An emotional farewell

It is with the greatest sadness that I have to say good by to my long serving, hard working tool mate, my Draper 79340 Multi Tool. 

Yes for some time now Drapey hasn't been feeling very well and developed a stutter that often resulted in poor running and sometimes even stopped completely, until one day he went bang!

Oh well, time to upgrade and meet my new Dremel 3000!!!

Looking forward to some serious precision engineering!!

Footwell End Panel Repair - Completed

Finally finished off the footwell end panel. I found this repair particularly challenging as you have to lean across and right down into the footwell to do the welding. It is also hard to brace the panel in place, as you cannot clamp it, so I braced it with wood against the cross-member on the floor as best I could, but I found the panel didn't make perfect contact at every point so some of the puddle welds kept popping off and needed re-welding. But we got there in the end.

Small Victories

Every once in a while something on the project gives me a real boost of motivation. The other week I bought the sill end cap which is designed to close off the inner sill from dirt of water coming in from the wheel arch. With all the cutting out of metal and potential twisting of the chassis and with no real experience in restoring an MG Midget I was so happy to find that it slotted in perfectly!

A-Post Repair - continued

Now that I have finished the A-post repair I have to say it has been extremely challenging to get it to fit correctly so that it makes the door and wing gaps look half decent.

Offering up the new repair panel seemed to suggest all was well.

 

Getting everything in line and moulded into shape took a lot of time.

After a lot of checking and double checking, welding, grinding and more welding I offered up the front wing to check the gaps.

You might be able to see the gap at the top of the wing widens right where I have welded the new panel to the original A-post. At first I wasn't sure if this was the wing or the A-post. I couldn't understand why the gap was there as the original metal curves in as well.
This meant I had to put a whole load on new metal to rebuild the apex of the curve.

But we got there in the end. I have also improved the gap between the door and the a-post so it is even all the way down, especially around the corner.

One of the final jobs was to crimp the flange into place. A pair of pliers and a block of wood was called for.

Carburettors Clean Up - Update

Remember these?

Well they now look like this...

I am really happy with the end result here. It was a lot of hard work as I don't have a blasting or cleaning cabinet, but toothbrushes, gunk degreaser and wire brushes have done the job. I will need to buy new filters, jets and gaskets but looking forward to getting them back on the engine.

Footwell End Panel Repair

Whilst waiting for the paint to dry on the A-Post I started to prepare the footwell end panel ready for welding. Just the same with all the other repairs I drill holes on the welding contact points, spray with weld-through primer and add a couple of coats of chassis paint on those areas that will be hidden forever.

There were a couple of signs of rust on the original metal chassis so I wired brushed that all back to clean bare metal and applied a coat of rust converter. Once dry I will prepare for welding in the normal way.

A-Post Repair Continued

The next step is to prepare the outer A-Post repair panel ready for welding into position. This involves drilling more holes and spraying a coat of weld-through primer on the contact points, but applying chassis paint to those parts that will be covered up for evermore.

One of the issues that I had with this panel was when I test fitted it for the first time the door gap increased near the top as you can see below:

 

There was something not quite right and I took me a good while to work out the the panel had not been bent in the correct place. The photo below shows the panel after I had flattened out the flap and re-bent the flap in the correct place with the red line showing the old crease. The door gap is now correct. Panic over!

A-Post Repair

I am sure that I remember saying some years ago that one of the most important parts of restoring an MG Midget was to make sure that the doors fitted. Everything has now come down to this point. Did the chassis bend and twist when I removed all of that rusted metal? Or by some chance of luck did it all go according to plan. Welding in the door hinge repair would answer that question.

I cannot remember how many times I fitted the door whilst attached to the hinge repair, but it must have been a lot. I took my starting point from the top part of the repair against the original A-post as you can hopefully see from the second photo. I then made sure the repair was vertical and tacked a couple of small welds to hold it in place, then test fitted the door again to make sure all was lining up as it should and finished welding it in.

This left a small custom repair job that took no time at all to sort out. I do love making these.

I had to fix another rust patch around the windscreen support hole which also turned out very nice.

This now only leaves the outer skin of the A-post to fit and if the test fitting is anything to go by we are looking ok to crack on with it. 

There is some adapting to do to get the line correct on the top left of the repair to ensure the gap is consistent, but I am confident it will work out.

So looking forward to finishing this front side.