Meg's legs & Valli's lean

The last major chunk of bodywork requiring attention was the rear end. All metal aft of the heelboard counts as the rear to me, and it was in a bit of a state. The logical thing to do was to replace the boot floor first, or so it seemed, so the spot welds holding it at the front and sides were drilled out and the bodged seam welds were ground away. And the boot floor was gone, leaving me a big space to work in preparing the areas where the new one would fit.

I thought I would try and ascertain the cause of “the lean”, the slight list to port of about ½ an inch which the car had always had. I was not really worried about it, I had learnt to live with it and it made little difference to the handling, the only time it became apparent was when lifting of hard when cornering, on left-handers the back would be out marginally quicker than on right-handers, but not by a great deal due to the rather tame MGB handling.

It seemed a shame not to try and sort it while I was taking things this far though, and while there was no obvious cause before, with the boot floor out and squatting in the back the problem suddenly became very apparent. The rear part of the rear chassis rails (a box section) forms the rear rear spring hanger. Read that through a couple of times. Like most of the car, and especially as it is a box section, it is a rust trap, and they often end up being replaced during the lifetime of the car. I knew for a fact that one side had been replaced, and the other had been repaired well, however the one which had been replaced was welded in the wrong position, and one rear chassis leg/spring hanger was either higher or lower than the other by about 7/16ths”, but I could not work out which side had been replaced, so I was unsure which spring hanger was in the correct position. The nearside hanger was 7/16ths higher than the offside, but for the life of me I could not work out if it was 7/16ths too high or if the other side was 7/16ths too low.

The boot floor has been removed, note that the small panel at the front has been cut away an dbent upwards, which is necessery when removing the floor. Shortly afterwards, when work started on the rear spring hangers, the axle stands were relocated to the foward rear spring mounts for obvious reasons.

No wonder I couldn't spot the problem before... what a complete mess it was in! Stong, yes, pretty, erm prehaps not.




And a bit of a motivational shot.. once the boot floor was out, there was a lovely view foward of my new floorpans, sills, footwell ends, upper and lower A posts, dash sides, bulkhead, windscreen frames and repaired transmission tunnel and centre console. The outline of the chassis rails, crossmember and front inner wings can be seen where the weld has penetrate through.

Thankfully help was at hand, in the form of Richard Craig who was a great dependable help as always and promptly sorted out the mess.

Meet Meg.

One delicious 1967 Overdrive MG BGT. With rear chassis rails in the same (correct) place on both sides, which I used to determine which of mine was incorrect and from then how far to alter it. I will never tire of staring at those rear lamp lenses!

Yes judging by Meg’s legs, and using the few vantage points on my car which had not bodged or corroded to the point that they were useless as references, I found that the nearside chassis rail was spot on 7/16ths inch too high, meaning the spring was mounted higher on the nearside which then leaned over compared to the offside. Brilliant, now I knew what was wrong so I set about fixing it. I cut the nearside chassis rail from the rear valance, then cut the boot floor extension from it, along with the much of the rear wheel arch. It was clear now where the replacement chassis rail had been fitted and the change of angle could be seen.

The very end of the nearside chassis rail had to be moved 7/16ths" downwards. Free from the boot floor and the reinforcing panel above it, it could be cut from the valance and boot floor extension in preperation for "adjusting". The reinforcing panel was subsequently furnished with a new bottom.

It was cut at the bottom and up the side (It was no longer a box section because the rear wheel arch, most of which I had removed, forms the 4th side of the box). It could then be bent into the correct position and tack welded into place, the alignment was checked, I fitted the rear spring to check the alignment around its axis had not been lost, and all was well so it was seam welded back up. Fantastic, both rear chassis rails were correctly aligned. Thank you Richard and Meg.
The new boot floor, stripped of paint and primed, was plug welded into position then thoroughly seamed. I also had to repair the lower sections of the reinforcing panels which run either side of the boot floor welded to the chassis rails.

And there you have it, still with some Heritage paint as I was running low on painstripper at the time. All seam welded, just awaiting that strange reinforcing panel at the front to be primed, bent back down and welded into position.