Seats, Steering Wheel, and Front End/Wheel Balance

Greg finished up the steering wheel with it's leather cover, turned out very nice:

Also the door panels are installed, carpet on inner sills, and rubber trim installed around door opening:

Seats are done and ready to be installed, a friend ended up donating some better used foam cushions which worked out just fine:

Interestingly, the red piping didn't line up real well from seat back to seat bottom until we swapped the seat backs between the two seats - wonder if they had been switched before?  They line up much better this way, passenger seat on left is well aligned while driver's seat on right is about 3/8 inch off.  Very comparable to our other MGB's. 

When we had the tires mounted we were told the tire shop could no longer balance wire wheels, their newer wheel balancer might mess up the splines.  They claimed this is a problem with all newer wheel balancers.  We had been given an old manual wheel balancer but knew we were missing some pieces of it - called the donor and got the missing pieces.  This thing works real well, here's a picture of the old Snapon model WBK-2:

It even came with a good selection of weights.  So today we got all four wheels balanced plus adjusted the front end to 1/8 inch toein.  We're getting very close to getting this thing on the road!  Unfortunately we need seats installed to drive it, and it's much easier to put in carpet and side panels in wheel wells without the seats in place.  Patience, patience.

Front Suspension Done, Water Pump In

Front suspension is complete, all bolts good and tight and cotter pins in place.  Inserted grease in all three grease fittings on both king pins.  New boots also installed on steering rack.  Installed new wheels and tires on front, looks very sharp:

Tackled water pump.  Turned out it would have been easier to just remove the radiator at the beginning, after working around it for about an hour it was much easier to just get it out of the way.

Had an interesting issue, the water pump uses two 5/16 inch steel dowels to position is relative to the block, probably to maintain clearances between the block and the rotating pump vanes.  These dowels were retained in the old water pump, and one would not come out even when gripped with my best vise grips.  Quick trip to parts store for replacements, no luck.  It's such a simple part, after some thought decided to make one of Ray's 5/16 inch drill bits about 3/4 inch short.  In this picture you can see the one dowel that came out sitting on the vise jaw, the one retained in the old water pump, and the 5/16 drill bit about to be attacked by an angle grinder in the area of the red mark.  Sorry, Ray, but the drill bit will still work.

Rest of the installation of the water pump went fine.

Interior progress and waiting on parts

Did get other half of front suspension dismantled.  Plus Ray's neighbor at PM Maintenance, Danny, was able to use a torch and get the lower trunnion bolt out for us, thanks Danny!

Waiting on parts to put front suspension back together.  Meantime we're moving forward on the interior.  But first here's a picture of a windshield pillar after Ray sanded it down and painted it, looks pretty darn good:

We got some PC-7 epoxy, which is what the pros on old steering wheel restoration use.  Filled in biggest cracks and put a quick coat of black paint on, looks decent in a picture but in person needs a little more work.  But we think it will look very good when done.

Vince brought the two door caps home to start dismantle and recovering using the vinyl and beading from our interior kit.  The biggest challenge is the rusted up fasteners which typically have one end in a blind location embedded in wood.  When the threads will not break free, then the part embedded in the wood starts spinning.

Here's the parts from the first cap after dismantle:

Here's a closeup of a screw anchor Vince recycled from an old MGTD interior door to replace the one he had to drill out to dismantle the assembly:

The plywood at the base of the soft member of the cap was pretty rotted away, and was damaged in trying to get the screw anchors out.  Vince replaced this with plywood from above mentioned MGTD since it's a flat piece with just six holes in it, then glued the foam to the piece.  Picture shows foam, then new plywood piece, then old damaged plywood:

Finally here's a picture of the rebuilt door cap next to the old one from the other side.  Turned out pretty good.

Hopefully with what he's learned, Vince can do the other door cap in much less than six hours!

Exterior is Done, Front Suspension Causes Troubles

The exterior of the car is now done, looks great!  Even let the new owner install the ultimate "bling" on the car, the MG logo in the middle of the front grill.

Next we wanted to replace the front suspension bushings, a very typical failure on these cars that causes the wheels to be "bowlegged".  When we took it apart though we found we needed more than bushings.  The lower trunnions on both sides are supposed to have a bolt connecting them to the front and rear A arms which rotates within the bottom of the kingpin.  These bolts had seized in place, which meant the rotation now occurred between the bolt and the A arm.  The likely reason they seized is lack of grease.  And the effect is "wallering out" of the holes in the A arms:

In addition, on one side this high pressure on a small area of the bolt had caused the A arm to cut half way through the bolt, clearly a possible safety issue.

So the lesson here is - grease your front suspension components!  Not a real expensive fix, but it is time consuming, including waiting on parts to arrive.

Dreaded Windshield is Done!

Installing the windshield with new rubber along the bottom of the frame is one of the toughest jobs on an MGB from our experience.  It wasn't easy on this car, but was reasonable.  We tried a method we read about using fishing line to hold the rubber in place, we weren't that impressed with this method.  Good thing we also did our prior trick of putting a wire inside the rubber extrusion to pull the flap back forward after installation.  Turned out real well:

There is a little bit of graying around the edges of the windshield, actually shows up more than in real life in the above picture.

The front headlight buckets and turn signals are installed plus the front bumper:

And the rear bumper is installed:

Things are lining up quite nicely.

And so the assembly work begins

Vince got started on assembly work while Ray is out of town.  We also have a friend named Greg who is interested in buying the car, and is willing to come help with the assembly process. 

So Vince and Greg worked today - Vince on doors and Greg on trunk and rear lights.  Greg got the trunk cleaned up and the rear lights installed (well, only one works but we'll get that worked out).  Here's Greg with the lights:

Vince has done a lot of work on doors, sometimes even earning the nickname "the door man".  He got the driver's door done (vent window, rollup window and regulator, all rubber plus lock/handle mechanisms).  Passenger side almost complete, needs rollup window to be installed.  Here's a view of that driver's door:

All going very well so far.

Painting Done!

A major milestone, the paint is done!  Here's four pictures that Ray took 5/3 at Darrell's: