Boot Floor In!

For the past 7 months I have been unable to get into the garage to work on the MG Midget, which has been really hard to handle, but we really want to finish the house as much as possible. We have been living in this house for 3 years now and we're finally coming to the end of the top to bottom renovation.

However now that much of the work has been completed I have been able to get back to restoring the car!

First up was to get that boot floor welded in, which has been a big task. 

There is still more welding to go which I will be tackling over the next week or so, but happy this is in and fits really well. Hopefully progress will now pick up.

Really need to spend quite a bit of attention around the rear wings and extension panels on both sides. Seems like they will fit...

Boot Floor Preparation

This has been a long time coming, but tonight I finally started to prepare the new boot floor repair panel for welding into place, now that the wheels arches and the rear panel were done.

There were quite a few holes that needed to be drilled. Around the wheel arches, rear panel and the new floor panel. It almost seemed a shame to drill the new repair.

Once all the holes were drilled I needed to prepare all the welding contact surfaces with weld through primer.

Getting proper excited now. All that is left is to apply final coat of black chassis paint to the box sections that will be hidden for hopefully some time to come. Then I can weld this huge panel in place.

Right Hand Rear Wheel Arch Repair Continued

I have been pushing on towards my target of getting the boot floor all welded in. It is now time to finish off the rear wheel arch that was without doubt one of the worse affected areas on the car.

But progress, although slow, has been made an it was time to finish this area off by welding in two bespoke panels.

After a few alterations the new panel fitted fairly well

Once all the welds were ground down the wheel arch was starting to take shape again.

Just one more section to go.

Looking much better! I wondered many times if I would ever get this finished.

Rear Panel Repairs continued

Grabbed a couple of hours to finish off the rear panel on the left hand side. I was a little worried about this as there were multiple curves involved which took a lot of banging with the hammer and twisting with pliers. 

Assess the damage and cut out the template.

Make up the new part and bend into shape.

Test fit and then weld in

Grind down the welds and admire your handy work!

Really happy I was able to close the gap using pliers on the inside and the weld the joins. I had to remind myself that this whole area will be mostly covered by the chrome bumpers.

Left Hand Rear Wheel Arch Repairs - continued

As mentioned in a previous post I needed to repair to left hand side rear wheel arch as shown below.

So I needed to manufacture a replacement part, but this time make sure it fits the curve of the inner wing panel.

Having already made this before on the right hand side it took no time at all to make the new part.

 

And this time I made sure the curve was correct before welding it in place

Once welded in it was time to double check

and then tidy up...

Very happy with that. Next up will be to finish off the right hand side wheel arch.

Bump Stop Repairs

I have also been cleaning up the bump stop plates. Not much to describe really, but as I don't have a sandblaster I used wire brush drill attachments.

They were very dirty but only with minor surface rust and grim and they cleaned up really well.

 I also coated them with rust converter

I will finish by painting on some black chassis paint on the inside to seal it for a few more years.

Rear end panel repairs

Although it has been a while since I have updated my blog I have been getting on with the usual rusty panels removal.

First up was some further work on the rear end panel where I had stopped from the last time I was working on this section, as you can see below.

I wanted to finish off each corner, which was... yes you have guessed it, make a template and weld it in!

and the other side...

It was clearly much worse. You can see the seam coming apart above where the rear wing joins to the rear panel. So I decided to do this in two parts because it would be too difficult to accurately shape the metal to fit perfectly.

I'll close that gap and the seam next time I work on this area.