MG Maestro Reader Resto
Peter Cooper’s MG Maestro Turbo ‘just needed some engine work’. But it all got a lot more involved…
Brought back to life, this Maestro Turbo restoration is truly superb.
With retirement approaching for Peter Cooper, his wife Joan had a suggestion to keep him occupied. ‘Why don’t you get yourself an old car and do it up?’ It was during the spring of 2014. ‘She was probably thinking it would take me 10, 15 or 20 years,’ laughs Peter. Instead, the restoration of this rare MG Maestro Turbo took around two and a half years. And that was quite a bit longer than he intended, due to unexpected setbacks.
When Peter started browsing, he had little idea of what to get. As a former British Leyland engineer, something produced by his former employer was the obvious choice. ‘I was originally thinking along the lines of an MGB GT, a V8 or even a C, or what about a Magnette? Then I noticed a Maestro Turbo advertised in Birmingham. That magic word ‘Turbo’ made it more interesting.’
Being based 150 miles away in East Sussex, Peter bought the car without seeing it. It was taxed and Mot’d, and looked reasonable enough in the photos. But the seller said it had major engine issues because he’d ‘misconnected an oil and a petrol line.’ When Peter turned up with a transporter, he realised the big ends had gone. But aside from that – and the fact that any stopping power was non-existent – it didn’t seem like too much of a challenge.
Back home, Peter finally had the chance to properly examine his acquisition – number 436 of 505 Maestro Turbos built. There was rather more sorting to do than he’d planned. ‘I found silly problems such as the gearlever shortened, radio wiring cut, the glovebox body smashed, and the aerial missing – even the hole had been filled in. But there was also a crease across the bottom of the spare wheel well – the worrying sign of a possible rear-end prang.’
Peter decided to get underway with a winter rebuild of the engine, along with work to resolve the butchered interior, having acquired some secondhand seats to replace or recover the damaged ones in the car. Taking the engine out over the Christmas period revealed more bodges such as missing fixings, broken wires and enough rust to convince Peter a full restoration
was needed. He sourced a replacement tailgate and its aperture panel, rear arch repair panels and full sills. ‘I persuaded a company in Bradford that was breaking an MG Maestro EFI to sell me the complete rear panel and spare wheel well. It was a game and half to find a courier company prepared to carry what amounted to the rear end of a car body from Yorkshire to Sussex without wanting to charge me twice what I paid for it all!’
Peter stripped the engine down to reveal it needed some work. Sourcing replacement pistons was a big issue. ‘The best I could get were new forged pistons at over £110 each. Buying those would have made the engine rebuild more expensive than the whole car! Eventually an MG forum member agreed to sell me his genuine, oversize turbo pistons.’
Also on Peter’s shopping list were a flywheel and clutch from later models, as BL had increased the clutch diameter by 13mm, thus making them better suited to the extra power. A new oil pump was also required, Peter managing to find one from a company that was doing a good deal on its final one in stock. ‘It was about 50 per cent of the normal price, with a replacement thermostat for the princely sum of a fiver. It goes to show, there are some competitively priced components out there if you are prepared to look hard enough.’
Julian Godfrey Engineering of Heathfield, East Sussex took car of the major jobs such as the rebore, but Peter put everything back together himself, including overhauling the existing turbocharger and sorting out wiring bodges and faults. ‘The garage floor space was ideal to lay the harness out in the same basic shape it would be in the car. It certainly made locating wires a lot easier, knowing first where they were in the car and then confirming the correct ones by the colour code.’
Bother with a bodged-up back end
Having stripped the shell, Peter discovered that a quite serious rear-end accident had been repaired with a lot of rather inexpertly fitted replacement panels. As welding is not Peter’s forté, a fellow enthusiast offered to carry out most of the repair work on the body – so it was sent off in April 2015, along with the body bits acquired. In the meantime, Peter amused himself by working on parts he’d taken off, like the droopy headlining which had
‘A forum member agreed to sell me his genuine, oversize turbo pistons’
been fixed with masking tape. Peter did it properly, using glue and reconstructing the cardboard former. ‘It’s known as a biscuit, probably because it breaks in to crumbs at the slightest pressure.’
Gradually, Peter became more concerned about lack of progress on the shell. After 12 months, he made a surprise visit to the lock-up garage where it was being stored. ‘What greeted me filled me with sadness,’ he recalls. ‘It appeared that little had done since I’d seen it five months previously, after its return from being shotblasted. More worryingly, none of the parts and panels were in the garage with it.’ Peter eventually retrieved the shell on a trailer, managing to pick up most of the parts on later occasions. ‘Of the 30 jobs I’d requested, 12 could be accepted, seven rejected, two were not finished and nine were not even started.’
So in June 2016, the shell went to a new restoration company. This time, Peter purchased a second Maestro to use as a donor vehicle, to save time and money. Everything went much better this time, and by November the completed shell was ready for respray. While this was going on, Peter found another firm able to supply cloth upholstery interior material very close to the original design, which is no longer available. The seats were redone, with the addition of front seat map pockets and a rear bench armrest.
At last, the time came to put everything back together, including suspension components that Peter had refurbished with polyurethane bushes, a stainless steel exhaust, and all the repainted glassfibre add-on protuberances. Larger front brake discs were used, so the original wheels had to be replaced with MGF items. Peter did the reassembly in his garage. ‘Space was so limited and the potential to strike the newly-painted parts on brickwork quite high,’ he recalls. He wanted the car as complete as possible for the PC Restoration Show in March 2017.
Enter the electrical gremlins
But there was a problem. The Maestro wouldn’t start – despite two auto-electricians looking at it, plus the replacement of all ignition components. It turned out that the crankshaft sensor wasn’t receiving a magnetic pulse from the reluctor ring due to the new, larger flywheel. Shaving the sensor’s aluminium spacer sorted things out.
‘Engine finally running, a gear was engaged and the clutch released,’ remembers Peter. ‘And there the car sat, with no forward momentum.’ Peter had to take the gearbox out and dismantle the clutch, but all looked fine. So he put it all back together again to find that, inexplicably, it now worked as intended.
Six months after its appearance PC show, the Maestro went for its first MOT in four long years. Aside from some weird electrical gremlins, it passed. And how does Peter feel, after all the trials work? ‘In some ways it’s sad, because all I’ve got to do now is drive it and enjoy it, show it and let other people see that it’s still around.’ Which is maybe why he’s just bought an Austin Allegro Equipe. After all, there’s still a lot of retirement time to use up…