Mark's Mgbgt Adventure

Judy and I put the bonnet back on the car. It looks so nice having it back on and freeing up some room in the garage.

Also, the interior is now back in the car. I had to trim the panels over the wheel arches a bit to get them to fit but they look great. It cost less than $100 to buy the material; it would have cost close to $500 to buy them.

My paint job did have some orange peel. Using rubbing compound and polish, the worst of the orange peel is removed. With a coat of wax the finish looks pretty darn good; both Judy and I are happy with the results.

The rubber bumper covers also got a coat of bumper paint over the weekend and look nice and black.

A couple weeks ago, I made quite the find at Obsolete Automotive. I was up there late on a Friday needing a used part. I went up stairs with Jeff to help him look and I found a rubber bumper Spitfire spoiler. These were only used on 79 and 80 cars and are almost always missing. I was also surprised at the mass of used parts there is upstairs, I couldn't believe all the parts.

The car is painted other than the top of the bonnet. I've been waiting for a dry, calm day to paint the outside (the underside is complete). Last Sunday would have been perfect but the forecast was for rain, which never materialized.

The interior is starting to go back into the car. It takes a while to cut and glue the little pieces of vinyl trip around the doors, but its done and I have a few pieces of carpet in place like the sill carpet and the transmission tunnel, which was a pain because I have to get the holes aligned for the dash support. Last night I put the battery into the car and the tail lights come on and the stereo works! Tomorrow night I'm hoping to start making the interior panels

This was a good weekend. The car is painted and I got a couple coats on the doors and under half if the bonnet. Tonight I home to get a couple more coats on, the bonnet is really hard to do, trying to get good coverage everywhere. Its certainly not a professional paint job but Judy is very happy with it, and that is what really matters.

The real good news is that I actually started putting pieces back on the car on Sunday: tail lights and the abs transmission tunnel are back on. Also, the new rims are looking very nice. There is a lot of hard work on Judy's parts to get to this point.

Well, it was a busy weekend. I took Friday off to start painting the Spitfire. I was out taping the car by 7:30 am; wipe down and had primer on by 11, sanding by 2, seam sealer by 5; wait an hour and another wipe down, and finally by 6:30 I was shooting paint. I guess there were a couple spots that I didn’t get clean enough because I had a few fish eyes.

Also, around 4 the bonnet came back from the media blaster (he picked it up the day before). So by the time I got a coat of primer on the bonnet, cleaned up, it was 10 pm. A quick bit to eat and I was off to bed. There was a reason for this madness.

Saturday I was out of the house by 5 am, riding in the passenger seat of a 28’ tilt-load on a 3 hour drive to pick up two TR7s. A friend pulled in a big favour at work to get the truck for the day. By 3 pm the drive was filled with my 73 MGBGT, a 76 TR7 parts car and the 77 TR7 restoration project.

The reason we bought the two is because the 77’s body is in great condition; only rust is in the trunk and an inner fender. It has been stripped of paint so it was easy to see the shape of the sills, floors and fenders. The downside of the car is that the transmission tunnel has been cut to make room for a Firebird V6 and auto transmission (now for sale). So the parts car will donate an engine, transmission and pieces of it’s transmission tunnel plus more I’m sure.

So my Spitfire restoration is down to the bonnet; can’t wait to have this completed.

Still been busy sanding down to the original paint/primer layer, applying filler, and final sanding with 320 grit paper. I will be ready to paint once I have the garage swept and vacuumed, have cleaned and taped-off the car.

Judy is making great progress with the rim; she has one polished so well that I can see my reflection in the aluminum.

The sanding has begun. I quickly learned that my compressor is too small for my DA sander; it's rated for an average 4 cfm @ 60 psi, but the constant cfm must be much higher; the compressor runs constantly; never catching up.. I'm going to try turning the regulator down to 50 psi to see if that helps the compressor out on the cfm side. I'm trying to only sand down to the original paint; there's one coat above it; of course I do go deeper at times. But the bonnet is getting media blasted this weekend at a cost of $250. The guy is picking it up Friday evening and returning it Sunday, now that's quick service. Part of the reason he is doing it quickly is so that I get it back and put the epoxy primer to it before too much flash rusting takes place. I figure it's $250 well spent.

Judy's been working on the alloy rims, sanding and polishing. She's sanded one and it looks very nice. I think they are going to look very nice once she is finished with them. I really hope the car looks good for the NATC in August.