New member, restoration puzzle question

[Mick Stock]

Good afternoon..
I've just started a full restoration on my 75 rubber BGT. What started off as sills and wings rapidly spread inward, as they do. My question is either simple or complicated really, I just wanted to know what best order to do the following jobs in, can you help?
Front leaf spring hangers
Sills (all four parts)
Floor pans
Currently I have the car on axle stands under the spring pans and u-bolts. Obviously this has to alter during the work. How best to support the shell when the axle and sills are off?
The project is a slow one, clearly, locked away in the garage at the end of the garden..

[Peter Cresswell]

Hi Mick
A good start, if you haven't done so already, would be to view 'An MG is Born' by Mark Evans who restored a B on Discovery Channel. You can get a DVD of the whole series from Duke ( www.dukevideo.com ) but they are often repeated on various channels some of which are on terrestrial TV or you can find them on Youtube sometimes. Where it is really helpful is when jobs have to be tackled in a certain order for a reason. Quite entertaining as well. Also the Haynes MGB Restoration Manual is useful - probably more so than the workshop manual.

[Mick Stock]

Hi Pete
Thanks for the tip, I've already watched it and keep it for reference. Quite entertaining even if he has limitless access to the machine mart catalogue...
I just wondered at which point to transfer the load whilst doing the jobs- shackles first supported by rotten sills, or sills first then tweaking the heel board to good metal. The floor pans will be coming out in many small pieces.
Critically though, I'ts in a 1960's lock up garage at the bottom of the garden, so it's squeezed against one wall to give decent access (I can open the driver's door fully).
One more quicky - All my panels are BMH, except the castles, they are steelcraft. I have an offer of a cheapish pair of BMH castles, are they significantly better?

[Jim Haines]

Good luck with your project. It sounds as if you have a lot of work to do.....
When we did mine - quite a few years ago now - I made the decision from the outset that ALL panels would be BMH and not the cheaper variants that were around. This paid off - the door/body gaps throughout are now as they should be and this was all achieved without major remedial work that often occurs when trying to match parts/panels made from original tooling against stuff made for maximum profit....
With some parts now you simply can't get O.E., and often this results in much gnashing of teeth and other things - I have just gone through a saga with - of all things - radiators caps that don't fit, don't work and turn out to be the wrong size..... With body panels the O.E. fit is still there - long may it continue.
Again - good luck.

[ROGER COOPER]

Hi Mick,

This sort of major restoration is way beyond me but I remember years ago talking to Ron Gammons who was relating the story of someone who consulted him on much the same subject for a ROADSTER. Ron told me he nearly had a fit when the guy said he had removed the Sills and Castle Rails on BOTH sides of the car. All that was left holding the car together was the rather insubstantial transmission tunnel.

Even though you have a GT I advise you to remove only one side at a time, starting with the worse one, otherwise there is a tendency for the front end of the body to move forwards as the rear end moves backwards leaving you with an unexplained gap when you come to fit the new components - and you could end up accusing the supplier of the sills and castle rails of sending incorrect parts.

In other words the shell sags without its sills and castle rails, and with a GT you could end up with roof distortion as well.

It may be too late already but did you measure the length of the old sills in situ before removing them, so you have a finished dimension to build back to?

Good luck - we are all looking forward to seeing the fruits of your most worthwhile labours.

[Mick Stock]

I hate to spoil this but today I got down and dirty under the car, this car is the one I owned when our daughter was born, sold it in 1995 and tripped over it again three years ago. So you see, it's a sentimental journey, I did get a couple of years of fun until I laid it up for the inevitable.
Anyhow, it seems the all four chassis legs are worse than expected, so I think now is the time to stop.
I wish I had known this before as I recently bought and sold at a loss, a '72 chrome shell, finding the floors were gone on that, thinking if I've got to do them on this, I'll be better off doing them on my '75.
Going to have to sleep on it but I can feel the breakers torch on this one. Hopefully I can find another project and recycle all the stuff I have accumulated. I'm happy to mig till the cows come home but there comes a point where you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.... That and the dangerous aspect of it all.