Righting the previous wrongs on the BGT

Having inspected the former Classics World project MGB GT and decided to buy it, I now had to crack on and sort out those bodywork issues I identified last issue. Very briefly for those who may have missed that issue, the driver's side was all good, but the passenger side was not so pretty. Some repairs had been made with lots of small plates welded together rather than having one single large plate made up, but that welding looks sound enough. However, where the inner sill goes up to join the floor at the back on the nearside, they had attempted to weld a repair section in, but the only bit of weld that actually joined the plates to the car was along the bottom, with the rest of the repair panel being welded onto thin air rather than metal.

So I took out the sections that had been allegedly welded in and replaced them with new metal that I shaped. At the front there was another plate, but that had been done without taking the wing off so it was only welded as far as they could reach. I took the wing off and finished that area off properly.

Higher up, there was also a split just below the screen. I've never seen a BGT go there, but oddly enough I was talking about it with my son, and he's doing a BGT at the moment that has cracked in exactly the same place, also on the nearside. I wonder if any readers can explain why they might have gone there? Mind you, Karl's BGT is stripped to bare metal, and the welding on that makes the welding on my car look comparatively professional!

With the wing off, I could dig around the bottom of the screen pillar to see the full extent of the damage there. The curve at the bottom was all made from filler, so I dug that out and made up a repair section to weld in. That was nastier than expected, but at least access was now good. It was more of a problem on the split because I really didn't want to remove the screen if I could avoid it. In the end I was able to lift the rubber up enough to weld up the split in very short bursts, so avoiding putting too much heat into the metal under the rubber and melting that.

I knew that the toe board was going to need work, but that was all easy enough while the front wing was off. The reinforcing section higher up was in excellent shape – whoever repaired that in the past did a proper job of the welding. The only thing they didn't do is where the splash guard goes in, they didn't reattach the top part of the flange so you couldn't close it off completely. The daft thing with the splash guard is that it doesn't go over the top of the trumpet, which is why you

need an L-shaped bit to be welded in there – the rubber seal then goes over both parts and seals off the gap. Perhaps if it had rusted off prior to the repair they might not even have known it should be there, despite doing a proper job of the rest of the repair.

Overall the MGB was no worse than I had expected. I knew I would have to make up a piece of the castle section from the front to the centre of the door, about 18in in total, but the rest of the repairs were largely made up of flat panels. The inner sill had only gone to about 5in. I was surprised at how solid the floors were overall once I'd scraped the tarlike substance off the inside. And since all the rot was fairly localised, there was no point in buying new panels, I just made my own repair sections. I've got a cardboard box here with all the bits of metal that came off. It is a mixture of rusty original metal and plates that they had put over the top.

I was surprised how easily the front wing went back on. Normally you have a bit of a fight to get everything to line up and all the bolts to go in, but this just fell into place. The top rear bolt below the tax disc is always the hardest because access is tight, but this was no trouble at all. Perhaps the wing has been off and on so many times that it knows the routine by heart! I didn't even put the door back on first, and when I put that on later the shut lines were all perfect. It is nice when things go in your favour occasionally.

The only bits I did not weld were a small patch on the seam on top of the rear wing and where the tailgate was bubbling across the bottom. I didn't weld the wing because MG put expanding foam in every cavity on this age of MGB and there is a very real risk of this catching fire when you do any welding in those areas. So I had to use P40 fibreglass paste there, which I don't like to do, but really it was the only sensible option if I wasn't taking it back to a bare shell. As for the tailgate, I used P40 there as well – not something I would do on a car I was restoring for somebody else, but perfectly acceptable on my own car that I am putting back on the road on a modest budget.

As for the paint, I have read that the best primer to use with this colour is black, which I didn't even know you could buy. For now I have just sprayed some primer over the repairs and topped it with some black paint from an aerosol, just to protect it and tidy things up. It doesn't look out of place, but I will then take the car down to the paint factors to get some of the correct paint mixed up. I have to decide how far to go though, because the paint is quite badly micro-blistered in places. I think that having done the repairs that needed doing, I will now just put it all back together, tidy up the areas I have repaired with some fresh paint but then concentrate on getting it back on the road. I can always come back to the paint later if I decide I want to improve it further.

ABOVE: With the NSF wing off the BGT, Alan could see that the structural member had been repaired well (white arrow), but that a small L-section had not been fitted to carry the splash guard across the top of the inner wing (yellow arrow).

ABOVE: With previous repairs cut off, the full extent of the rot in the floor, toe board and complex sill structure could be assessed. It was not as bad as it might look in this picture!

ABOVE: The trick is to build the repairs up one section at a time, replicating the way the factory built the shell as best you can. Most repair sections were flat, though the outer sill curves behind the wing.

ABOVE: Alan also had to make up a new section of castle rail and weld that in. This is made of thicker metal than regular body panels. If your skills are not up to fabricating shapes like this, new rails cost from £70 upwards.

ABOVE: For the reasons detailed in the body copy, Alan repaired a few rust bubbles in the rear wing top and across the bottom of the tailgate using fibreglass repair paste before blowing on some primer.

ABOVE: And this is the sill after Alan had made all the repairs and seam-welded any joins. Those welds now have to be protected with seam sealant, all bare metal coated with paint and then covered in rust protectant.

RIGHT: Rot around this seam between the top of the front wing from the scuttle panel is common, but Alan had not encountered this split just below the screen before. It might be more common than he thinks, though.

ABOVE: And of course, once you start digging around any suspect area, the holes always seem to get bigger very quickly! Fortunately Alan was able to effect any repairs without removing the screen or melting its rubber seal.