MG Sports Cars

Looking at the Ford 5.0/302 installations got me to wondering (which along with thinking is dangerous for me) what would the ramifications of a 6" frame extension? I'm thinking of just between the two adjacent bolt holes that secure the front suspension to the frame. This would provide sufficient room for the engine and transmission with fewer (if any) modifications to the firewall and transmission tunnel. I do not possess the equipment or skills to do this myself so I would have to pay a competent welder/fabricator to do the work. My main concern is handling. Any thoughts on this?

Well it would be a nightmare scenario stretching the fenders, hood,reshaping the inner fender panels And making them look good as well.
Dave Craddock

Have a look at Dale Knapke's TR6 with a 2" stretch.................

[forum.britishv8.org]

Thanks for the responses. Dale - my idea was to cut the front sheetmetal aft of the wheel wells and move them forward with the rest of the front end. It appears to me that the slope in the sheetmetal is linear which would make the fenders rather easy to fill in. The hood would be another matter altogether...Phil - nice job Dale is doing and rather quickly at that! I'm just getting started on my project; in fact, I'm still in the tear apart stage.

Rolly, I think you'd be in for much more problems than you'd have just trimming the firewall and crossmember as most Ford V8 swaps do. Stretching the wheel base would throw off the ackerman for one and trying to fix that would most likely result in a lot of bump steer. You'd move from one problem in the handling to another. Stick with a proven combination and you'll know what to expect from the performance and handling. You'd need to keep those bolt holes in the original spacing relationship as that's where the front suspension bolts on to the chassis, so you'd have to lengthen the frame behind that area which would also include lengthing the inner fenders as they form a good part of the front chassis strength.
Since you wouldn't be doing the fabrication yourself I'd think it could get very expensive to do that sort of mod short of building a tube subframe structure to reinforce that area much like Dale did.

Fram stretch is what MG should have done for the MGC

MGC? Would have been a huge success as designed, except with a small block Ford instead of that heavy six!

Quote:

MGC? Would have been a huge success as designed, except with a small block Ford instead of that heavy six!

I like the way you think, Curtis!

Graham,

For once, I must agree. ;)