work to the uprights. It did, so I set to fabricating a new panel.

The horizontal panel has been cut out, ready to fit the new one.

Nigel, bless im, gave me a sheet of steel of ideal thickness, very slightly thicker than the original. I marked it up and cut it out, which took most of a morning because it is an awkward shape. Then I drilled all the holes for the master cylinder frame and cover. I cut the square hole for the pedals to move through, and folded the edges down as per the original.

The new horizontal bulkhead panel in progress! Very precise stuff

Getting ready to fit the new horizontal panel, the reinforcer which fits below the horizontal panel has been bolted temporarily into place, to bring the foowell end into exactly the right place, confirmed by a lot of measuring.

When it was looking good, I tried it in place, then tacked it, followed by plug welds along the front then seam welds throughout. I replaced the lower edge of the front upright sheet, and welded it all. For the curved and flanged hole at the outer edge, I used a section from my spare bulkhead as it would have taken hours to form a piece of the correct shape. I also replaced the steering column avoidance plate with the one from my spare bulkhead, as it had not thinned out worryingly with rust like the original one. This was primed and welded into place, but I will finish off the welding when the car is on its side again as the welder doesn’t like welding upwards.
The strengthener was welded to the underside of the horizontal plate, and the whole assembly was now very strong indeed. I bought some nuts form Namrick and welded them in place to the underside, as captive nuts, for the pedal box, and this bolts on perfectly. I also welded on some captive nuts for the accelerator cable pedestal. All in all, apart from some minor tidying up and some more holes needing drilling for various things, it is as good as new and stronger than new, as well.

And there it is! Ohhhhhh yeah!

Led your Zeppelin (Or any other dirigible for that matter, or even your car!)

2009-02-13T22:08:00.003Z

A fairly long winded explanation of Lead Loading!

I don’t want to use any filler on the GT if I can help it. Filler is for chavs, so they can hides the corrosion on their m*dern cars, and blend their rear spoilers on their front wheel drive cars. Filler is plastic, plastic is rubbish. I hate it. End of the story.
Filler is porus, all that is required is a hairline crack in the paint covering it, and water will be absorbed and held against the steel, and it will rust. Especially when it is used on seams, which are rarely completely water tight at the microscopic level. This sort of defeats the object of rebuilding the car. So I am going to avoid the use of filler altogether if I can help it, it was not used originally, so why should I need it?

I wanted to try lead loading ever since I read about it in the Haynes bodywork manual, on a beach in Cornwall shortly after buying Valleri. Speaking to people about it, it seemed to be an art which takes much practice and time to acquire, far superior to using filler, the proper, old fashioned way. I like this craftsmany stuff, and I had to try it!
Basically it involves melting lead, or a modern alloy with similar properties, onto steel panels. This can then be filed to shape easily as it is soft, and as lead is very uncreative, it will not corrode, and it will protect the surface of the steel beneath it. It is ideal. If you recall, I had repaired the scuttle, around the windscreen frame and where the front wing bolts on. It was the correct shape, but not completely even due to the grinding marks left from tidying up the welds. Time to lead load it, and being an idiot I presumed I could do it without practicing, besides I can’t afford enough material to waste practicing!

It’s quite simple, but difficult to describe. First you need a heat source. A modern gas torch will provide too fierce and precise a flame, which will burn rather than heat. The weapon of choice is a decent paraffin pressure blowlamp, I use a Primus No.630 which is a lovely quality bit of kit from the 1930s. Of course with any case of heat and metal, distortion will occur if too much heat goes in to large flat panels, so the first task it to “mask” off the area around that which is being leaded, by putting wet cloths anywhere which could be distorted. These will act as a heatsink, but even so the less time, and therefore less heat the process takes, the better.

Yours truly demonstrates the tools- a decent blowlamp, and a HUGE file! (Photo- sister)

The steel surface has to be really clean. Any discrepancies will mean the flux does not take, and the lead will not stick, so a good go with a wire brush in the drill is necessary. Then solder paint can be applied to the area. This is flux, with tiny grains of powdered lead in suspension. It must be stirred up thoroughly, as the lead immediately sinks to the bottom of the container. It is applied to an area slightly larger than that needing to be leaded, the acidic flux cleans the metal while the suspended lead tins the surface.

The blowlamp can be played over the solder paint, keeping it moving and bringing the temperature up evenly until the lead melts and the solder paint turns from grey to bright silver. Then it can be allowed to cool, and cleaned thoroughly with a damp rag to remove any excess flux and impurities which inevitably happen. The surface now has a very thin layer of lead over it, (it is “tinned”) so further lead can be melted into it to build up the required amount.
Vintage blowlamps do not really have a flame control as such, and are used full throttle, varying the distance between the lamp and panels to control the temperature. The stick of lead can be heated to the point where it is starting to soften, then the flame is brought onto the tinned panel at the right distance to start heating it up, while the solder stick is kept just below the molten temperature. When the thin layer of lead on the panel is melting, the solder stick is brought fully into the flame, and some blobs of solder are melted onto the panel. When enough is deposited, rough shaping can begin. I use a flat length of stainless steel to shape the lead, because I can’t afford a wooden paddle and the tallow required to stop it burning. This is the hardest part of the whole operation, getting the lead in the vague shape that is needed. Too much heat and it will melt and run, not enough and it is not possible to move. It’s something I can do, but not really describe.

Once the lead is near to the correct shape, it should be left. It is easy to try and get it just a bit better, then ruin it and have to start again. Once it has cooled, it is important to wipe off any excess flux, which is acidic and will rust metal quickly. Then shaping can begin, first with a coarse body file (8 teeth per inch or similar) and then with emery cloth of increasingly fine grades. Shavings form the body file, and any blobs of lead which run off, can be remelted and used again. I use a ladle and a Primus stove, to make ingots of lead for reuse as it’s expensive stuff. And there you have it- lead loading. It’s great fun. I enjoy it even more than welding, and that’s saying something.

Flawless, just like new!

Oooooooooooh yeah! I love lead!

Floor it, and Door it!

2009-02-12T22:25:00.005Z

It’s ages since I’ve written anything here. Not because I haven’t done anything, I’ve been hoofing through the hacking at a promising pace. It’s just I’ve been doing lots of things which have not been totally completed, and I don’t like to put them down here as done, when they’re not.

If you remember, I was working on the nearside spring hanger. The hanger itself was sound, because it had recently been replaced, the floor pan however had not and it was just bodged to the spring hanger with a lot plating and untidy weld. It confused me at first, however studying Nige’s GT showed that on both sides I was missing the heelboard extension plate, which goes over the spring but under the floor pan. Not good. I don’t like missing panels in my GT.
It was probably perfectly sound as it was, but before I put the new floor in it seemed silly not fitting a new extension plate. It’s a pressed triangular shaped panel, which spreads the load from the front rear spring hanger into the floor pan, heelboard and step sill/rear chassis leg. The MGB Hive very rapidly sent the two new heelboard extensions, the one I don’t need for a while is piled up with the rest of the offside panels by the sofa.
The factory paint was removed, and the underside of the heelboard extension was painted in weld through primer, and holes drilled for plug welding. Being a Steelcraft panel, it didn’t quite fit properly, so it was “Adjusted” by a combination of delicate panel beating and socking it with a bigger hammer. Then it was welded in, full throttle on the welder getting plenty of heat in, to make some good strong welds. This is the suspension, and not worth taking risks with, I am glad I did it now instead of relying on dodgy patching.

Avast Ye! the heelboard extension piece is in place, over the spring hanger. After a great deal of work, actually! The floorpan sits on top, over the flat triangle part. Here be triple thickness of metal, so lots of weld through primer will go on, and seam sealer later!

Onto the floor pan! I had removed the old one, so all that needed doing was to clean up the flanges on the transmission tunnel and heelboard, and paint them, and the flange on the step sill, in weld through primer. As well as the edges of the floor pan, after the paint was removed and holed drilled for plug welding.
A note here on weld through primer- I am using this on all flanges, anywhere where there will be a double thickness of metal. I know it sounds obvious, but panels, and therefore cars, rot at their seams. You do not often find serious rust in the middle of the panel, you find it at the edges and panel joins. Where panels were originally joined together, they were spot welded at a double thickness. If you drill out the spot welds, and examine the seams, you will find they are rusty, as moisture gets into the gap between the panels and rusts them, and the spot weld holding them together. Very basic stuff I know, but there are still idiots out there who believe their car is perfectly safe and strong despite it never having had any new panels. Do some research into how your car rusts, look at many examples under restoration, go to an MG Breaker’s yard, examine some crashed MGBs. Not a pretty sight I know, but I’d rather have been in the ones with sills replaced in the last 10 years, than those with the original bodywork (and mangled footwells).
I am using “Etchweld” primer from Bilt-Hamber on the seams. Never one to believe the hype, I tried it out on a couple of sheets of metal, then plug welded them together, and drilled out the welds and examined the result. Of course, some of it in close proximity to the spot welds burnt off , however much remained, in fact more than enough to go to the effort of applying it in the first place. As long as it is allowed plenty of time to dry before welding, it will play an important part in protecting the seams, where the factory did not bother.
The floor pan, all prepared and ready, fitted in perfectly. It sat beautifully exactly where it should, so I spent an afternoon plug welding it into position, starting at the back and working into the footwell (Doing the easiest bit first!).

Plug welding all around the perimeter. I was kneeling in the footwell/floor most of the time, the wooden board was to spread my weight to avoid altering the perfect way in whaich the panel sat where it should!

Then I seam welded the floor all the way around, to stop water getting in (it will have seam sealer later on both sides, of course) and for added strength. This was the part which took the time, as with any large panel heat distortion (and burning off too much paint!) will occur if too much welding is done in one go. So about an inch and a half at a time, then letting it cool, while doing a weld at the other side of the panel takes a lot longer than you would ever imagine. Especially when you take into account plenty of breaks to let the shielding gas and fumes escape, welding in a confined space like a footwell is very dangerous and it would not do to be pushing up the daises at this stage, when there is still so much to do! I tacked the floor pan to the cross member and chassis rail, these will be replaced later so there is no point welding them on properly. That was the floor done!

There you go. The first seam completed between the floor and heelboard. It can be seen how the heelboard extension is sandwiched between the spring hanger and the floorpan, a perfect fit! Am I just lucky??

I was then ready to start tackling the offside. The first thing to repair was the door, as I needed a decent door of the correct shape to work around, so I could get the door gap correct, and measure things up before bracing the offside and starting to hack things out. The original door was slightly dented from when myself and Valleri collided with a Lister D-Type stationary engine (don’t ask, the door lock burst!)
The door frame was in good order, so I cut all around the door skin to release it. Door skins are like a large envelope flap, in that you fold the flap down along the sides and bottom to secure the skin to the door. The frame was reasonably solid, although the door bottom had some bathroom sealant in it, which I spotted even before buying the car. The door bottom needed replacing, and as I don’t have a sheet metal folder (oooh I fail at life) I had to buy a new door bottom for about £2.40 which made things easy. The bottom was nibbled and ground out of the door frame, and the new one welded in.

The door frame, denuded of the door skin, and after all that it has had the bottom cut out too. The corner nearest the camera ended up being replaced too, a lot of new door frame was fabricated from steel sheet.

The new door bottom has been tack welded into place, now it's going to be seam welded.

The rest of the door frame needed some minor repairs, although in the end because I am a pedantic fool I ended up replacing half the door frame, putting about four new repair pieces in, and replacing the internal brace which spreads the load from the quarter light post. Everything was seam welded as usual, you can’t tell that it has been repaired now.
Once again, examining the old door skin shows that despite it being a fairly recent replacement, it was rusting quite badly around the edges where there was a double and even triple thickness of metal, if you count the door frame, which was also rusting. So out with the “Etchweld” primer again, hopefully this will slow the process down, along with some wax or oil injection into the door later.
The door skin, along with all the other new panels I am fitting, had the rubbish factory paint taken off. It was painted in a couple of good coats of very high zinc primer, I did the inside of the door frame too while it was easy to get to. I used the very high zinc paint, because once again impact resistance and lack of brush marks are not especially desirable characteristics inside a door, whereas lots of zinc is!

The first coat is nearly dry! Etchweld primer on the flanges, high zinc primer everywhere else.

The rather battered workbench (actually mother’s freezer) was ideal for fitting the new door skin. First a sheet of MDF was laid over it, and the door skin placed, outside face down, on top. Then the frame was put into place, and the business of fitting the door skin ensued. The trick is to go all away around the door, folding over the flap a little at a time. Apparently it is very easy to distort the door skin if it is not taken slowly, and ripples in the door would make the whole exercise pointless. So armed with my favourite panel beating hammer, I went round and round the door skin, first getting the flap at 90 degrees to the door frame, then starting to fold it inwards and close the flap to secure the door. Slowly, slowly!

The freezer, with a board over the top to keep things smooth, is then covered with cardboard initially. The flaps are slowly bent inwards evenly, all the way around.

A long time later, we're getting somewhere....

Half way there! Oops, I forgot to get a photo of the completed door!

The most important thing is do keep changing the angle of the door, so that the part of the door which is being hit is supported at the back, to door must be tilted so the area you are hammering is in contact with the board. Brilliantly, it worked, and it fitted perfectly with no distortion whatsoever. Fantastic. Just to make sure, I put a few tack welds here and there to secure the skin, and welded up the quarter light mounting area at the top. I have yet to drill the drainage holes in the bottom (Very important!) and the holes for the seal retainer at the top, but even so, I have an as-new door! It looks just like a Heritage one costing £300, and is just as sound. Yip-yay!

Compound curves, and a spring hanger!

2009-01-13T21:25:00.004Z

The nearside sill was, then, completed. Apart from the final seam weld I want to add underneath, for a bit more strength, but I will wait until she is back on her side before I do that.
The next nasty area staring me in the face was the scuttle, mainly the area around where it joins the dash side. The same area the front wing bolts on to, where many MGBs have rust starting to show. Sure enough, I had plenty of rust holes and thinned metal to sort out. So for my usual tactics- cut it all out, and replace it! The cardboard templates and hand nibbler were used again, and I cut back to sound metal then replaced with new panels.

Oh dear, it looks awfully complicated. Curvey in all different directions.....

Nibbler to the rescue! Cutting out a piece at a time, going back to good metal, taking out a chunk which can be replaced be a repair section fabricated from steel sheet.

Cardboard templates are perfect for working out what shape to make the repair sections. fill the gaps with cardboard, tape it together, unfold it flat, and make the same shape from steel. Easy!

The most difficult bit was going to be further back, around the bottom of the A-Pillar and screen frame, where there are beautiful compound curves with the straight lines of the car flowing into the windscreen pillar. And they had to be replaced, along with part of the screen frame.

That is a big hole to fill in. I was worried at this point I would never get it all back together, it is so daunting. Would it ever be the right shape? Note I am alse repairing a section of the windscreen frame, note also some repair pieces which have just been weld-through primed ready for use.

I was never going to be able to repair the whole area from one piece of steel, so instead I made several sections and with a fair bit of panel beating, I got them the right shape and they fitted in perfectly. It is impossible to describe the process of making a flat, oddly-shaped piece of steel into an awkward curved shape, which is smooth, and of the correct radius and shape, using only a hammer and dolley.

Wow, I think I might actually be able to manage it! It's difficult to describe how complicated this process is!

Somehow, I managed it. The pieces were put into place and seam welded together. And when ground back, there was the perfect shape of the scuttle. It just somehow worked. Well Hurrah, and Huzzah. The surface is a little rough from grinding, but I will cover it in a thin layer of lead, to protect this vulnerable area from corrosion as much as to get the correct smooth finish. I’m itching to try my hand at lead-loading, I have the lead, the flux, I’m just waiting for my blowlamp to turn up.

...And breathe!!! YAY, it worked! It's as solid as when it was built, and it looks and feels good even without any lead yet. I was told I would never manage this, and I should just use flat pieces of steel and build up the surves with filler. Screw that! It worked!

And the front wing fits perfectly, too! Oooooh yeah! Joy!

I then turned my attention to the rear spring hanger, in anticipation of the new floor pan waiting to go in place. On top of the spring hanger, there should be the heelboard extension plate, which the floor pan sits on top of. The extension plate spreads the load from the spring hanger into the floor pan, heelboard and rear chassis leg and step sill.
Valleri didn’t have them on either side. Bleeeeeegh. Previous repairmen, when replacing the spring hangers and floor pans, had omitted them, instead bodging something up out of lots of small steel plates, which was sound enough but not to my liking. So my new heelboard extension plates rapidly turned up through the medium of the courier, and I started cutting out the patches and trial fitting the new plate.

After a lot of grinding and welding, it test fitted perfectly, so I repaired a section of rusted flange which was necessary to attach the floor pan too, cleaned the steel up to shinyness, and gave the top of the spring hanger, and the underside of the heelboard extension plate a good couple of coats of weld-through primer. Ready for welding in place tomorrow, hopefully followed by the floor pan as well.

Noooo, I can't find my "before" photo at the moment! But here it is, repaired and ready for the new heelboard extension to be fitted, followed by the new floorpan!

Being silly

2008-12-21T23:20:00.004Z

Time for a new sill! Sill replacement is the thing which scares most people. This was to be my first sill, and I was making things hard for myself. I was replacing the floor-to-door step sill, which most people leave well alone. Not only that, I had replaced the panels which the step sill attached to…. The opportunity for the whole thing to become distorted was huge. Fortunately, it was all locked into shape by the 1-inch steel tube, and securely held in the same position.
The rear chassis leg required a fair bit of work to allow the step sill to be fitted to it. It had corroded, and it had the remains of previous sills attached to it, so I decided to replace a fair bit of it from heavy gauge steel. Cardboard templates to the rescue, a full day’s work gave a chassis leg as good as new.
Thankfully, the step sill slotted into place perfectly. Nothing had moved, and no distortion had occurred. Good-oh. The door was in place throughout the sill job, so I could check the door gap remained the same, and that the door close with a click of exactly the same pitch each time. So I welded in the step sill, because all was well.

The step sill gets bare-metalled ready for welding in place.

Then the Newcasle rail. Good old Mark Evans. Once the paint was removed, it was clamped precisely into position, and checked with an engineers square. When it was at precisely the right angle, it was tacked into place. All was still well alignment-wise, so I seam welded it in place, an inch at a time, taking things very slowly and alternating the position of the welds to ensure the metal did not heat up too much. Eventually, the Newcasle rail was in place, with a lovely long seam weld which made a nice fierce crackling noise as it took place. Yay!

Lots of fitting and checking was done before the Newcasle rail was welded in place. Including these very accurate (no honestly!) spacers, to keep the Newcasle rail in alignment.

The seam weld is getting longer, piece by piece

Some structural strength going back into the car at last!

Then nothing happened for a week. The local roads flooded, cue being driven through three feet of flood water for half a mile by father in the Land Rover. Satisfaction is growling slowly (pre-turbo-diesel) past a stranded bmw Chelsea tractor, no we’re not getting out in 3 feet of water to give you a tow! (No tow rope!) Then the welder broke, and I had to wait several days for the Christmas post to deliver me the bits so my groovy welder of welderness could work again.
So I drilled all the holes in the inner membrane so it could be plug welded in place. Then I painted the inside side of it, and the castle rail and step sill, so the would be nicely protected inside. Most of each panel was covered in two decent coats of Bilt-Hamber insanely high zinc primer. I wanted to try this out, and the fact that it left brush marks was not important inside closed box sections! The anti-stonechip nature of this product is also an unknown quantity, but it will by fine in Valleri’s sills! The edges, where welding would take place, had a couple of coats of weld-through primer, which will resist burning off. I hope this plan will be a good one, time will tell!

Lots and lots of high zinc primer, with particular attention payed to welded seams and any joins. The primer goes on thinly, despite having so much zinc it's difficult to push the brush along!

Drilling out the holes for plug welding. A lot more holes than usual, but there's good reason for this. Why is there a soundproofing mat covering the mill? Well on such a boring job, I was listening to a Richard Thompson as usal, and the motor was drowning it out...

Weld through primer on the edge. The first coat of high zinc in the middle. When it's dry, it will be followed by another coat of weld through, then another of high zinc in the middle. I'm not cutting any corners here, this sill is built to last!

With the welder back in action, I plug welded the membrane in place. I did this very carefully, one weld in one place, one at the other end of the panel, then a wait for everything to cool down. This was 1. To avoid heat distortion, and 2. To stop too much heat getting into the panel and burning off my lovely paint. Patience paid off, peering through the castle rail drain holes with a torch and mirror shows the paint is intact, so my sills should last a fair few years! Then ground down all the plug welds, to leave a flush fitting panel ready for the outer sill.

Huzzah! The inner membrane has been plug welded in place, after an infuriating wait. And the welds have been ground back, rady for the outer sill.

The outside of the inner membrane and the inside of the outer sill got the same paint treatment. A lot of high zinc primer, then a lot of weld-through etch primer on the flanges, where and near welding will occur. I’m confident the sill will last, especially once it’s full of oil, or wax, or whatever will go in the cavities….! And the outer sill has been lined up with the door, and tacked in place, for welding tomorrow. And no distortion, no movement, everything is perfectly aligned!

The inside of the outer sill gets the same treatment, after the holes have been drilled...

Oh yes! Oh yes!!!

Bulkhead!

2008-12-21T22:33:00.004Z

With the A post repaired, the new footwell end in place, it was time to turn my attention to the bulkhead and dash side.
The bulkhead was in a state. To make sense of what I have done, I will refer to the bulkhead in three parts. The central chunk, and the outer third at each side. The centre of the bulkhead was in good order, but the outer third on both sides had rotted to not very much at all. Of course, I am only dealing with the nearside at the moment, so I had to do something about the nearside outer third. Does that make sense?

The outer Third of the bulkhead, looking rather sorry for itself. This had a plate fixed underneath, with gave it some strength, but it still wasn't really up to standard.....!

I’d bought a bulkhead section from a scrap car, this was the only saveable bit from the whole car. I contemplated replacing the entire bulkhead, but due to its sheer size, weight and complexity, this was decided against to avoid distortion. So I used parts of my spare bulkhead, mainly the complicated curves and intricate parts, to replace the worst areas. In the end, I cut out most of the outer third, and fabricated a repair chunk using some parts of the spare bulkhead. This was then welded in, and with the utmost of groovyness, it fitted perfectly and seamlessly due to some careful welding and grinding. It was a huge amount of work, but very worthwhile, as I will have a sound and solid bulkhead, and with adequate protection it should last a good long while.

This is just how much I fabricated. That's a lot of new metal, the curvy bits and holes were grafted in from my spare bulkhead.

......Giving this. Hello Vicar! Delicious shiny metal at last, and solid as a very solid rock which has just been hardness tested to 8.9 on Mohs' scale of hardness. You can see the joins.. .You can't feel them! Just wait until there's some primer on there. That's without any lead loading, too!

With the bulkhead done, I could turn my attention to the new dash side. This forms the left hand side of the footwell on the nearside. The problem here was the fact I couldn’t remove all of the original panel, as the two strengthening bars I had welded in were attached to the dash side. This did not cause a big problem, I just had to leave two small areas of the old panel in place, and cut corresponding pieces out of the new panel. I stripped the paint of it (Why do people buy Heritage panels, fit them and leave the inadequate Heritage paint on them? It’s only to protect the panels in storage and transit, and has the anti-rust capabilities of a small Norwegian hatstand. Trial-fitting it in place, it went straight in and was a perfect fit. Good, I hadn’t distorted anything!
Before welding it in place, I treated the inside of the A-post, as this was about to become a box section again. And we don’t like untreated box sections here! I used some Jenolite and some Bilt Hamber Deox gel to remove the surface rust, two products I have been recommended by various people, and was keen to try out. Both worked very well.
The areas I couldn’t reach were a problem. There will always be somewhere you can’t get a wire brush into, and that’s just the place that worries me. Those little somewheres that you can’t get to, which won’t be treated as well as everywhere else. That’s just the sort of thing I hate, and need to eliminate. The answer seems to be Rustbuster rust converter. This is not acidic, so you don’t have to remove it after use, perfect for the places you can’t properly get to. It does not remove the rust as such, but it encapsulates it and stops further damage. So it seems perfect for those hidden places which you can’t properly get to. All accessible places inside the A post got a decent coat of zinc primer.

The A-Post. Plenty of rust converter, and weld-through etch primer on the flanges.

So, happy that the A-post was not going to cause me trouble for a while, I prepared the new dash side for welding in. The areas where it would be welded to the A-post, bulkhead and footwell end were given a coat of weld through primer. So were the areas of the A-post, bulkhead and footwell end, where they would meet the dash side. It was then plug welded in place, using the holes created by drilling out the spot welds holding the old panel in place.

Welding in the new dash side. She's taking shape alright! And a perfect fit, to boot.

At this point, I decided I would seam weld everything as well. Well, not quite everything, discussions with people who utterly rag their BGTs on racetracks and such have been helping me in planning to create a stronger body shell without compromising flexibility. So many panel joins will be seam welded as well as plug welded in the original places, which should help to keep the water out.

Monocoquing around

2008-12-02T21:28:00.015Z

When I wrote this last, I was starting out on the structural work on the nearside. Before I did so, I welded up a couple of holes cut into the gearbox tunnel, which were reckoned to be for a gearbox conversion of some sort when the car was used for hillclimbing. Then I removed the console frame, and welded in one which hadn’t been hacked up as well.

Transmission tunnel, having been altered, possibly for a different gearbox.

And the same tunnel after some welding, panelbeating and a new metal console support.

I inspected the sills, and they were perfectly sound, in fact they were lovely and glossy black inside, apart from the floor-to door step sills, which were lightly corroded but would have been fine with a wax coating. But I needed to remove the outer sill to replace it with a new panel, as it had been welded on badly, it was dented and the vertical indentations had been filled in with weld for some odd reason.
The car was returned to level on the spit, and locked in position. A bead of weld ran along the top of the sills in the door gap, which is why the door seals never fitted properly. I presumed this is how the outer sills were held in place when the sills were done last. So I got out the grinder, and went along the top of the sill pieces to remove the bead of weld along the top. A chisel was inserted between the inner membrane and outer sill, and I started to hammer the outer sill off.
Then I noticed the inner membrane was parting from the step sill. Rubbish. I quickly clamped everything back together, hastily welded it up and got the car back on the ground, and levelled it. The nearside door, hinges and striker plate was fitted, and it shut. Phew, I hadn’t distorted my car.
I wondered what the best option was. I could remove and replace the outer sill, but I’d have to also remove the inner membrane, and clean it up, dress it and refit it. After some work to the step sill, and the castle rail to allow me to put it all back together. But then it would be so much effort to go this far, I might as well do new sills on both sides and make a good job of it.
So for probably the first time in the history of MGBs, I am going to remove and replace two perfectly sound, corrosion-free sills. Because some idiot had fitted them incorrectly. A seam weld along the top does not make for a sound car.

The door is back on... but not in a good way!

Before hacking the sills off, I braced the body shell in that area. First, a jack was placed under the cross member, and I jacked the middle of the car up a tiny amount, to give a perfect door gap. Much better than what it was before, what they managed last time the sills were replaced. I welded a piece of 1 inch square steel tube into the door gap from the A post to the panel behind the B post, to keep everything square. Then I made a diagonal reinforcer from the heelboard to the bar, to add a bit more strength. What with the fact the car has a roof, there’s no chance she’ll move out of shape. I do keep refitting the door at regular intervals though, to ensure that all is well with the door gap. You can’t be to careful, for the sake of a little effort it seems silly to bend a car.

Then I cut out the floorpan.

1. Cut a big hole....

2. Seperate the floor from the crossmember and chassis rails...

And there, it's gone. Excellent!

The new sill components turn up... Ready for action

Removing the sill took ages, and it was a huge amount of effort. There is still some to come off at the back. It’s especially difficult on a car that’s been hacked around as much as mine, I had great difficulty working out which panels were which, what should be there, what actually is there, what to keep, what to remove, then how to remove it. I cut off the inner membrane, castle rail, and step sill, and a large part of the rear wheel arch because the sill had been patched to it and it was impossible to tell what was what.

After about an hours work, the rear of the sill and wheelarch area is finally beginning to make sense, after I have hacked away an awful lot of metal.

There! That's much better! On the right is the rear chassis leg, with the step sill in the middle.

Then the dash side panel had to come out, because it was patched along its bottom edge and it would have been difficult to locate the new sill properly. I had planned to replace this panel anyway, alone with a new footwell end, inner wind, trumpet and such. The panels had been patched and bodged, and while technically they’re sound and fine, I’m stupidly pedantic and want the best for my little car. While I was waiting for a few hundred pounds of panels to arrive from Mech Spec, I welded in another diagonal piece of 1” steel tube from the cross member/chassis leg joint to the lower A post, to keep it in position while I too the dashboard side out. (Dash side= footwell outer side panel)

My rather groovy (if I say so myself) bracing system. The door clicks shut better than it ever did, like a proper sports car door!

Even more metal had to come out. The footwell end panel was hacked out, and so was part of the bulkhead. My new bulkhead has been reduced into three pieces, the outer two I will use to repair the bulkhead in my car. There is not feasible way to replace the complete bulkhead, so I will only replace the corroded outer parts. The new bulkhead chunk is nearly ready to go in, after I spent an afternoon welding up new flanges where the originals had corroded, so it’s nearly ready to go in.

Removing the footwell end panel, dash side panel, and parts of the bulkhead...

What a mess it was in! This is going to be quite a bit more solid when it's done, rest assured!

The same area, looking from the top. PATCHING DOES NOT WORK! Anywhere which has a double layer of metal will corrode from the inside out. I'd have thought that's fairly obvious, as this photo demonstrates, where someone has tried to patch between the dash side panel and the footwell end panel. Eh eh eh!

A huge panel delivery! Yay! That's a nearside floorpan, chassis leg, inner wing, trumpet, dash side, footwell end, outer sill, crossmember and front tray amongst others.

The new footwell end panel has been welded in place, with puddle welds in place of the original spot welds. Whether I will attach all the new panels like this, or whether I will add reinforcing seam welds is yet to be decided. But either way, the first new panel is in place, and oh what good feeling!

What an awful photo! That's besides the point, NEW METAL!!! Tally-Bally-Ho!

Next on the list of things to do was to repair the bottom of the A post. The theory being that with the new footwell end in place, the A post repaired and the bulkhead repaired, the dash side panel can be put in place. Then it’s sill time!
The A post had been butchered a couple of times in the past for sill replacements, and it looked awful. So I cut off the bodges, then cut back to sound metal. I measured up a friend’s GT, so I could repair the A post to the correct dimensions, otherwise attaching the outer sill would be difficult, and I don’t want a wonky car. So I made my own A post repair panels, and set about welding them in place. And even without any lead, it looks like new! I’m quite proud of this!

Eurgh! Still, I am utterly fearless now when it comes to bodywork. Bring it on!

I cut back to sound metal which the factory put there, and made up repair sections. These were drilled for puddle welding, along with the holes for the door hinge screws. I weld-through primed the edges which were to sit against each other, then removed the paint where the puddle welds would take place, by clamping the placte and puting a wire brush in a drill through the holes. Hopefully this will give good protection from corrosion, without compromising the strength of the weld.

Two side pieces in place and ground back...

The middle part clamped in place ready for welding...

And there it is, flanges and all!

I'm really quite proud of that!

Undersealed fate?

2008-10-26T22:30:00.000Z

Here is a graphic image of why, if you think your classic is protected by a fresh layer of Hammerite/Waxoyl underseal, you are so very much mistaken. I think people that gullible should not be allowed to own these cars, while they are apparantly protected, they are rotting away to the point they will end up being scrapped.

Time and time again, on removing the paint and underseal on this car, it can clearly be seen that rubbery underseal does not work. It simply traps water underneath it, and the metal rusts behind the thick black layer, unknown to you. I have cases of repairs done less than 5 years ago, which are already corroded to the point they will need re-doing. I am so glad I have caught this now, before my GT rots to the point of no return.

Look at this: Wet corrosion, beneath an intact layer of underseal. Loverly.

Vital lessons have been learnt here:

1. Hammerite paints are useless on cars. They chip extremely easily, do not last more than a couple of years at the most, and they do not stop rust.
On the tin, it says they can be applied over rust. And that they will stop rust. NO THEY WON'T, OK? Why do people ruin cars, just because it says on a Hammerite tin that they are suitble for metal and stop corrosion? People who have this much knowledge of anything should not be allowed near historic vehicles. Grrrrr, calm down.

2. Hammerite paints, covered with underseal, are also useless on cars. My inner wings have surface rust after they were replaced less than 5 years ago, despite only a couple of thousand miles being done since.

3. Underseal of the Waxoyl/Hammerite sort is useless. Not only can you no longer see what is happening to your steel, it is not really being protected. I'll get some more photos later of the underside of the GT with some of the areas which show up how useless underseal is.

Here's irony for you! Some of the best rust prevention carried out by whoever welded her last, was leaving the bar code sticker on the rear spring hanger repair. The glue from the sticker has preserved the paint, and the steel underneath, better than the underseal applied around it.

Working back cleaning up the underside, I discovered my nearside rear chassis rail was a bit dead. It's easily repairable though, just the bump stop mount rusting out.

Oh well. I don't care. Just a little bit more welding.

Sideways

2008-10-26T22:25:00.008Z

I got bored waiting for some vital parts and cut a rear wing skin off.

And I discoverd my sills were open at the back. Brilliant. I don't think they're the worse for it, though.

I stuck the one eight wire in the Mig and patched up the chassis rail, then cleaned it up, then checked I hadn't removed too much metal and the repair was sound. Mainly for practice really. I now had a BGT bodyshell capable of being mounted on the spit, so I got on and fitted the brackets.

Why am I now obsessed with welding?

Eventually. I ordered some high tensile steel bolts to attatch the spit brackets to the body. I will re-use these as overkill bumper mounts in due course. When the bolts turned up, I tried to bolt on the front brackets, but the pre-drilled holes were too close, so I had to mill out one of the holes to make a slot which fitted. Then the pivoting bar was bolted on, and the high-lift jack summoned up. And the front was slowly jacked up and inserted into the A-frame. Groovy. Simple, that was done. I stood back and looked- This was rediculous. The car was at at a hilarious angle. Still, mad plans are the best!

She wasn't this bad, even with a broken rear spring!

The it was time to fit the rear brackets to the rear chassis legs. After removing the rear leaf springs, which was simple enough. The car sat on the springs once they were unbolted, making the cunningly-placed axle stands useless. Oh well. The brakets fitted, but the holes in the pivot bar were in the wrong place so new oned were drilled. Not a problem, I'm just glad I implusively bought a sharp new 7/16ths drill bit the other day!

That is quite high.

Gettting her on her side was the next thing. I was too impatient to wait for the local classis lads to come home from work, so at at 10 in the morning I went out to the garage and started planning.

One of the pieces of goalpost could be used as a brake. Why not! It was turned aroun with the longer end wedged into the pivot bar, and it curved in such away that it would drag along the concrete floor as the car turned and I could control the amount of braking required. Excellent. Let's go!

Richard Thompson diddn't mention any of this malarky!

It worked, perfectly. Hair-brained idea indeed! I used the bracket supplied with the spit to keep the car on it's side to stop it rolling over completely. However, the bracket started to bend slightly, so I took some of the pressure off it by a couple of piles of spare wheels agains areas such as A posts and things, more as a precaution than anything.

And there it was, the car on it's side! It was remarkably easy! Thanks are due to Robin Gell for help and advice on the process, and the spit manufacturer for building such a decent of kit for a very reasonable price.

Valleri under the knife

2008-10-16T22:02:00.005+01:00

The spit has now arrived, and what a lovely piece of kit it is. Very hefty, beefy and well made, and crude but effective. Once she's on the spit, she can go on her side and I can remove the paint from the underside and see what I can find. Then I can make final decisions on what sort of repairs will be needed where. I will also have a bare shell, so things won't catch fire when the welding starts. Speaking of which, the trusty Mig is now running on BOC Argoshield Light, which is giving superb quality welds.

One large spit. One or two people, to whom I announced the arrival of my spit, were concerned I'd packed the project in and bought a Triumph!

A lot of this will be replaced. Why am I so pedantic and obsessive? It's bad to the point it's costing me money now, not to mention time and effort!

But I'm not putting the shell on the spit until the offside chassis rail has been repaired. It has corroded and thinned in several places, the worst being around the front crossmember mounting point.

Fresh air does not make for structural solidity.

So what do we do with corroded steel? Cut it out, obviously! This was done with an angle grinder, I'm getting quite precise now after making Rich his flamethrower mounts!

Look at it inside! I really want the chassis rails gone!

I'm going to patch the chassis leg with repair pieces for now, at least. That way, I can put her on the spit with no risk of bending a chassis rail.

What to do with the chassis rails is still something I'm unsure of. I can't really decided until I've taken the paint off the underside and examined that closely. I could get away with patching the chassis rails up, but I'd feel much happier if I could replace both. I am currently thinking I might be able to replace them and get them aligned accurately myself, by doing one at a time (obviously) and making jigs to keep it in the correct position, by having spacers going between each chasssis rail at regular intervals, another using the bolt hols at the front of the chassis legs, and another, using the front crossmember bolt holes (the alignment of these is the important thing). Am I a complete fool? Maybe.

Interesting discoveries

2008-09-26T14:39:00.003+01:00

I decided to strip down the engine while I had a quiet few days (I ran out of paintstripper and money!) The enigne is now in pieces, all oiled and bagged up. I diddn't want condensation building up in the cylinders, or any other problems relating to storing an engine out of use.

The sunroof frame, which will be re-used (with wider and longer screws to replace the rusted ones)

The front crossmember was taken off for a few days so I could attact the inner wheelarches

The cylinder head, the valves and rocker assembly were all in perfect condition

The studs coming out... finally I no longer regret spending money on that pipe wrench!

Hello Vicar! a Duplex conversion! Oooh!

and a +.060 overbore. I am beginning to suspect that this is the engine from whenever the car was a hillclimber. The head is a standard later job I think.

The last traces of paint are about to disappear from the top... It's nearly there!

Shinyness

2008-09-26T14:27:00.002+01:00

The paint stripping is getting there. It's impossible to describe the amount of work involved to do a good job, but the cleaner the car the longer it will last. There is still the underside to do, when i have a body rotator/roller/spit. But all this effort should be worthwhile. It had better be! To date I have got through quite a few wire brushes and burnt out 3 electric drills (under warranty, yay).

2008-09-26T14:21:00.002+01:00

As more things are taken off, it becomes clear that they will be put back on slightly differently.

Interesting supporting method for the wiring loom and fuel pipe (cable ties in large numbers)

All this is going, especially the 12v conversion. A smaller 12v battery will go in one of the original battery cradles, the other will be converted to a toolbox.

Sitting very high on the suspension now!

The boot floor needs replacing. The rear springs are good, but then again I did those a few months ago!

And that is the most pathetic repair I have ever seen. Why are people scared of proper cutting and welding??

MGB GT weight reducing procedure

2008-09-26T14:18:00.002+01:00

...take everything off. After removing some paint (and the engine and gearbox) it's back to the task of reducing the shell to a shell.

I really hope this area looks a bit prettier when it all goes back in. What a complete tangelled mess.

Removing the instruments, wiring loom and dash.

Engine out

2008-09-26T14:01:00.002+01:00

Next problem, a rather beefy lump of cast iron known as the B-Series. This engine was very good, and I hope when I take it apart it doesn't need too much work. And once it's out, I can repair then paint my engine bay body colour. At last! Living with an undersealed engine bay has been embarrasing!

Just a few things to disconnect..

Engine cowers under the mighty (borrowed) crane

No problem!

I think I need a new rear oil seal, at least..

And the gearbox and overdrive out.

For once, things went smoothly, removing the engine and gearbox was easy! Unfortunately, there is play in the first motion shaft of the gearbox, so a new bearing is required. I am hoping the rest of the gearbox is alright though.

Stripdown commences

2008-09-26T13:14:00.002+01:00

The first task was to take off as much as possible, and then put every single component in a bag, with a label. Anything of note was noted down to save hassle later. Hopefully bagging and labelling will avoid the kind of situation where I have no idea which length of bolt goes where, or where the nuts for the tailgate hinges went. Or the little tube for venting the fuel pump. Or indeed any other bit of car.

She still looks too much like a car!

Then I couldn't resist a little explorative chiselling to see what I could find under several layers of paint and filler.

I knew that was there!

That doesn't scare me!

Paint removal starts. The most boring part of the whole project.

Nitro Mors and a wire brush in an electric drill reveals the original white paint, then a respray into green, then a subsequent respray into white again. And lots of filler, just to slow the process down a bit.

Paint removal is what is going to take the time, I can tell that already.

Why not?

2008-09-26T13:03:00.000+01:00

Ok it's rebuild time. Welcome to the place with photos and stuff about me restoring my 1972 MGB GT. She used to look like this.

However, whoever rebuilt her last time decided to use W*xoyl underseal, and all their efforts of 4-5 years ago have come to nought. She needs doing again, and doing properly. I know there is some cosmetic rust to deal with, and probably some structural stuff to do as well. So why leave it, life is too short to be driving a BGT which isn't perfect. Let's go!