‘On furlough, I worked 8am to 6pm, as if I was at work, to get it all done’
1976 MG Midget Jake Wootton, West Midlands
If you did that yourself then clearly the passion runs really deep.
'Yep. The love of cars started early for me. I used to go with my Dad, Uncle and Grandad around the race tracks in the UK with a succession of modified road cars from when I was seven or eight years-old. Today I am a 19-year-old apprentice Vehicle Engineer working at Aldon with some of the best in the business. My grandad owns an MGB and this may partly be the reason that this MG caught my eye!'
When did you find it?
'I spotted it in December 2019 for £1000. I thought I could put some skill and creativity into action in my spare time. As it turned out, 2020 was about to throw a lot of spare time at me! So this little MG became my furlough project. I kept my usual working routine and got up at 7.30am every morning, into the garage by 8am and managed to work on it daily through the year to get it looking how it does today!'
That’s impressive. Where did you start?
'After getting what I thought was a solid car home, I realised it needed a lot of work! I called upon my mentors, the lads at work! Andy, who formerly owned Archers Garage, suggested I start with a one piece front end thatworked a treat and saved a lot of welding work.'
But there’s more mods than that surely?
'Lot’s more. I wanted it to be bespoke. So installed electronic ignition, refreshed the engine and creating a fully reworked bespoke water system which was essential as I had to cut off the front chassis legs when replacing the front end. The heater has been removed and replaced with a laser cut piece of aluminium. I've moved the battery along with the expansion tank – I wanted to try this as I haven't seen it done on any other MGS. It tidies the engine bay and makes things more accesible.'
What about grunt and stopping power?
'I rebuilt the original set of 1.5in SUS with some three inch ram pipes (that make it sound fantastic) all followed by a lot of work on suspension and brakes. Apologies to the purists but the Ford Colorado red colour worked so well on the test patch that I had to have it! 3D printing and CAD helped with smoothing bodywork and it also created a switch panel.'
That’s a fantastic lockdown project. Now what?
'It is finished. but it’s not a garage queen… there is a hard but fun life in store! On it’s first run out it did its head gasket. I reworked the cooling system, skimmed the head and block and it runs much better now. I have actually bought another engine to build up. I want to get over 100bhp out of it and then take the car hillclimbing.'
Who do you need to thank?
'Thanks to Fix Auto UK for the paintwork, Midtherm for the powder coating, my cousin Tom who's spent hours of time developing a multitude of 3D parts that he's printed and we now use on other classic cars and obviously I must thank Alan, Andy and Roger at
Aldon Automotive.'