Front End Panels

After installing the duct panel the shape was returning to the panels on either side of the grill opening.

But before continuing with panel straightening , repairs need to be made to some small cracks on the bottom right (passenger) of the grill opening.

The metal here is quite thin. Using a piece of copper to act as a heat sink and helps reduces the risk of blowing holes through the metal. Drilling a small hole at the ends of the cracks helps prevent the cracks from growing. I was quite nervous welding on an outer panel (even though it will be cover by the grill). 

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This gives some strength back to the panel  and now the beatings can begin!

Actually the panels didn't need all that much persuasion with the slapper to get a proper look.

Final shape will be made when the actual grill that will be going on the car  is available (this one will be replaced by a higher quality one).

The front end is actually starting to look like an MGA!

Front End & Radiator Duct

The car had the scars of being in at least one front-end collision. Body panels on both side of the grill were dented and creased, the radiator duct panel was also warped and misshaped. 

 

Replacing the radiator duct and valance "skirt" should help bring the shape back to the front shroud. Both these parts are available new.

The duct panel and the skirt were both put in at the factory using spot welds. To remove them, every spot weld had to be drilled out.....

 

......about 10 or 12 drill bits and a lot of holes later:

Out with the old :

In with the new:

Long Winter.... but some progress

While I took a bit of a hiatus over the winter months, the car was safely tuck away in hibernation.

This was the first snow fall of the year:

What seemed like an extra long winter season, has finally let up and work has started again.

This pile of junk last fall:

Has cleaned up nicely:

 I was particularly concerned with the valance, although it was not to badly rusted, it had seen a lot of curb damage. The shape was completely deformed and was not even close to the proper curve to allow it to attach to the car.

After sand blasting, I was able to work on the valance in the basement (when no one was home to be bother by the banging). After a good many hours with the slapper and dollies, bends and dings disappeared. Because of the double curves this piece was a bit of a challenge,  I had to work along one curve and then go over it again along the other curve, making minor corrections to the first curve.  I was very surprised to see how well the proper shape returned.

Although some filler will be needed, it will be kept to a minimum. The valance now easily attaches and matches the shape of the front of the car.

Rear Fenders

With the colder weather, progress is slowing down. Still waiting for sand blasting to get completed.

I did get some work done on the rear fenders.

The rear fenders I received with the car were unusable, both have had repairs done. And both are rejects.

After removing a lot of filler I was left with this. Although the MGA rear fenders tend to have rust issues in the dogleg area, I was hoping to see a better repair job then this.

Even the back end show history of damage. To much!

The only choice was to look for "new" ones.

I found two rear fenders in British Columbia removed from California cars.

A few dents, some minor surface rust, but the all important dogleg is in very good shape.

After cleaning off the paint and rust, and introducing it to the slapper, the fender looks great! Very little filler will be needed.

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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Engine

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The MGA had a variety of engines:

• 1500 early (1489cc) 68 bhp
• 1500 late (1489cc) 72 bhp
• Twin Cam (1588cc) 108 bhp High compression
  
• Twin Cam (1588cc) 100 bhp Low compression
• 1600 (1588cc) 78 bhp
• 1622 (1622cc) 93 bhp

Although no real outstanding horsepower here from today' s standards, when these were first produced they won a great many races. Even today on the vintage racing circuits, MGAs are winning their share of races.

My car came with a 1600 engine, of which the previous owner had no history of. 1600 engines are found in a variety of British vehicles and have been around for many years. My block is undoubtedly from an MGA due to the cutout in the block to allow a mechanical tachometer. Although the 1600 is not stock for my  particular MGA, I do appreciate the upgrade in power. Most of the MG community is accepting to interchange different engines sizes between different years, or even going as far as using a MGB engine and still being called "original". The early 3 Main MGB engines are virtually a dropin exchange where as the later 5 main blocks require a little work, i.e. matching various  components from the MGA (1500,1600,1622, & 3 main 1800, depending on which transmission your using, as well as using an earlier front plate, which use the rectangular engine mounts.

When I dismantled the engine I discovered (after some head scratching) that I had 1622 pistons and rods in a 1600 block. Someone had tried to replicate a 1622 engine. The block had been bored out to 3" (.030 over) to except the 1622 pistons. Along with the unusual components, the pistons and rod bearings were slightly scored. The block and crankshaft looked quite healthy.

I had a machine shop go through the engine, they cleaned up the cylinder walls and polished the crank. The machinist mentioned that the bores were not consistent through the whole cylinder, which would explain why the pistons were scuffed and perhaps adding extra strain to the rod bearings. The engine components were balanced, the block hot tanked and new cam bearing installed. It looked great and ready to be rebuilt. The crankshaft, camshaft and piston rods will be the only things not replaced.

The 1622 engines, besides having a bigger bore also have higher compression pistons, this in combination with a newer style head produced 93bhp. The 1500 & 1600 engines, both used a dished top style piston and and a cylinder head with a 37cc combustion chamber, producing 8.3:1 compression. The 1622 engines used a flat top piston and a 43cc combustion chamber, producing 8.9:1 compression So in an effort to grab a few more horsepower I decided to go with the higher compression pistons as well, which means I need to replace the original head (compression ratio would be to high with the old head). Running the engine the way I found it  would have produced a very high compression of around 9.6:1 and would have required very high octane fuel to combat pre-ignition and engine life would be shortened. Since the proper1622 (43cc) heads are very hard to find, I have bought an early MGB (1800) head, these heads are interchangeable and are a lot more common. This head is very similar to the original 1622 head, with the combustion chamber and both exhaust and intake valves all the same size. So on paper I should be getting close to 93 bhp. The head will also be ported and  polished to allow for better air flow. That should make my silk scarf stand up in the breeze.



The original oil filter cartridge system has been converted to except the modern spin-on filters. Oil changes will be a lot easier and cleaner.

The 1622 and early MGB flywheels were lighter for added performance. The earlier MGA flywheels can be easily lightened to match. I had a machine shop lighten my flywheel by a few pounds, it also needed to be re balanced. This could add a couple of hp and improve the throttle response, although losing the extra weight will make it easier to stall from a dead stop. The ring gear was replaced at the same time.

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Although I have all the parts, I'm hesitating actually rebuilding the engine. I would like to wait till I get a little closer to having the car complete so the engine is not sitting around and possibly seizing up or maybe creating some extra wear when it does finally get started.


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