Mark's Mgbgt Adventure

The weekend saw the A-post closing pieces, sill end cap and a front corner of the driver side floor pan welded in. That brings the welding to an end. I also dug out the grinder and flapper disk and smoothed out all the welds. It took three months to do all the body repairs. Now it’s time to purchase body filler.

Saturday I clamped the inner fender to the rear fender and clamped the assembly to the car. After adjusting the position of the inner fender a few times I was able to get it to fit nicely against the inner body of the car and the rear fender was still lining up nicely. I then turned my attention to the sill and it fit quite well, except at the fire wall where more grinding of old weld was needed. I've made good use of my air die grinder during the restoration; getting into tight spots with a pointed stone. So after frigin' at the front I finally got to sill fitting right, it lines up at the back just like it is suppose to (I don't know why it was so far off earlier). Even the gap around the door is pretty good. So, with everything fitting well, I marked the position of the inner fender to the body with a China pencil and took all the panels back off.

I bought two tools especially for this project: welding pliers (ones with a copper plate on one side for clamping metal together) and a combination jogger* tal punch, and they have proven to be the most useful of tools. The metal punch is so nice to use for putting all those holes through metal, and there were a lot of them to do on the inner and rear fender. The other valuable tool has been the 80 grit flap disk for the grinder. The flap disk is so much better than a grinding wheel for removing paint, prepping a surface for welding, and for grinding down welds. It is easier to control the pressure and the amount of material removed compared to the grinding wheel. *

I aligned the marks on the inner fender and temporarily attached it to the car with a couple pop-rivets and re-fitted the rear fender - great fit. So I dug out the welder and firmly attached it to the car. I then painted the inner body of the car and the inner fender with POR 15. End of day and time for a beer.

Sunday was another good day. Once again I fitted the rear fender using vice grips and clamps and everything lined up well, the fit of the rear fender to the inner fender was perfect, and the sill fit was still bang on. So off came the pieces and the door once again and out came the metal punch. I must have spent close to half an hour punching holes in the rear fender and sill. Using every vice grip and clamp I had I clamped the rear fender to all the metal it was to touch and the welding began. Welding the rear fender on was so easy, mainly because I could do most of it sitting on my rolling seat. The worst part was the 1,000 W of light behind me lighting the work area warming my back. The sill welded up nicely and fitted very well.

With this assembly completed, I dug out the POR 15 again and taped a brush to a broom handle and painted the entire inside length of the sill. So that leaves the driver's side sill end cap, the two A-post post closing pieces and the driver's side floor strengthener left. I forgot about the strengthener until this morning or else I would have welded it in yesterday as well, oh well, I need something to do tonight.

Over the weekend I got my door fit straightened out but now I have another problem. When I offer up the sill, its too short, weird.

So yesterday I took a chance and started welding the sill in. I now have the inner all welded in and the strengthener welded at the top. I went to fit the outer sill and this time it just touches the B-post metal, so its off by about 1/2 inch, but the outer sill is not fitting right at the front, trimming/fitting is needed. The Outer sill needs to overlap the B-post metal by about 1/2 inch to be in the right spot. Sunday I had the door on and had fitted the inner sill and the rear fender and the gap around the door was great! I know the opening is the right size at the bottom because the inner sill fits perfectly, it's bends fit perfectly to the bends of the A post and B post areas. So the outer sill has to fit right, unless the pressing is a touch short.

Saturday was a great day to be out in the garage, the sun was out and it was nice and warm. The three pieces of the sill are all gone from the body and the rear fender is gone aside from a small piece at the top of the B-post. Half of the rear inner fender is gone and I have a couple old patches at the rear to cut out, and new patches to make.

I suppose I need to re-hang the door to make sure the fit is okay before I start putting new metal on at the back. I noticed that I didn't quite get the lower A-post panel into the proper place at the front, down about a 1/4" at the front corner, but looking at it from the front end it looks okay. I've come to realize that these panels are not perfect. When I install the lower A-post panel I jack the upper part of the panel up to the body and lift the panel and body to a height that I measured before I started to cut and then use a second jack to list the bottom edge to the floor. I think I had my second jack back too far, which allowed the front edge to be down a bit. Of course I didn't notice until after I had welded half the panel to the floor (for the second time). Like I said I need to put the door on and see how everything lines up. This will mean that I need to put a jack under the floor to provide support the floor, which will move with the weight of the door and no sill.

There is still lots to do but I've turned the corner.

The Spitfire's body was pretty crsuty it turns out. Here's a summary of my restoration work since I started at Christmas, 2007:

Christmas 2007

Started the rebuild over the Christmas holidays. Had a spell of warm weather so I had Judy sanding off the primer and me coating the passenger floor with POR15.

Cutting out the floor was pretty easy. The back half of the floor was cover with a 1/8” piece of steel being held in place with screws and tar. Underneath the floor was attached to the back edge and the transmission tunnel, but not attached to the sill. Another smaller sheet of metal covered the front half. So a bit of cutting with a reciprocating saw and the grinder easily had the floor removed.

It felt like half a day was spent measuring the floor opening and transferring measurement to the floor; measure twice, cut once, right? Anyway, the passenger floor went in quite easily, only a bit of fussing to get to align with key alignment points.

Almost a month was spent waiting for panels to arrive. My original order had only the passenger floor and most of the sill pieces for the driver’s side, so the only thing to do was grind off primer and paint the pieces with POR15. I hope it never rusts again.


Monday, January 21, 2008

The passenger side door opening has always been tight at the top, body sag of course. Once I installed my adjustable brace, I gave the brace a few turns and was able to make the opening bigger, the same as at the bottom and now the door opens and closes quite nice. I originally thought that my passenger-side door hinges were worn but I loosened the hinge bolts, adjusted the door just a little bit and all is well. And, the replacement hinges I just bought I believe have more play in the hinge and pin than the original ones do. Of course the replacement hinges are made in Taiwan so it's no surprise to me that they are crap.


01/28/2008

Called TRF this morning and they said that the parts are on their way from England and that they are expecting them to arrive mid to end of the week and should be filling my back order by the end of this week or beginning of next week.

Back out in the garage tonight to start drilling.


Tuesday, February 19, 2008

More progress over the weekend. The lower a-post has been removed and replaced. I took a while thinking about its alignment but after trial fitting the inner sill, which has lots of bends in it to fit the body work contours, and it fit so well I figured I must have got the lower a-post in the right spot so I welded it in last night.

I also got the rear part of the sill removed and found almost an inch of bondo in the lower part of the wing, and no original metal. Fortunately, up where the wing repair panel needs to be attached it is good, sound metal. When I saw the inch of bondo I was afraid that another rear wing would be needed. I trial fitted the inner sill, the sill membrane and the jacked up the front lower a-post into place and everything lined up perfectly, even my door opening measurements were bang on. I finally found a good use for the shell casing that I have laying around the garage, worked very well with the bottle jack.

So I got the point on Sunday where I was starting to cut out rot and making patch panels when friends came by to progress stopped. As you can see from the snow on the MG I never got around to making room to put it back in the garage last night.

Very time consuming cutting out welds and changing wheels on the grinder between cutting, sanding and grinding wheels. I did have two grinders until Friday when one decided to pack it in. I also had to pick up a couple more weld cutters, they don't last a long time but they sure make cutting out welds a lot easier.

Tonight I hope to get a few more patch panels made up for the rear floor corner/wheel well; lots of rust to cut out back there.


February 26, 2008

Tonight I'm hoping to assemble the sills with clamps and screws. Man, I hope the fit is good.

I have a colour print-out of Paul's work on Big Red in the garage with me. I hope the sill panel I have is shaped better than the one he had. Before I started this work the bottom of the door was a good quarter inch out from the sill so as long as it goes back together better than that I'll be happy. I'm guessing that I could have adjusted the hinges to fix some of that gap and probably will have to play with the hinges some to get in/out alignment right.

Once thing I am surprised about is the size of the gap between where the door seal goes and where the door is in relation to it. The gap seems quite big. Maybe that partly to do with the in/out alignment of the door

I would think that once the new sill is all in the brace can come out and move it to the other side. Maybe as you say it could come out once the inner sill and stiffener is in place.


02/29/2008

Spent about 4 hours on it last night and all I got to show for it is the inner sill is now welded in and the sill strengthener is almost completely welded in. I guess I did weld more of the floor into place.

I first assembled the three pieces of the sill with clamps and screws and then put the door on. The fit was quite good except the outer sill was too far forward, the gap at the front of the door was very good. This piece goes under the door and comes up in front of the door and is aligns with the bonnet when closed and also partly wraps around the fire wall. Well it was proud of the bonnet by a 1/4" and more like 1/2' away from the door. So a bunch of grinding later I had it aligned with the bonnet but the door gap is still to big but that's all I can do because the pressing just isn't quite right. The passenger side is a press steel panel and the driver's side a heritage panel. Hopefully the drivers side fits better.

The odd thing is that the lower rear edge of the door is still proud of the out sill and I have no idea why because the floor is in the right spot and therefore the sill is also in the right spot the lower rear fender is also in the right spot. Maybe the door has a wow in it? The top rear, top front and bottom front edges of the door all fit nicely. Oh well, it's a Spitfire...

So I have the outer sill to attached, the floor strengthener, the front sill closure, rear fender patch panel and bits of welding to do and THEN the passenger side is complete, certainly will take me the rest of the weekend to complete.

03/04/2008

Last night the outer sill and rear patch panel finally got welded into place. I looked at what Paul T did to fix the door to sill alignment but I couldn't figure out how to then make the rear patch panel align to the sill. I emailed Paul Friday asking how he tackled this, but no response came. I can partly see why Geof holds him in such high regard.

So I did bang out the zig zag a bit but I will still end up with a small gap, but that's life. I will play with the door's hinges and rear latch plate position to see if I can improve the fit.

Another problem with the outer sill panel is that the bottom edge doesn't align with the bottom edge of the strengthener and the floor without jacking up the outer sills bottom edge. And the top front edges aren't at 90 deg to each other so some grinding and fiddling is needed to get everything to align. The passenger outer sill is a Steelcraft panel. I wonder if the Heritage one on the drivers side will be any difference. According to TRF Heritage makes both panels so he speculated that they come off the same press, but why then the different price?

So I'm down to the floor strengthener and the sill closing panel plus misc welding, such as the floor to the front edge of the lower a-post, plus a bit more POR on some bare metal spots, and the passenger side will be complete.


03/17/2008

One side complete, one side to go. This past weekend I finally finished with the passenger side; all welded up and welds ground down!

Before starting the floor I unplugged all the rear lights and the fuel level sender and pulled the harness through to the front of the car; it was kind of in the way.

I got the floor cut out of the driver's side and started cutting the lower edge of the sill so that I can slide the floor in but I ran out of cut-off disks so I'm off to restock today. Made good use of my air compressor and cut-off tool to cut out the floor in front of the pedals. The air tool could fit in the small spot a lot better then the electric grinder.


03/18/2008

Sunday I stared to cut out the driver's side floor. Unfortunately I also used up my cut-off wheels so I didn't get the floor cut out on Sunday. Not a problem come Monday evening, new cut-off wheels and the floor was clear of the car in a matter of minutes.

I have a bit of an issue to work through before I weld the floor in. To fit the floor at the front I need to loosen the front body mount. Put my socket wrench on the bolt head, gave a couple turns and off came the head bolt. Due to the shape of the firewall I cannot drill straight down to remove the old bolt and tap the hole for a new nut, and I'm not lifting the body off. I can't easily get to the captive nut from the bottom because of the box frame, not with out cutting holes. Buying a new outrigger is out of the question (+$80). I can weld the body to the remaining bit of the bolt, but that is too DPOish. Right now I'm thinking that I'll have to cut out the bottom of the out rigger to gain access to the nut. Cut the nut off with my Dremel tool and weld another nut on and then weld up the box section of the outrigger.

What I ended up doing was cutting a hole on the back side of the out rigger and used my dremel tool to cut the nut off. It turns out that the problem was the bolt reacted with the aluminum spacer, galvanic corrosion between dissimilar metals. An MG friend stopped by last night so that's all that got done. Tomorrow I'll weld a new nut in place, close up the hole and have the floor welded in!


03/24/2008

This weekend saw the driver’s side floor completely welded into place, 95% of the sill cut out, lower A-post cut out, new one welded in, and 95% of the rear inner wheel well and rear fender cut out. The last 5% of the sill and fender will take 95% of the time to remove though, all the low hanging fruit have be picked. I have some rust repair work to do around the trunk, where the inner wheel well used to meet the metal of the trunk and where the leading edge of the wheel well meets with the sill.

In order to get the door and door opening aligned, one must jack up the lower A-post, which lifts the hinged end of the door, allowing for the proper alignment of the A-post to the B-post and therefore aligning the door. Once jacked into place the A-post is welded to the floor. This same process will have to repeated once I’m ready to weld in the sill because the weight of the door, and the dash and windshield is enough to deflect the floor once the jack is removed.

I was wearing a mask most of the weekend but my nose still got filled with dust, the dust is probably the reason for the persistent cough.

The following is the machine work they performed: clean, magaflux, and resurface the head; install and 3-angle grind 8 hardened valve seats (intake and exhaust seat were all found to be in bad condition); install valve guides and umbrella type valve seals; clean, magaflux, and resurface the block; bore cylinders for 0.030 over pistons (pistons were already 0.020 over sized); line bore the main bearings; install camshaft journals; and confirm that the crank did not need turning.

Another winter project was the rebuilding of the HIF4 carburettors. The HIF4 carburettors use bushings on the throttle shafts, which can be removed and replaced easily with the use of a special little tool to pull the old ones out with and push the news in. Genuine SU rebuild kits come with throttle shaft bushings and the person I bought the rebuild kit from provided me with the tool for free.

Once I received my engine back from the machine shop the reassembly went smoothly. I think the most difficult part of the reassembly was getting the transmission’s input shaft to mesh with the clutch. I used flat-top pistons to increase the compression ratio and decided to use an original specification cam rather than a mild road cam. I had read in several sources that the original cam was a good, all around performing cam and since I have only driven a worn out B-engine I figured I wanted to get a feeling for what the engine and car performed like when new. Once the engine was pretty much assembled it received several coats of MG Maroon paint.

And so, one fatefully Thursday afternoon in June, the engine went back into the car. With the help of Judy, the engine and transmission slipped back into the car without scratching the newly painted engine compartment. The rest of Thursday and all of Friday was spent reconnecting the engine, installing the starter, a new exhaust system, putting on the rebuilt carburettors, and adding vital fluids. With the help of my son, Thomas, the clutch was bled and then we crossed our fingers as I tried the key. The engine started just like it always did. Other than one small plumbing problem on the carburettors everything went off without a hitch. We timed the engine and went for a drive around the block. What a great feeling to have rebuilt the engine myself and actually have it running again, with a little help from my friends of course.