At it once again.
Cleaning up the steps worn in the leaf spring that I had disassembled.

After

Wondering if I should disassemble the other leaf spring to grind out the steps. I was surprised the amount of wear on the leafs considering the milage I think the car has on it (About fifty five thousand). 

More blasting & front suspension work

Cleaned more parts from the front end and cut more rusted parts from the frame. Disassembled the swivel pins (or king pins) and links from one side but the lower one from the other side will not move. The bushings and pins are out but the thing will not move. Will try soaking it in penetrating oil but it may be bent, in which is case it might be junk. The front shocks need to be replaced when the time comes. I have painted the springs, spring pan, arms, and wishbone arms with POR 15. The side channels of the frame were cut away and other damaged and rusted out areas got the same treatment. The battery carriers are gone and the angle support arms for the carriers have a lot of metal rusted away, they will need to be replaced with new units. I will have the frame sandblasted before welding patches or removing anymore material. Those are my boys helping out at the blast cabinet I built and working on the frame.

Sandblasting

I cleaned up some of the front suspension parts today after work. I built my own sandblast cabinet a few years ago and it works rather well. I need a new gun in the cabinet as the one I have is cheep and wearing out fast. That's my son using the cabinet last summer.

Working on front suspension. The brakes came out with no trouble but the link pins put up a good fight. the hub and bearing came out without any problems and I did not need a puller to remove. Parts were missing from the right hub though. The cotter pin for the spindle retaining nut, the washer that goes under the nut, and the grease retainer ( the half moon shaped piece of metal) were all missing.

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.

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.