Front Fenders

While I wait for my sandblaster guy to become available, I've begun to sort out my fenders. The two front  fenders that came with the car were in fairly good shape, lots of bumps and bruises but no major problems. This left fender is from a 1600, (two small holes for the indicator lights). MGA  front  fenders tend to rust in the headlight and indicator light area, as well as, the bottom lip behind the wheel.

Someone tried to patch this rust with fiberglass. To repair this properly the rust must be cut out and new metal welded in. A new flange will be installed for the indicator lamp to make it a 1500 version.

First the rust cut out

And new metal welded in, two pieces were used to maintain the crease line. The hole and flange for the signal light will be added.

About 4 hours of panel beating, mostly with the slapper and I have a  pretty decent fender. After slapping, there are slight raised spots which need to be removed before using filler or glaze. I used a auto polisher for this with 80 grit paper. The polisher moves quite slowly and therefore doesn't heat up the high spots making them worse, a shrinking disk could also be used here. After the polisher all that's left are some very small low spots, mostly rust scars, so filler will be kept to a minimum.

The right fender was  less beaten up on the nose area, but a lot worse at the rear in front of the door. Not sure what happened here. Some kind of repair? Hopefully this will look a lot better for the next picture.

This is difficult to repair since the fender support bracket is on the backside of this crease, so banging it out will be difficult.

The flange at the bottom of this fender that holds the valance on was missing and had to be replaced, I used the other fender for a template. Two more captive nuts need to be welded on. You can also see the the proper 1500 signal light flange that needs to be added to the other fender.

Bodywork II

Not having very much previous experience in bodywork, I turned to the internet for help. I discovered a great video on panel repair:  panel repair. This guy is great, shows a lot of tricks in a series of quick videos. He uses a slapper, which really works well and should greatly reduce the amount of filler that will go into my car.

I couldn't find a slapper so I made one. Nothing more then a 1/8" piece of metal, 15" long by 1 1/2 " wide with 2 bends in the middle. I rounded the corners and beveled the edges to reduce any unwanted damage to the panels. It works GREAT! I cant believe the dents and dings that come out. It can be very time consuming but very satisfying.

The fellow on the video also uses a shrinking disk. A stainless steal disc on a grinder. The idea is as you run the disc over the panel it will contact all the high points. These high spots become very hot quickly, with a quick squirt of cold water these high points actually shrink back down. It works well on steel but with aluminum I take a lot of caution, the disc can remove aluminum from the panel leaving a scar.

Although it's hard to get a proper picture, I've shown here a door skin that I was ready to throw out because it was to far gone. The right side has been slapped for about 3 hours and it has come out great, I find that the skin even has become more ridgid. The small nicks are from an over enthusiastic body man using a grinder or such to remove the paint, these will be easy to fill.

The other door skin is slightly better off, but will require a good amount of work as well. The boot lid and has very slight dents and should only need minimum of work.

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Bodywork

My original plan was to start the body in the spring of 2010, but I've started the body early. Because I didn't get a real chance to check out the body pieces before I stored them away, I was curious to see what I had.  I brought down the fenders, doors, bonnet and boot lid from the rafters of the garage. On first inspection, I see a lot of work. On closer inspection I see a whole lot of work.

MGAs use aluminum skins for the boot, bonnet and doors. The frames are made from mild steel. Aluminum is a great for lightness and resisting corrosion, but the mild steel and aluminum are a poor combination. Dissimilar metals in contact with each other can accelerate corrosion. Paint will help block the contact of the two metals, but for my car paint has been replaced by rust.

I've removed all the skins in order to clean up the inside of the frames. I could see no other way to clean and paint the frames.

The corrosion has began to pit the aluminum, but no perforations and these skins should work just fine. Patients is the main tool for removing the skins, and except for a couple of cracks at the seams, I had no real problems. The frames themselves were worse off. 

Sand blasting is the obvious choice, but since my sand baster was tied up for a few weeks I decided to try a different method. Electrolysis uses electricity to clean rust from metal. Basically you need a 12 volt supply (capable of 2 amps of current), alkaline solution (water and washing soda) and an anode (piece of expendable metal). I used a blow up swimming pool big enough for the bonnet frame, added a cup of washing soda.

I used speaker wire with a couple of alligator clips ( don't use the battery charger's clips in the solution, they will corrode). I attached the neg (-) lead to the rusted object and the positive lead to the sacrificial chunk of metal and place them in the solution (don't let the two pieces of metal touch).

After a day you get a soupy concoction.

And the part is rust free, but full of black slimy goo.

After a fairly quick clean up with a steel brush, the results are quite amazing.

99% of the rust was removed and anything remaining is easily handled by the chassis saver paint.

The bonnet skin had a few dents and scratches as well as some holes someone tried to repair.

I didn't want to attempt welding aluminum, specially thin aluminum, so I tried a product call Easyweld. Similar to using solder but a lot stronger. It works on all non-ferrous metals and you only require a normal butane torch (720 deg. f ). The results were satisfactory but not enough to completely repair the damage done.

After cleaning the bonnet skin I sprayed the inside with self-etching primer and replaced the skin back on the frame. I used Easyweld to repair any cracks that showed up in the aluminum seams.

With a very small amount of filler, this bonnet should be ready for primer and paint.

After I completed the bonnet I've discovered that I should have annealed the aluminum before I bent the lip. Annealing is basically heating the metal, it makes the metal less likely to crack and would have made this job a lot easier. 

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Wheels

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As I  previously  menioned, MGAs were offered with a couple of different wheels:

-1500/1600 came with either a steel disc rims using lug nuts or wire wheels using knock offs
 (with only a slight change on the 1600 steel disc rims to allow for the front brake calipers)

-Twin Cam came with unique steel disc rims that require knock offs

Wire wheels 15" x 4" had 48 spokes and were painted gray
Optional 60 spoke wire wheels  were available

My original steel disc rims are in poor shape, all 4 have wobbles in them. Standard rims are not available new and used ones are probably no better than mine. It seems my only choice is to go with alloy wheels. Actually I like the idea, strong, light weight and well balanced. With "vintage spirit" in mind, I purchased Minilite replicas. Minilites were used on the racing circuit back in the day, and they look right at home on a MGA.

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Nuts and Bolts

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Through the winter months I cleaned up all the nuts and bolts that came with the car using a wire brush on a bench grinder and a small sand blaster. I organized all the hardware into trays. I had originally thought I would used the majority of these bolts again during the rebuild, most seem to be in good shape. The Bolts on a MGA are Unified Thread Standard:  UNF (fine)  UNC (coarse). Most of the bolts are fine thread count. Three sizes make up the majority 1/4", 5/16" & 3/8".  Luckily none of the bolt heads are Whitworth, and I don't have to purchase another set of wenches and sockets. SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) threads are by far more popular today, which makes UNF bolts more expensive.

I have discovered that SAE fine and UNF threads, although slightly different can be interchanged with one another. So in the interest of  longivity I've decided to go with new bolts when ever possible and I've found a local nut and bolts store that has a good selection of various sizes.

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