Project MG Midget

Buckle up, because there is lots to get through in our final instalment of Project Midget as we round up a few choice moments during the reassembly stage.

Our long-running project draws to a close as the interior is trimmed and the engine fitted, but are they ever really finished?

We had hoped to wrap up this project with the Midget driving off merrily into the sunset, everything working perfectly and the little MG set fair for the next 50 years of motoring. However, living in the real world as we do rather than some TV utopia, that was always going to be unlikely. In the end we have taken it out for one very brief run, but there is still work to be done. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first let’s explain some of the final steps to turn the Midget from a project into a functioning car.

Obviously, for that to happen it needed an engine and gearbox. Between these, we sandwiched a new clutch. I have never understood the idea of lining a clutch friction plate up by eye – if you move your head even fractionally to one side, it will look central even if it is not and that will cause it to judder as the power is taken up. I always measure the distance in from a point on the clutch cover or flywheel to the outer edge of the friction plate, and do that in three places. Combine that with feeling the lip by hand and eyeballing it around the circumference, I have never had a problem in getting it perfectly central. Am I missing something?

I also replaced the rear seal on the gearbox, the one that goes around the propshaft’s splined front yoke. I was in two minds about doing this because I did fit a new one to my Morris Minor project a year or so back, and had to do it again because the first one I fitted leaked. On a Minor it is not difficult to change the seal once you have removed the propshaft, but

on the Midget with its boxed in tunnel, it is an engine out job. Has anybody found an easy way of getting the old seal off? I haven’t! Tapping around the circumference with a drift, it takes ages to get anything moving. I got there in the end, and knocked the new one on using a large 36mm socket to stop it tilting.

To mate the engine with the gearbox, I put the box on a trolley and hung the engine from a crane on a rope rather than a chain as this made it easier to adjust things to get the engine level. Then I just had to drop it to the same height as the gearbox input shaft, level the box up on the trolley with a selection of wooden blocks and when the gap between the engine backplate and the bellhousing was even all round, I pushed the gearbox in and home it slotted. In fact it went on so easily that I wondered if I had forgotten a vital part of the clutch!

We got the engine and gearbox into the car without scratching the paint, but it was a very tight squeeze. Not as tight as the radiator and its shroud though – they were a real nightmare! This may be partly because the uprights have been welded onto new chassis rails. Throw new side panels and a replacement front panel plus a repaired radiator shroud into the mix and a few fractions of a millimetre here or there added up to something that just did not want to fit. It didn’t help that I had forgotten to run a tap through the threads and couldn’t get a good line of sight on most of them, so I could never be sure if I was struggling with a damaged thread or with paint clogging the captive nuts rather than holes that weren’t lining up perfectly.

Access to the side bolts is difficult in places, but do remember to look at the problem from a variety of angles because sometimes what seems impossible to access from above may be much more visible from the side through the wheelarch or from below. After several abortive attempts when I just could not get things lined up, I took everything back out and examined it. That’s when I discovered that one of the caged nuts was missing, so I ground off the cage so that I could use a conventional nut and bolt instead, and ran a tap through the other threads.

Finally, after a five-hour marathon, I had everything bolted up and could fit the hoses. That evening, I happened to pop back into the garage to measure something, and for some reason decided I might as well fit the fan blades now the

radiator was in. Some of you will be ahead of me here, but eventually it dawned on me that you cannot fit the fan with the radiator in place – there is simply no room to get in with a socket, or even an offset ring spanner, to tighten up its bolts.

Now, I dare say that I should have known this would be an issue, or at least checked it earlier in the day. After all, the fan is only going to work efficiently if it is close to the core. In my defence, although I have taken out dozens of radiators for various reasons in recent years, it is absolutely ages since I have worked around a mechanical fan. Even my Herald had been converted to an electric fan, and pretty much everything from the 1970s onwards came with an electric fan from the factory. This was a little depressing, because it meant that all my day’s work had to be undone. However, I knew I wasn’t going to get much sleep if I had this hanging over me, so even though it was 9.15pm, I bit the bullet and decided to do it now. The only bonus was that I now had a system for fitting the radiator that seemed to work well and I knew how everything went together – this time it took exactly one hour from undoing the first hose clamp to tidying my spanners away.

Moving on to the exhaust, as the pictures show, fitting the multi-branch exhaust manifold that came on the car

caused some headaches. I persevered though, because standard manifolds are not available in virtually any condition. I then spoke to Chris Bentley of the MGOC about the most suitable exhaust system, and he said: ‘You could use just the stainless back boxes and front pipe excluding manifold from a B036 system, as your car would have come originally with the twin box system running across the back of the car and exiting on the offside. One thing to bear in mind is that you might lose a little pep – the previous single box system is noisier, but offers better performance. The introduction of the twin box system was due to noise emission regulation and if anything it stifled the car.’ I went with the single box system.

Meanwhile, I was building up the doors. There appears to be no single correct order of fitting components here, and I did change a few things between one and the other. The bottom line is that it can be done in a variety of ways, but every step of each one is a total pain in the proverbial with terrible access and awkward angles.

For example, I found that the rear window runner would not go in the door with its bottom bracket on if I tightened down the crash pad first, nor would it go easily past the glass and the lock mechanism once I’d taken the bracket off. Each door took me three hours of frustration and retracing my steps, but I got there in the end.

I also had problems with the door locks. None of the keys appeared to fit them, but soaking the mechanisms overnight in penetrating fluid freed things up and got that problem sorted. The passenger side lock was fine, but on the driver’s side, the lock mechanism would work OK for several goes, then randomly stick and take a lot of force to unlock using a screwdriver from the inside. Clearly this would not work and would damage the locks in use. I don’t even want the locks because I’d rather leave the doors open than have somebody slash the roof, but it does need to be complete. After taking off the mechanism several times and cleaning it, the problem remained – a £10 secondhand replacement solved that one eventually.

This is obviously only a brief summary of many days of work, but the burning question you all want to ask is why we haven’t yet taken that drive into the sunset. Well, the engine idled perfectly with excellent oil pressure, but opening the throttle caused that pressure to fluctuate alarmingly, sometimes dropping too low and other times staying up where it belonged. There was no rhyme or reason that we could see to this. We fitted an external pressure gauge to check that the Smiths one wasn’t telling fibs, we replaced the oil pressure release valve and even fitted a new oil filter, just in case. None of that made any difference, so now the engine will have to come back out. That’s how classics repay you for all the time and money you invest in them! We will keep you posted on progress in future Driver Diaries.

3 You drop the whole assembly into the engine bay at a very steep angle. Simon raised the car up on ramps to give more room for crawling around underneath, because it really is an extremely tight fit between the crossmember and bulkhead.

1 When mating the engine and gearbox, it is essential that the crank is level with the gearbox input shaft. The rope made it easy to alter the angle of the engine, and the two units slotted together very easily.

2 The offside engine mount has to hook under the steering column, so that is attached to the bodyshell first. But if you fit the nearside mount to the engine, that will make it easier to drop into place.

5 Because the Midget’s propshaft tunnel is boxed in, you need to insert the splined end of the propshaft into the back of the gearbox through the gear stick opening before the engine and box are fully home. This goes through the new seal we fitted.

6 Getting the radiator and its shroud secured into position proved to be something of a marathon, as detailed in the main text. Eventually it was fixed in place and the coolant hoses could be connected up. Can you spot the deliberate mistake...?

8 Simon’s problems weren’t over yet, though. Remember that hole in the bodywork that Alan reshaped so carefully back on p53 of the Spring issue? It turns out that the aftermarket twin branch manifold wouldn’t fit through the standard hole!

4 You have to drop it slightly, move it back a fraction, drop it again and so on, with somebody from above (thanks Steve!), somebody from below (Simon) and ideally someone checking for clearance at the sides – that was Mrs G’s job.

9 Simon did consider going back to a standard manifold with its single downpipe, but they are no longer available new and it is very rare to find an uncracked original. In the end, he enlarged the hole again and then painted the cut edges.

7 Unfortunately it then had to all come back out again because there was not enough room to secure the fan blades to the water pump. At least the radiator went back in more easily the second time around.

18 The Dolomite clips separate out the two functions of gripping the weather strip and the door. That means you can attach the small section securely to the weather strip first, then push the bigger jaw up and onto the door’s flange.

10 The welding where the pipes joined the flange at the manifold end were good, but bulky. To ensure that the washers applied even pressure to both inlet and exhaust manifolds, they were filed on one side to fit around the bead of weld.

13 Simon had bought a new dynamo, as the output from the old one had been erratic. This needed the pulley to be moved across, but the bush behind this was too thin and so the thicker bush from the original had to be transferred too.

17 Moving on to fitting up the trim, the inner weather strips on the doors proved a nightmare to fit to the door shells using the standard U- shaped clips. In the end, Simon bought a set of these clips that are for the Triumph Dolomite.

15 With hindsight he should probably have rotated the distributor through 90 degrees and re- ordered the HT leads to suit, but instead he removed the drive dog, turned that around and put the distributor back facing the opposite way.

12 ... so that it could sleeve inside the manifold. The markings drawn onto the pipe with a Sharpie pen show how far it has to go and in what orientation – it is easiest to mark this during a trial fit before exhaust jointing paste is applied.

14 The Midget came with a very nice 123 distributor fitted by the previous owner. With the HT leads pointing upwards, Simon was not keen on how the low tension wires where they exited the distributor body rubbed on the starter.

11 The mild steel exhaust that came on the car was basically sound, but the tailpipe had separated from the back box. So Simon bought a stainless- steel single box system from the MGOC. He had to cut the front end off this...

19 Still on the doors, the new skins had to be drilled for the door mirrors. Simon was lucky enough to have access to another Midget to measure where to put them, then protected the paint with masking tape before drilling.

16 It looks a little odd to have the HT leads exiting away from the spark plugs, but they reach easily enough. Rotating it through 90 degrees to get a better compromise is one of those jobs to go on the ‘maybe some day’ list.

23 The two parts of the Tenex fastener itself simply unscrew from the hood and are easy to fit. Simon used a pair of circlip pliers to get the first one off, but the new set came complete with this bespoke tool for the job, so subsequent swaps were even easier.

24 The Midget came with these speakers across the rear bulkhead closing panel. Although Simon has not fitted a stereo to the Midget, leaving the speakers in place was easier than filling the holes that had been cut.

22 The Tenex pegs around the rear deck to which the sides of the hood are attached when erected were tricky to fit under the plastic cover. Note that these were fitted before the carpet had been installed as seen last issue.

20 On any bodywork that has to be drilled, trimmed or otherwise finessed in some way, any bare metal that gets exposed should be protected with paint. Simon keeps a tin of red Hammerite handy for this purpose.

26 Also to make the most of what boot space is available, the spare wheel was secured facing down so that a tin of spares and tools could go inside. It will need a plywood or hardboard disc cutting to go on top though, and soft padding.

21 Simon made an elementary mistake when fitting the door catches, not realising that they were handed. Getting them the wrong way around meant that the interior handles would not work, but swapping them was easy.

25 However, boot space is at a premium, so he removed the speakers’ cones and replaced them with plywood covered in vinyl. Two have been done in this shot, with just the central speaker left to go.

34 Alan Denne then came round to help fit the bonnet. This would have been easier if Simon hadn’t fitted the catches first! They got there in the end though, with a tap on the side with a hammer wrapped in masking tape (to protect the paint) providing the final clearance.

27 Speaking of wheels, Simon bought a set of five Blockley tyres. These have a tall sidewall that suits the age of car perfectly, providing the perfect mix of grip, aesthetics and comfort. We shall report on performance in due course.

29 Simon removed the numbers to straighten out the panel and repair the broken letters, then added a steel panel on the back to stiffen it up. He wanted to do this rather than fit a new number plate to keep at least a little of the car’s heritage.

31 The rubber seal on the stick itself was also rather chewed up and so was replaced. Hopefully this combination of new parts will have eliminated the zizzing that Simon had noticed when he first collected the car.

30 Meanwhile, this nylon cup and spring under the gear stick had been missing, but was on lengthy back order from the usual MG specialists. Eventually Simon thought laterally and got them from a Morris Minor specialist – same gearbox!

28 The front numberplate on this age of Midget is only secured to the sloping top of the bumper with two machine screws through a couple of these wedges. As a result, the aluminium plate is vulnerable to getting snagged and bent.

33 The captive nut on the bonnet into which the bonnet locking pin goes was missing. It is just possible to get in with a spanner and hold a nut in place, but it helped to take the spring pressure off using some cable ties.

32 Michael, who rebuilt the engine, came round to assist with its initial firing up. Oddly, it refused to fire until he swapped the brand new spark plugs that Simon had fitted with a known set of used ones, then it roared into life.