The Webmaster Zone

Its nice to have some nice weather to work on the car outside. Fenders and doors are off, to the left is a pile of scrap including the fender that isn't worth saving, to the right is one of the doors sans door skin and the front valence that might be fix

Close-up of the door shell without the skin and the front valence which may be repairable... we have the new door skins now, so they should be on soon. Joe does a perfect factory-style fold & weld with the new skins.

Scrap. I pulled the door handles off (one screw, one nut) but the locks are frozen so they go to the junk heap. I'll probably get a whole new key set anyway, as I currently have a key for the ignition, a key for the trunk and a key for the glovebox!

Joe replaced the entire rear quarterpanel from near the hook for the soft top, down to where the dogleg attaches to the sills, and back around to the gas filler hole. The previous repair work was crap, the new metal that was put in was not welded to anyt

Time to dive in and start taking stuff apart. Out came the pedals, then the clutch and brake master cylinders as a unit with the bracket. Drilled out some stripped screws and removed the hi/low beam foot switch and the gas pedal stop, and the washer flui

Brake fluid really does a number on the bodywork. Looks like the car was never painted behind the heater, not suprising. Next comes the removal of the fuel line, pump and tank. At this point the front of the car is totally bare.

All sorts of crud in the heater, I'm sure it hasn't been cleaned in ages, maybe never. I'll backflush the heater core, strip all the old paint off, and reassemble with all new seals and repaint. There's several layers of paint on the box, you can barely

The pedals and MCs that I pulled earlier. Everything needs to be cleaned and painted. The MC's are being tossed and replaced. The early MC's are cheap and I don't want to take any chance of dumping brake fluid on the new paint when it's done. Actually

Off comes the handbrake lever. One of the screws was stripped, almost all the large phillips and pozidrive screws are stripped on this car. Apparently it was too much effort for the DPO to use the right sized screwdriver. You can see the beautiful fibre

Rear end sans gas tank. The tank has a little rust near the back, but looks solid and clean inside so I think I can restore it rather than replacing. Some of the bolts are undone from the top inside the boot, some from the bottom. I put a second jack un

The narrow wheelbase of the MGB (compared to American Iron) makes it important to get it lined up on the dolly "just right". Note, the driveshaft has been removed, which is a good idea when towing the car for significant distances. This camera is terrib

The stripped interior. Sorry about the lens flare, the sun was setting while I took the snaps. The DPO fiberglass transmission alteration to fit the OD transmission will be replaced with metal. Some surface rust on new floor pans already, not suprising

I removed the entire wiring harness (minus rear loom) connected to the dash. It was pretty tricky getting to the dash bolts with all the gauges in, but the right combination of long socket extensions did the trick. Actually, the radio did have to come o

Misc parts from the teardown. I hope I remember where they all go!

The REALLY bare front shot. Drilled out the screws for the RH headlight bucket, the engine is visible and has only the exhaust header still attached.

You know you're a bit car crazy when you think to yourself, "So that's what it looks like behind the dash!"

Here we go - passenger side seat out, everything out of the trunk, some interior panels removed.

The early type door before disassembly. Remove top & bottom screws on right-hand runner, then two nuts holding on quarterlight from the bottom and two bolts from the side (under plastic plugs), then screws holding bottom of quarterlight runner at the bot

The door parts I removed so far: window glass, right runner, left runner and quarterlight, regulator

The mostly bare door

Doors stripped, windshield out, rollbar out, most interior out. Note the notches cut out of the battery cover for the rollbar mounting plates (me) and the crappy fiberglass transmission mods (DPO).

The rear gets the same treatment. Generous use of penetrant to get those bumper bolts off!

On to the engine bay. Ran the car for a while to warm it up (feels like a race car sitting in it with no interor or windscreen) - then drained the oil and coolant. Removed distributor and generator, horns, and the radiator and oil cooler as one unit.

The easiest way is to remove all of this as one unit (radiator, overflow tank, oil cooler and hoses, shroud). Note the aftermarket expansion tank. I'm not sure if I will keep it, as it blocks some of the fresh air that feeds the carbs. Cooler intake =