Michael,
Thanks for the introduction to british-cars. Today I have recieved several
messages from the group so I know that end of the transmission works. With
any luck I'll be able to send too.
As far as the MGA ... it is a '61 mk II that I've had for the last 5 years.
I bought it as a companion to my daily driver with the hopes of restoring it
to show quality. That was just before my first year of college and I figured
that I would have plenty of time to work on it - well now I just finished
school and I'm not done yet. I hit a road block when it came to painting the
body. I wanted to paint the car with the body off the frame with the fenders
separated to do the best job, but as you may well know this is a big job and
would be very expensive to have professionally done. I always figured that
I would learn how to paint and do it myself since the body needs little or
no body work. Anyway now that I'm out of school and working and the car is
located about an hours drive away, I can't fathom finishing it in the near
future especially since I am going to take a long time to paint it.
So far I have built the car from the frame up to a rolling chasis with body
still removed for painting. By measuring diagonally across the bare frame, I
found it to be well within factory tolerances, and with that in mind with the
fact that I had all the correct driveline components the car would be worthy
of full restoration. The frame and suspension parts were sandblasted and
powdercoated after new battery boxes were welded in place. Every part from
then on was treated the same way. Now the frame is built up to a rolling
chasis with new 60 spoke wire wheels and tire, new front hubs, all new
bearings and bushes new shock absorbers, etc. etc. The engine which was
professionally rebuilt was cleaned and painted the original engine color
after a brief emergency transplant into my driver mga ( less than 1000 miles)
Anyway when I tore the car down to the frame I made a list of all the parts
I was going to need, and bought them all together for a substantial discount.
The cost then was around $2000 for all of the parts, I can't imagine what it
would cost today. There are a few bits yet to get i'm sure, but not many. I
even bought complete hardware kits from Clarke Spares to replace all the
little screws, nuts and bolts, and crome bits with the correct original type
(linread). I nut riveted stainless bolts onto the frame (before powder coating)
to hold in the new floor boards. I treated the marine grade plywood with rot
preventative, painted them black, and then screwed them in with stainless
screws that matched the original. I can't tell you how frustrated i have been
in the past with the floorboard screws in my '59 driver. Things like that
will not ever happen with this mk II.
Anyway I've invested a lot of time into this project, but I'm not sure if
I can finish it. Whats left to be done is less than half but still mounting
if you don't know how to paint.
If there is an interested party, I'll let them take this off my hands for
the amount I have in it, or of course I am open to interesting trades.
Take this car off my hands or I'm going to put in a ford V8...I mean it.
eric.
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