MG Sports Cars

That does it. I'm moving to Australia!

Thanks for the kind comments. It was a labour of love (and money).

The car is about as together as the photos show, but work is back on in anger and i'll post progress shots.

The flares are from Paul Trevathen and I'll be tackling the rears this month I hope. I need to box in the rear chassis rails as we cut them in half originally to give us more tyre clearance (pics shortly).

I'm cutting the rear part of the rear guard to it follows the panel at the side of the boot. This allows a nice big raised area for airflow, which means only the front part (wraps around the sill I think) is going to affect ground clearance.

I'm not sure what you mean "Rear clearance was tough while trying to keep the monocoque together under the flares". I'm about to embark on this and would like to understand if there's something I'm missing or a pending mistake.

All up it was designed to have 100mm which is minimum for road clearance. We might be able to drop it a little more for the track, but I'm not sure how much vertical adjustment there is. I'm probably better retaining some clearance in the chassis and dropping the spoiler/splitter lower.

I also can now have a side exhaust which gets rid of the big muffler and clearance issues around the diff. I may need a muffle and I see they make flat rectangular ones which hopefully won't destroy ground clearance. I think they are only as thick as the chassis rails.

I should not the photos are old and I can take new ones of anything anyone is interested in.

Cheers

Byron

This is what I mean by the monocoque connection to the the flare. As you can see I cut the inner wheel well, which is structural, and fanned it out and then welded it to my flare so that my flare is structural. Well the clearance problem, and I have 8 inch wide wheels in the rear, is the outer edge of the tire hitting those fanned out and welded pieces. So my ride height is limited by this tire contact point, I have it set just high enough for the suspension to travel without hitting. Basically I would need to tub the inner fender (and shorten axle) or fan the wheel well more and make the flare larger to decrease my ground clearance.


There are a few more pics under my "how its done"
[www.britishv8.org]

I see what you mean. In my case there is no inner guard, tub or in fact on this side here even an outer guard. This means I'm free to drop the ride height. Without flares the tyres would scrub on the guard around the crease line.

What I need to do is box the frame rail with some 2mm sheet. The back half template was fairly easy to create. The front part is harder as the bend is slightly 3 dimensional. I might have to do it in a few pieces as 2mm is hard to bend and the gap between the rail and what was the shelf behind the seats I'll do in 1mm. It's not structural, but a good place to collect dirt. The tub will then run from the rear to here.

I then need to replace the outer guard, position/cut the flare and voila.

I'm sure it will be 100x more fiddly than it sounds as I've never done this before.

Byron

Don't forget your tire clearance will change if one wheel is up and the other is down. Also allow for sidewall flex.

Jim

Ok yea I see you have done a lot more cutting than I had originally thought so what I was saying is irrelevant. I like how you tied the cage into the frame, that whole area looks really strong and well thought out.

WOW!

Good points Jim. The tyres are 18" so sidewall flex will be minimal, but the side to side issue needs to carefully checked. It was always tight and my hope is that the flares will give me plenty of room. A rough fit up shows about 2" extra clearance which should allow an 11" rim with a spare inch. I shall see.

Ivan, all that cutting is great in terms of clearance but it's a pain to reconstruct (and I'm only just starting). The cage etc is great, however I have to get parts of it redone to comply with the latest regs. I've worked out how I can do that by leaving the bar you see and the cross bar for the top shock mount. I can then replace the main rollover hoop , cross brace, and the rear mainstays. The current mainstays aren't straight (slight dogleg) and they are meant to be, mind you I can't see how they can, given they have tie into a certain point on the main hoop and the only place to put it (and keep the angle right) is where they are now on the chassis rail or further forward. I'll see when I talk to the cage guy in a few months. For now, there's work I can, and whilst I'm motivated I'm maintaining the rage!

I have lots of pics of this, but it's a it boring.

I cut out a plate for the chassis rail yesterday and need to clean it up for an exact fit and bend it slightly in 2 places. And next week I'll have power for the welder so I can start making a mess.

I also cleaned up some of the paint around the tail lights and discovers so much filler that it amazes me how poor the build quality was, mind you I don't know if they car was ever in an accident. The car is straight as we checked when it got the sills done, so it doesn't matter. I also discovers some rust. There is rust hole at a join near the tail light, but I can rust convert and fill with weld I think. There is a few other bits of rust, I can see oodles of it high up under the guard but it looks to be surface only, so apart from access to clean up it looks pretty good. I did discover the graffiti wheel I'm using doesn't get that black tar stuff off very week. I was thinking of trying paint stripper.

Byron



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/10/2014 07:08PM by choppedfish.

4 hours worth of work to clean up the old paint/rust and rust convert. I think I used every wire wheel/graffiti wheel/wire brush I own. The tail light section is very tight and fiddly. I had to remove a section which I'll need to make as it was full of rust and lead. I need to make some other bits as that panel you see is only really attached on the inside chassis rail. My plan is to weld it all round and connect it to the outer guard (spot weld) and seal vs the foam strip that was in there before (allowing it to sort of float).

It shouldn't be too hard, but getting it to line up on what could be considered the correct line will be fun. Mind you having massive flares will discuss any misalignments. And I must remember that it's not a concourse car.

After the rust converter the surface is a bit rough (mind you it was rough anyway) but not rusty now and now primed. Lots of filler will be needed to get it looking nice. The inside bits I don't care about the external bits came up ok.

The plan here was whilst the guard is off to get in and clean what would be hard/impossible with it on. I need to now clean/convert up inside the top half of the guard. An initial go showed some minor rust pitting but the panel is solid (no holes), it's a big area, but should take a lot less time than the tail light.

Fortunately there is not a lot of the car left, but I think I'll need shares in wire wheels.

Byron

Sorry it's been a long time since updates, but nothing exciting has been happening. I hurt my shoulder and wrist so there were some delays. Essentially I paint stripped the entire left rear inside and out with wire wheels and a little draw through sandblaster. It's taken ages and made me realise I like the assembly work not the paint/rust removable piece. Overall for a 50 year old car the rust is 99% only surface rust which is incredible.

The panels so far are in great condition and I'm sure the car is getting a lot lighter!

The plan is to send it off for bead/sand/media blasting in the next couple of months and get it back to bare metal. This will save a lot of time and wear and tear on me, and reduce injuries (wire wheels on grinders tend to want to kill you sometimes).

Meanwhile I fired up the welder and started closing in the chassis rail. I foolishly welded the whole lot and now realise I didn't get enough penetration. I need to get my shoulder better and then I can grind it all back and reweld. No big deal, just a waste of time.

Once that's finished and it shouldn't take long I can then attach the outer guard and add the flare. I had to remove part of the inner guard near the taillight since it was rusted through.

I have some questions I hope someone can shed some light on.
1) There is a lip near the door area that I'm not sure should be removed to attached the outer guard or not. The right side of the car has the full guard and I can't tell from that. The replacement guard is from the trim line down and logically the lip in question on the replacement panel goes on the door side. When the door is in place the gap here is very tight so I do wonder if this lip should be removed or not?

I've attached some photos of this.

2) The guard was removed on the outer edge of the ridge above the trim line, and the replacement panel sort of sits over this fairly well so I could join it here. I did notice however that the original ridge slopes down whereas the replacement panel is deeper and flatter, it's also varies in depth a little. Since I'm doing both sides I can make them even (i.e. flat). Also it's a track car and will have big flares covering most of the guard anyway so it won't be that neat anyway. Any thoughts on how best approach this?

3) There is an odd gap between the new outer guard and the door/sill area. This is missing again on the other side so I have nothing to compare with. Mind you I'm taking the doors back to a shell and welding in so this would be covered with the door in place anyway. Is there meant to be something here?

Thanks

Byron







Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/28/2014 01:31AM by choppedfish.

Attached are few more photos. A few showing the replacement guard and it and the original guard near the trimline and the also the mystery gap. In the gap photo the guard is not fully pressed in at the bottom (only held with my knee) so it's a bit bigger than it should be.

Cheers

Byron

Almost a decade later and things are finally happening.

The car ended up in storage until early this year because of “life”.

I did try and get it road registered but the Australian regulations are very strict regarding engine capacities vs weight of the original car and it was too hard.

More time passed and I now have a heart condition that precludes me from racing the car, but my son is now 16 and has the interest to race it. He wants to be a F! Engineer and racing a car will be learning experience. There is an MG racing series in Australia and the target is to race in that one day.

So with that in mind we have to first get the roll cage compliant and log booked, The old cage was not compliant mainly due to the use of chrome moly which is no longer allowed and my son is about 10cms taller than me and it wouldn’t be safe.

The original plan was to retain a lot of the old cage and build a new rear hoop and back stays only. But the more we looked at it we couldn’t find a way to provide adequate protection to the occupants with just a centre bar from the main hoop to the dash.

Also the fabricator didn’t like the rear control arm setup. Too weak.

So we are, with the blessing of Motorsport Australia doings full type 3b cage. Normally this would be what is inside a sedan vs. an open top car but our first rule is safety above all else.

Attached are what a type 3 B cage looks like.




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2023 04:19AM by choppedfish.

Here are the latest progress pics.

So much has been removed compared to original. But steps backwards means steps forward.

Photos are off to Motorsport Australia Monday to ensure we are on track. Which I’m sure we are.

I'm delighted that you're continuing this wonderful and inspirational project!

Progress!

Motorsport Australia is happy and the fab work is incredible.

NOTE: I'm not sure why the first image is rotated. It's correct when you click on it.







Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2023 07:47PM by choppedfish.

Control arm brackets in place.

Cage welded. Looks ace.

New seat in position. Just fits... phew.

Next up is the control arms. Anti-roll bar mounts and panelling and tubs.

And it's finished.

One minor change to show a better connection between backstay and chassis and it can be registered.

National level type 3b cage. Well above what we need but safe.

And the cage is registered. Big step forward.

Working on pedals and EPAS now.

And it's home.

The car was stripped back to bare metal and a few months of work has the tubs and boot finished.

The rear guards had to be re-attached including the sections at the back of the doors and then cut away for the tubs. A lot of welding and grinding.

As we will be running flares I didn't bother grinding back the welds where the tubs meet the guard as you won't be able to see it.

We have around 14" from the inner part of the tub to the inner edge of the flares so will likely go for 12.5" wheels.