Tuesday, September 20, 2005




The frame was in bad shape. It has usual rust to the floor rails and the battery carriers but I also had a crushed and torn cross tube. The tear was at the bends of the tube making it even more of a challenge to repair. I finally got some tubing from a place in town but the wall thickness was about 2.5 X that of the stock tube., I bent it up anyway to see if I could and it fit pretty good. But the kinks in the tube at the bend looked bad. The thing was so thick I knew that there was no problem with the strength but it looked bad. I took the damaged section I cut out and took to a muffler shop in town and had them bend me up patch section. Well it fit pretty well and the wall thickness is almost exact. It's not stock but it looks ok and gets the job done.

Monday, September 19, 2005

1958 MGA

This MGA was purchased by my brother in 1975. It was red when we got it but I found out severals years later (like maybe 20) that the original color was tryolite green. I have read that the first three MGA's off the production line were this color. It's hard to get a good idea just what this color looks like in pictures because of the blue/green combination. The other colors that my car was painted were white and black. I will try to find some pictures of when we first got the car and scan them in to post. The car was in one piece at one time but the more I dug into it the more I saw wrong with it. The longer I had it the more I wanted to correct the botched repairs and neglect. Now well I don't think it can take it apart anymore. This disassembly was over years (decades really) and I learned later the body should not be removed from the frame before repairs are made to keep door alignment problems to a minimum. Oh well. After many false starts over the years (decades) I am really getting things done to the MG. I have hated it, despised it, wished it would be gone when I got home from work but I could never bring my self to get rid of the dam thing. So the journey begins.