Friday, March 28, 2014

MGA final update.

Having finished up the MGA that by most accounts was "unfixable" I thought you'd enjoy some pix.

 
 
The rockers were installed shortly after these were taken. We had to get everything on the chassis and mostly llined up before they could go on.

 
 
Fenders were a bit low at the nose but adjusted up nearly perfectly, lots better than from the factory I'm sure.

 
 
The only panels on the car I did not have to repair or replace were the doors.
 
These are right after the body hit the chassis, BTW the chassis is from a different car. Add in the fact the all of the body mounts and surrounding areas were rusted or nonexistent I was surprised at how well it fit and how quickly we got it bolted down.
 
 

Chassis and driveline have been completely redone, motor is fresh and everything is painted or powdercoated.
 
 
Wheels and tires are also new, tires were made in the Ukraine, I mentioned that it was good he didn't wait to get the rubber as I'm fairly sure those folks are not interested in making tires right about now.

 
 
The nose was wrecked and rusty so the grill section came from another body and I had to replace the flanges where the fenders bolted to the car, the patches were 7 foot long and 5inches wide. that was 14 foot of weld per side.
 

 
 
I made the patches from scratch and made them fit the fenders better than the factory did.

 
 
The forward sections of the inner fenders were rotten so those were replaced from the same car that we got the grill from and they needed patched too.



The leading edge of the hood was way off so I had to rebuild it. whats another 3 foot of weld when you've already welded a couple miles...

 
A few random pics of my idea of overwhelming and underpaying....
 
 



 
 
 


 
Adding some better metal,,
 



Both rear door posts were made from scratch and the passenger side front door post was homemade too.
 
 

 
 
Not sure anyone can understand how much work went into this thing and I'm glad its over and done.
 
If you own an MGA,,, I feel for you and if you have one that needs this kind of work,, well kindly find another dumbass to fix it cause I'm fairly sure I'm not doing another one..
 
We do have enough cutup rusty parts to build a copy of this one as it was when we got it if your interested.....
 




4 comments:

  1. We do have enough cutup rusty parts to build a copy of this one as it was when we got it if your interested...

    Pfff. No way. I mean, maybe if it had door panels... ;)

    Strong work, but I'm not sure you can claim to have "fixed" the original car. It's more like you built a new one from scratch. :D

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  2. Still..once it's done, the pride in the ride will be worth it.

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  3. The owners is having a special plaque made for under the hood thanking me for the work.

    I told him to add "He aint doing another one" to the last line!

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  4. Nice to you got it out of the way and made some room in the Shop for Stewie.

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