Tuesday, 9 July 2019

Battery Tray Repair

I don't know why but I have been looking forward to working on this repair for ages. Probably because it is always right in my face looking at me from the front of the car.

The battery tray is really badly rusted.



I needed to cut out the worst of it in the hope I can weld in a new panel, without having to replace the whole section.




So far so good! Just need to clean this all up and cut out a new piece of metal and weld it in, but with all that waxoil that someone has painted on there I'll have to wash it down first with degreaser or the welds will become decontaminated.

I will also have to sort out this little hole as well.



Thursday, 4 July 2019

Nearside Triangular Support

I remember when I first got to look over my MG Midget and thought at least the nearside triangular support isn't as bad as the other. 

In some ways I wasn't wrong, but just because it didn't look like this...



... doesn't mean it will be a quick fix.

Ultimately I found some rust and if I don't deal with it now it will bother me for the rest of time. So that mean't pretty much the same amount of work as before.

I think this is the only photo I have of the nearside when I first stripped the car and you can see it looks in much better condition than above. There is just a small rust patch in the bottom right corner which I thought would clean up.



but it turned out to have a few small holes!



It was at this point I decided to repeat the same job as before, which meant starting with the end panel.


Now that was all taken care of and back to good metal I could get on with the main structure.



But then I had to deal with the badly fitting repair panel. 



That needed the same alterations as before.


I don't know why heritage have made the panel that don't fit but my local Moss supplier assured me they have always been like that. At least this time I knew what I was doing!


There were a few more welds to make good to seal it all in correctly and make a replacement splash plate that was previously damaged, so now it should last for many years to come without me worrying about that rust!

Sunday, 23 June 2019

Pressing on

As the weeks continue to fly by I am doing all I can to maintain work on the MG Midget. The list of jobs to do on the chassis is coming down and I think I am nearly at the point where I can potentially list them here! I am still just trying to get as much done as possible.

There are still a number of little jobs that seem to take as long as the big jobs.

For example, this little hole has been staring at me for months!



I have been putting it off partly because there was bigger and more important sections to complete but also it is in a really tricky location, right down in the engine bay before the transmission tunnel.

Thankfully I am still a little flexible, so got on with it, but it was not easy to get the welder torch in there and with the welding helmet and a light source!



Tuesday, 28 May 2019

Making progress on the floor

Recently I have been pushing on trying to complete the whole underside of the MG Midget. This has included finishing welding in the left hand floor panel which has been going well. One of the jobs was to reattached the transmission tunnel reinforcement plate.




It is certainly looking more complete now!



Next up is finishing the triangular support in the engine bay, and then the plate underneath the front chassis frame which is all bashed in from some accident years ago.



Depending on its condition on the inside I'd like to straighten this out and weld it back in. But who knows what lurks behind! I am also thinking of removing the underside of the chassis legs to see how bad they are, especially as they were quite bad when I removed the old floor panel. It will also allow me to see how far the damage to the front of the chassis legs which do need to be replaced.


Saturday, 27 April 2019

Passenger Footwell Update

It has been a few months since my last post. Life again has rolled its dice. A new job and a big push to finish the house has limited my time in the garage working on my MG Midget.

There was the odd time I managed to grab an hour here and there to try and keep the progress going.

Here's an overview of progress so far:

Footwell Side Panel:



After cutting out the old panel the new one fitting perfectly.

Inner Sill:



The inner sill also welded in very nicely. There was some small adjustments at each end but all in all a very smooth fit.

Test fitting the out sill:



I wanted to make sure the outer sill aligned correctly and thankfully it did. I checked with the end caps and like the off side of the chassis they fitted well. Looking forward to getting this panel in place.

Offside Floor:


Think this looks so good compared to the last time I took this photo


After nearly an hour of test fitting I was ready to start welding in the passenger floor panel today. It will take me a good few sessions to complete this large section, but again the alignment is looking good.

On a sad note my grinder packed in today, oh well, over six years of hard work took it's toll. Kind of excited to get a new one though!

Offside Triangular support:


Originally I thought this side wasn't too bad compares to the other side. I was wrong! Again!