New sills had been fitted to the car some time ago, along with a new lower rear wing panel on the offside. However, this, like all of the other work, had been done badly, so not only was it rusting at the seams, it was in the wrong place. The door gap must have been a lot less at the lower rear edge, and there was no adjustment left on the hinges, and it seems that the whole A post had been bent slightly out of shape whilst the sills were being replaced, to try and gain more adjustment and get the door gap a bit better. Of course, at the front, the gap was wider at the lower edge, cheating doesn’t work! And add to that the fact that the outer sill was too far forward, and too far out, the front wing was too far forward and too far out, giving a huge door gap at the front and a wing which got nudged by the door whenever it was opened. All in all, a complete mess.
This is the sort of thing you have to cope with when working on a car which someone has had a go at before. More often than not it will have been done badly, and there will be a great deal of work involved in putting right what has been done before, let alone sorting out rust, hence the need for so many new panels to replace the ones which have not only rusted, but have been hacked about several times before making them beyond repair. It would be much easier working on an original, unrestored car, which may well be in an advanced state of decay but at least everything should still be in alignment, in the correct place, held together in the correct manner, and of the correct sort. Sometimes the hardest part is working out what bits of the body shell looked like originally, and what has actually been done to it in the past to make it the mess it is now, let alone working out how to go about sorting it.
But then, and major restoration is an enormous amount of work. In comparison, it’s not a great deal more effort to rebuild a badly restored, bodged, crashed or seriously rotten car than any other, and you’ll be saving a car which may well otherwise end up scrapped or as little pieces on the ebay thing in a few years time.
Besides, the one I love is a bodged mess, but a beautiful bodged mess, which will be even more beautiful when she is no longer a bodged mess. There we go, I think I’ve justified it in my head at least…!
I removed the remains of the rear wing replacement so I could see the correct line of the B Post. If you consult the photo, you can see how the door had been altered to fit in with an incorrectly shaped rear wing, so now the door was incorrect for the B Post and therefore the new rear wing.
The door had been twisted clockwise by moving the bottom of the A post further back, to close up the gap at the lower rear of the door where the lower rear wing half had been welded on too far back. Does that make sense? Oh, and the front wing was too far foward, due to the outer sill being too far foward, hance the huge gap (filled in) between the rear wing and outer sill, and the even huger gap between the door and frotn wing. Add to that the fact that the outer sill was too far outwards at the front, due to the membrane and the outer sill being welded to the outside of the dash side (as per Haynes MGB resto manual, which is not really very good) instead of being inside the dashside. Which makes the door skin to front wing clearance virtually nil. And that all makes a fairly complicated mess. The outer sill and dash side were cut away, and the A Post moved back into the correct position, which was very convenient. It was quickly locked into place with a diagonal piece of square steel tubing, then the front wing fitted and the door compared to everything. It all lined up perfectly, although the front wing was still too far forward because of the dodgy outer sill.
Then I removed the complete sill. It’s easy enough to day that, but not so easy to do. It’s hot, painful and tiring work, hacking out such a vast amount of heavy gauge steel, and welds consisting of many seams piled one on top of another until they are about half an inch square. Even when the sill is gone, removing the last bits from the rear chassis leg takes another full days work. Replacing sills is fun, removing the old one is not.
The rear chassis leg had corroded where it met the sill, and a fairly large section had to be replaced to take care of all rotten and thinned metal. Banging plenty of heat into the welds and using the correct heavy gauge steel makes for a sound rear chassis leg, there is no point in replacing the sill if the points where it attaches to the body shell are severely weakened!
The step sill is fixed to the rear chassis leg at the rear, the cross member in the centre and the dash side along the front, so the dash side had to be fitted. The awful Heritage paint/powder coat?? was removed, all the holes for plug welding were drilled in the correct places, the panel was checked in case any distortion had occurred and then the edges of the holes for plug welds were ground flush, otherwise it would not fit flush with the neighbouring panel. Pieces had to be cut to allow from it to allow it to be fitted around the stiffening bar which runs between the A posts, once it is in place the small pieces can be welded on the other side. The flanges on the A post were cleaned of rust, repaired, all traces of the old dash side were removed and the A post was cleaned up inside and given a good coat of rust converter. Only then could it be tried in place, thankfully it fitted perfectly, ready for a couple of coats of weld-through primer anywhere it would meet other metal, and the other areas of metal it would meet were primed too. Without further ado it was plugged into place and seamed throughout.
Blimey, what an awful, wordy, complicated piece of writing. I think it captures the spirit of that particular job!
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