Our New MGA

My dad and I each have MGAs. Not to brag, but mine has been in GRM a few times. It's a Coupe that was my racer and as such has a few battle scars, but it still looks pretty good. It's nice to have another MGA for comparison purposes. A few decades ago, he bought this car and stashed it in the barn. After retirement he worked on it for a few years, but stalled in the home stretch. He's passed it on to me to finish. That is my daughter. Somewhere there is a picture of me with this car when it was initially brought home. I was a few years older than my daughter, so this is the definition of a stalled project. Hopefully, not for much longer.

Overall pretty solid and mechanically done. Just needs bodywork, paint and interior. I will do all this in my garage for $1000 or less.

Here is it with $100 worth of patch panels ready to be welded. This is a different front drivers fender as the one above. I decided to trade the crunched and bondo sculpted headlight area on one for rusty lowers on the other. Rust I can fix. Reshaping compound curves without needing bondo, not so much.

Hopefully by Fall, it'll look like a new car.

MG YAY. gotta love anything that had wooden parts in it off the assembly line

I will be watching closly. I have a 56 MGA roadster. It is about as far along as yours and has been that was for over 20 years. I really need to make the push to finish it.

I'll be watching your thread as well since I too have an MGA. Sort of . . . .

http://mgaguru.com/mgtech/restore/rt309.htm

Best with your car ! !

And I thought my projects got stalled! My problem is I get distracted by other cool projects and drag them to the shop. I spread my time around and work on different cars depending on my mood. I swear, they will all get finished in the same week and I'll look like the most prolific builder in the business park for a day or two.

MGA is a cool car for sure, I'd love a twin cam.

I have a '59 Bugeye that is about a week's worth of work away from being totally done. That should only take me till July to finish

Speaking of Bugeyes, I have one of those too. Since it's only a 10 year old project, I refer to it as "the new car"

Patch panels welded.

Here's why a new fender was needed. If you look closely, you'll see metal that could pass as scale topography of the Rocky Mountains. The outside had a pleasingly smooth layer of Bondo frosting New front fenders for an MGA go for around $2000 each, so I used the best I had. .

Likewise, the front valance was mangled and expensive. I've bought a new one in flberglass.

Here's a door shut panel I repaired earlier:

Given that MGAs were largely hand made and beat upon by Englishmen in the late 50s, many parts do not interchange between cars and aftermarket fitment is even worse. The grille can be a pain to fit and this car was no different. There is a step in the bodywork to create a recess for the grille itself. On this car, the opening was about 1/4 inch too wide. I fixed it. New valance below.

And finally, the interior and what is left of the wiring. PS, the car runs like it is.

Continuing the work on the front of the car. With the valance and left front fender off, I noticed the frame extension was pretty bent. The bumper is attached to the extension via two 7/16 studs and then the extension bolts to the frame and body. An 1-3/4" curved tube connects This car took a knock to the front at some point and everything is bent.

The two bumper mounts were pushed back and the surrounding sheet metal was bent and torn. The tube should be perpendicular to the extensions sides. Finally, the biggest problem was the crimped and twisted tube. Since this car will be a driver I took a grinder and made two "scribe" marks along the length of the tube for alignment purposes and then cut the tube in the middle of the crimp. Then I hammered on the pieces.

With the tube de-collapsed, I put the extension back on the frame and checked the alignment mark. It was close enough, so I welded.

Then I moved on to the "new" fender.

Nutserts replaced rotten captive nuts on the body.

Although this fender was much less battered, it was rotten along the lower edges. I replaced the metal on the side, but the area below the headlamp remained. There should be a curved flange on the lower portion of the fender that provides an attachment point for the valance. It was not usable.

So I made a pattern and cut a patch.

Then I removed the rot and welded the patch in place. There were thin spots that blew through and required some buildup, but I've worked with worse.

Then I tacked on a new flange.

And seam welded the back. Once cleaned up, it should be good to go.

looking good!

Looking forward to seeing how well that fiberglass sebring valence fits for you. Ours was so off that our body guy still hasn't forgiven me 6 months later.

What I bought was the stock-appearance valance. Thankfully it will be mostly hidden by the bumper. Just laying it in place, I can tell the curve around the nose isn't enough. Not sure if I'll segment, bend, and re-glass it or try to beat on the original metal one some more.

Stripped off four layers of red paint before getting down to metal on the fender and sprayed with self-etching primer.