MG Sports Cars

I had planned to move on to cutting the wheelwells of the GT but finishing up the engine compartment seemed to be a more pressing priority, and a much more attractive option after Tom had jumped in and cleaned out all the accumulated debris. So I broke out the gas torch and we got to work on that. All seams were torch welded with the exception of the inside corners around the rail caps that support the engine mount stanchions. Although I had considered brazing in some spots in the end I decided to go with steel.

In my absence, Steve and Tom had checked out the Snap-On MIG and concluded that it did indeed have some sort of a problem and we didn't even consider using it. So Acetylene it was, and after watching a bit of torch work Tom commented that he didn't know why I would even consider using MIG. Well, MIG has it's applications, and is particularly useful where a thicker metal must be welded in close proximity to a thinner one, but we managed to get by without too much warpage, and in the end buttoned up the engine compartment quite nicely. It is not without flaws. But, this isn't your average $100K build either and we were very pleased with the results.

We also replaced the damaged front section of the right inner wing with a panel cut from the green GT. That car has proven to be a very good parts car and is not yet finished with supplying the project.



At the very least I expect we will be using it's gas tank as we do not have any other at this stage.



While all this was going on, Steve and Tom somehow found time to install Bill G's gages in the best dashboard we have, a "pillow" dash with a NOS replacement cover that looks quite good. They found that by careful positioning they could replace the old rectangular oil pressure gage with two round gages, thereby giving a full compliment. At some point we will have to install and connect this, perhaps the same weekend that we install the seats. We decided that as much as we would like to use Bill Y's aftermarket seats they just won't fit well enough without some sort of surgery and so far nobody has had the chance to look at them and see just what would be required.

Here's a side view with the shocks cranked up a bit. steve was ultimately able to get about another inch out of them, enough to be able to drive the car, provided the big bumps were avoided.



Finally, after cleaning up and getting ready to cover the bare spots we were able to spray some semi-gloss black in the engine compartment, giving the car an altogether more civilized appearance.



But then as you can see we went and spoiled all that.



Now before I sign off I have a question. We purposely cut one side of the mule for oversize tires and left the other stock. It may be possible, with a maximum backspaced wheel to fit a tire in the rear wheelwells. I don't know for sure, the mounting plane would have to be right about at the outer tire bead and the lug nuts would project a bit beyond the sidewall but it might be possible to find such a wheel and fit it to the car before Durham. OTOH, we now know exactly what cuts must be made to move the inner wheelwell outwards enough to retain full suspension travel with oversized tires. Unfortunately it does not look like the Omni flares will cover this very well, although more mocking up needs to be done.

What I need is some sort of a consensus before I jump in and make the wheelwell cuts. I know Steve favors the first approach, but the rub lies in finding usable wheels. I favor the second, and in fact I am not the biggest proponent of Omni flares, one only needs to take one look at my roadster to see that. What I would propose to do is to make the wheelwell cuts, drop the suspension back down, and if time runs short, leave the outer wheelwells off for Durham and then sort out the wheelwells afterwards. If we can cover them with the Omni flares using the tire of our choice that's just fine, and if not I do have an English Wheel which we can use to form some sheet metal to give a pleasing result. So what say you, oh members of B.A.D.A.S.S. at large?

Jim

RE: the mounting plane would have to be right about at the outer tire bead and the lug nuts would project a bit beyond the sidewall

I think it's going to be hard to find a wheel like that. Plus, unless you do a similarly backspaced front wheel, the fronts will have more dish to them than the rear which would look odd IMO.

The omni flares wouldn't cover my rear tires (just 225's but wider than stock rear end) so I extended them. It was pretty easy to do using just a slip roll. I'll post a pic later today.

Wow, you guys are amazing. Looking very good. I can't tell from the photos how much the rear tires extend past the body, but I think it would be better to use the Omni flares and widen them if necessary as Rob did. That would give us a greater selection of wheels as well, although the ones on the car look pretty good for a Grand Touring machine. Don't need a lot of flash when you're packing big inches. ;-) Have you decided on the clutch setup yet? I'll be glad to send a check if you don't want to go with the pull type slave cylinder, or if you do want to go that way I can order it and have it shipped directly to you. Your choice.

I will go ahead and cut the fenders and then we'll figure out the sheet metal after we've finalized the wheel/tire choice. Steve is in agreement also. Brian is going to try to help out on the clutch. I know as a young guy with a family to raise it represents a significant strain on his budget, but he wants to be a part of this and I think he's an asset, so whatever we can do to work with him to make it happen would help. Any way you look at it the HTOB is going to be the easiest solution for the clutch.

I will be dropping out the IRS and relocating the upper shock mounts and adding in clearance for the calipers so that the brakes can be serviced more easily, then adding the final touches before the unit is reattached, at which point it will be complete except for the brake lines and cable. While I have it out I'll cut the wheelwells and flatten the bump. This all has to be completed before Easter. Anyone want to help?

Now I have another item to discuss. Some time back when we were talking about induction systems, hood treatment and such I mentioned the Buick GS "Star Wars" air cleaner. It's time to revive that discussion. Here is a link to the repop units made by Ron:
[www.buickperformance.com]

These are cast aluminum but not cheap, at $500 complete, in primer. I've talked to Ron and he'd really like to help out but it's a very small volume business, very labor intensive, and I just suspect that he'd really be going out on a limb to put the assets represented by one of these into advertising. I've renewed discussions in the hopes of maybe getting an unfinished one at a reduced cost, but here's the thing. The air cleaner is going to stick through the hood. There is simply no question about that. We sat the Qjet carb on the intake and even the fiberglass hood like Kelly has would not close completely, and that is without an air cleaner stud in the carb. So there's no way possible that we can avoid cutting a hole, and I think you would all agree that a round chrome air cleaner sticking through the hood is just going to look terrible, even worse if we leave the hood off. But, the hood that came on the car is fiberglass. It could be trimmed to the contours of a "Shaker" style scoop and look just fine. And, the Buick air cleaner is the closest thing we can get to an appropriate shaker scoop. Personally, I think it would look just fine poking out above that fiberglass hood.

What do you guys think? I know it isn't the easiest thing to visualize, but take a look at that link and give us your thoughts.

Jim

I agree Jim, it would look great and really set off the big Buick theme of the car, but it's pretty expensive for our budget at this time I guess. If we could get a "footprint" of the unit's size so we could cut the hood now we could probably whip up something that would look ok for now and install the StarWars scoop later.
I'm not sure about the large Buick lettering though. Seeing that in the center of the hood would somewhat take away from the MG or British side of the car which is what I thought we were trying to stress as well as the V8 theme. Looks like the lettering can be changed, perhaps we could use an MG logo instead and see how that looked. What would really be nice would be if we could get the BADASS logo made up for it!
Something like this perhaps.

Bill,
That looks good to me. Hope we can manage something like that.

Steve

I have ordered brake caliper pistons from the UK, cost us about $50. We made $150 on the doors from the mule. Steve paid $100 for the rack and in addition to the eighty or so in the account leaves us with $250 to work with. That's the state of the finances fellas. Not enough to buy an air cleaner with just yet, but we've got half of it.

Jim

I'll go along with whatever y'all decide. I personally think that a $500 air cleaner is real hard to justify on a shoestring budget project.

I completely agree, but what are we to do? We could leave the hood off but it won't travel real well that way and be a real nuisance to clean up. We could leave the carb off but then it won't run very well. I don't know that it's going to run by June anyway so maybe it's a moot point. But if it does it will have to have some sort of an air cleaner. The only one we have so far is an old rusty chrome 14" Mr.Gasket or some such cheap thing and I sure can't justify holing an otherwise good hood for that piece of cr@p.

But let's take stock of the situation a second, what is the car worth as it stands, or as it will stand in June? The body is decent, solid, good interior and custom modifications. Probably worth a couple grand or close to it. The engine? The heads alone are worth (when complete) about $2500 so probably close to 4 grand. Custom bolt-in Jag IRS rear suspension? Probably close to double that. So we're already talking about a $15,000 car here by the time you add in things like tranny, radiator and such, and that doesn't even address the paint. That's our cost. That's what we as a group have donated to this project to make it happen. So by the time we finish it, we'll be looking at a $20,000 car which is so unique that it cannot be assessed solely on the cost of assembly, and that rightfully should have a fair market value of about double that, or possibly even triple.

Now I know what you guys are going to say, an MGB conversion is never worth what it costs to build one, but is that really a true statement? There are some very unique examples that may be exceptions, and the three that immediately come to mind are the Berlin GT, Dan Master's GT, and Terry Schute's GT. Do I feel justified in placing this car in the same category? Very much so. It is the first of it's kind. The first 455 Buick powered MGB, the first grass roots group project conversion car, the first completely bolt-in IRS suspension and perhaps more, and we hope to eventually bring the paint and the wiring up to the standards this demands. Perhaps at some point the interior as well.

So I don't think the question is what is reasonably affordable, I think the question is, what are we capable of achieving? We've already proven that we could do more than anybody ever had any right to expect. We bought the second body outright. We paid retail price for the heads. Did anybody ever, in their wildest imaginings even dream, when this project first started that we'd ever do anything like that? I didn't.

I think what we should look at is what value is added to the car. Now if we cut the hood and slap on the 14" round filter, the value of the car and of the project as a whole just drops like a stone and our image goes to $h*t. There's just no other way to look at it. Please correct me if I'm wrong, that round filter sticking through a round hole in the hood just screams of blacksmithery. Not that I have anything against blacksmiths but their efforts are more properly directed towards horseshoes than fine precision machinery. OTOH, if we pay the man his asking price and buy the star wars filter (and it may be possible to raise the funds to do this by selling off spares, if the two items on ebay right now sell we could do it) and then neatly trim the paint-matching fiberglass hood for that filter housing, this immediately sets the car apart as something different and unique. For Buick enthusiasts, nothing screams BIG BLOCK quite as effectively, and the car will be instantly recognizable from a distance. As you are all aware, that is an area which I do know a thing or two about. The fit and finish on my roadster may not be what it could, but that is likely to change and more highly skilled hands will be at work here.

So it isn't just about the cost of the part. It's more about the image of the project. If anyone hers can make a suggestion as to how we might elevate that image as effectively and do so at a lower cost I'm certainly all ears, but I've about exhausted my stock of ideas and this is the best one I've been able to come up with.

Jim



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2009 09:41AM by BlownMGB-V8.

I'm not 100% sure how the "starwars" air cleaner will sit with the bonnet profile. I'm also not sure how large the hole will need to be for a hinged hood (as opposed to a lift off hood). I'm sure if I was looking at it in person I could get a better idea.

However, it may behoove you to fabricate your own air cleaner so that you can better accommodate the lines of the bonnet and clearance needed for a hinged opening.

Trevor "I don't a dog in this fight" Jessie

Jim, I'm not against using the air cleaner, in fact I think it would look great on the car. I was just thinking about the expenditure at this time. If we knew that we would definitely use the Starwars and we could get the dimensions we could cut the hood now which would allow the carb to fit with the standard air filter. Perhaps a bit of sheet metal welded up for a new top cover would make the air cleaner blend with the star wars cutout a bit cleaner and we'd have something that would look decent until we could fit the real item into our budget. I wish I was closer, I know I could take some of my spare 20 gauge and bend up a reasonable likeness to the star wars top that would fit over the top of the Mr. Gasket piece. A little paint and we'd be in business until we had the extra money. I pledged something towards the car this month, at least $50 towards the clutch or what ever, so I'll send a check this week for that and if we can scrape up the cash for the air cleaner and still get the drive train hooked up go for it.

OK, here's another option sent to me by my brother Dan:

[cgi.ebay.com]

Rough casting, no base, and no knob but to my mind very acceptable. What do you guys think?

Jim

Well, you have been touting fuel injection real hard on the other forum. What is this carb business, anyway? ;)

Is there a low profile MPFI option?

BTW, I'm bugging out for Florida in 2 hours & may not have internet access 'til the 29th of March. Y'all have fun without me.

Still need an air cleaner. The carb was a donation. Someone wanna donate a low profile MPFI? No? Well I guess it's a carb then. We may manage to go to efi at some point, but not before June.

So what about it? We have the money to buy the rough cast unit. Do I get it or is there a better suggestion?

Jim

I say but it. Offer 170.00. You can do a lot the with the 330.00 saved to make it look great!

Thank you Tom. Any other recommendations?

Jim

He has 8 of them. Offer $100.

I doubt that will fly. This guy has runs made of the rough castings. Ron buys the castings and finishes them. They may not be moving real fast in either category but the cost of the production run is probably close to a c-note each and I doubt he'll just give them away. The existence of the "Make Offer" link suggests he may give some on the price depending on circumstances and with the current economics maybe a bit more than otherwise, so I'm guessing $150 might be pretty close to what he'll take. But that's just my opinion and it's no better than anyone else's.

I can't recall if it was Ron or this guy I talked to on the phone before, but either way I got the idea there wasn't a whole lot of slack in the operation, that they wanted to help but didn't have much wiggle room.

Any other recommendations?