1973 - MGB - Long term project :)

Malt_Vinegar · 11 Jul 2013 at 10:04

I inherited a 1973 MGB GT from my dad a few years ago now.

He Bought it new(ish) in the mid 70's. He kept it for about 5-6 years. He then sold it (so, early 80's) My Brother was born 81, so it went before him I think!

It was sold to a local lady who wanted a small car to drive her young kids to school, and for driving at weekends.

It stayed in her ownership probably up untill the early 90's when my Father spotted the number plate whilst working, and followed the lady home. He then offered to buy the car back from her. She recognised him, and agreed to sell him back the car

He had it on the road every other summer for a few years, till it was laid up for almost 10 years. I always had a hankering for working on the car, and he agreed to transfer ownership to me as he struggles with steering it, and getting down into it comfortably. So it was not going to get used again by him.

Initially, I just serviced it, and put it through the MOT, which is passed first time!. I think I added an MP3 headunit to replace the tape-deck, and I drove it for the following summer, only when there was no chance of rain, and didnt do much else to it. Its main job was driving me to cricket matches!

However, things started to go a bit wrong. The clutch slave cyclinder blew, and I had to drive it back home without the clutch, which was an interesting experience

I decided to tackle the job myself, and after a few days of getting the parts together, I tackled my first ever clutch job. It took me a weekend, as I was very methodical and had to bend the copper piping (the old one rounded off when it was removed!) without a pipe bender and work out a route. I fired it up after refilling the system, and voila! The thing only went and worked, and the previously notchy clutch was as smooth as silk. Although there was a slight airlock that caused me to have to pump the clutch after a few miles (which I since fixed).

Bouyed by this success and because I was also noticing some niggles that were annoying me, so I decided to start on doing some smaller jobs to try and tidy it up.

I wrote a list of these things

Drivers Door - Not closing/opening correctly
Drivers Door - Dropped, poorly aligned
Front Seats - Spongy, uncomfortable, loose, and BROWN
Door cards - Worn, loose and BROWN
Carpet - Smelly, worn, BROWN
Rear seats - in great nick, but BROWN
Interior in general - BROWN and smelly
Wheels - Original Rostyles - very old and ugly
Horn - Barely working
Spotlights - Not working, looked like they were wired up by a blind man wearing mittens.
Engine - Needs a lot of choke to run.
Battery - ancient and crap
Paintwork/body - Fairly straight, but paint is old, cracked in places, and some rust showing on seams

Some of these are being addressed at the moment, some are already done, and a lot of the list have yet to be started.

I will flesh this out with some more pics as I go along, I have a fairly good collection of photos from the various jobs along the way.

Conanius · 11 Jul 2013 at 10:07

I love these threads !! Pics please :-)

Confused · 11 Jul 2013 at 10:15

Excellent - more old cars to look at

Malt_Vinegar · 11 Jul 2013 at 10:36

Removed, images were huge. can rehost them now

Malt_Vinegar · 11 Jul 2013 at 22:45

Ok, this was the day it came out of the garage, and went off for its MOT..

Just had an oil change, and a charged up battery, drove it down, bit of an italian tune-up on the way to the garage, and passed

Janesy B · 11 Jul 2013 at 22:51

Looks nice and clean, shame about the big old sunroof though.

bledd · 11 Jul 2013 at 23:37

Looking great mate, good job!

ElectroBlaster · 12 Jul 2013 at 01:00

Threads like these are epic so bring it on! Love these old cars

Dr Who · 12 Jul 2013 at 07:07

Lovely car and looks like it's in the hands of someone deserving, will watch with interest

breadturbo · 12 Jul 2013 at 13:52

Is it a positive or negative earth? used to have great fun my grandads old posi one

lordrobs · 12 Jul 2013 at 14:47

Awesome! I very nearly bought an MGB GT a couple of years ago. I'll be watching this thread with interest!

Malt_Vinegar · 12 Jul 2013 at 14:49

Thanks guys

I have a load more pics I will try to get resized and hosted tonight.
I might give fitting the new seats a go this weekend if I get the time.
I have bought a set of mx5 seats to replace the old ones, just need to fabricate some adaptor plates from some steel I had cut to size and collected yesterday

Its a negative earth now

been converted to single battery too.

vanpeebles · 13 Jul 2013 at 09:35

Nice to see another MGB owner on the boards

Malt_Vinegar · 13 Jul 2013 at 23:18

Ok, so I managed to get the seats done.

The old seats looked like this:

They were a bit smelly, uncomfortable, ugly and had terrible mounts which moved about too much. They also throw you out of the seat at any given opportunity!

So I looked at all the options I had to sort the seats. You can spend a lot of money on leather covers, new foams, and new rails/frames/etc, but i decided to see what else could be done. It seems that MX5 seats are touted as a good sized replacement, but would need custom mounts.

So, i bought these seats on ebay for £60:

So, the first thing to do was bend the end pieces flat, using my vice, this was nice and simple, and the MX5 rails were now correct for a flat floor.

Then I needed to deal with these locating lugs, as I really don't want to drill holes in my nice floor!

Bit of time with an HSS drill bit, and I had this:

A bit of precision bashing with a hammer, and I had this thing falling out:

Which left me with this:

Repeat 3 more times, and no more annoying locating lugs!
Funnily enough, once these were removed the new hole was the perfect length to install the rails into the old holes. Problem is, they are not wide enough! So some extra fab work is needed.

I got on to a local steel firm, and had them make up four 500mm x 70mm plates, and I planned to team these up with some nuts and bolts I had lying around:

So, first things first. Screw the original bolts into the floor, and leave the heads raised. Cut some cardboard to shape, and push it into place, push the bolts heads through (or cut them if your neat!) and this gives you some idea of where the original heads are.

Now, the clever bit, slide the new sea on its rails onto the template, which is quite tricky in a small garage, so I went in the back door (ooo-err), like so.

Then poke through the mounting holes on the new seats, so you mark the cardboard.

Once you have done this, you can remove the seat. Then you should be able to fit the template, like so, onto the removed seat:

Ok, so now the hard work is done! Drill the holes to the correct size for the bolts you are using into the steel blanks, tap a thread into the holes for the new seat mounts (makes it much easier to fit and re-fit the seats later, and you have this:

Repeat with the other side, and you have this:

You can test fit at this stage. Once you know the fit is correct, remove the bolts from the steel and give it a quick coat with whatever paint you have lying around.

Now move the steels under the carpet, make the correct holes:

Install the new seat, do it up tightly, and use washers

Repeat for the other side, and you get something like this!!

The seats need a bit of a clean up, and polish, but they will come up almost perfect

Malt_Vinegar · 13 Jul 2013 at 23:30

Also, whilst I was doing this job, I removed the old horns which almost failed me on the last MOT and decided to switch a new set

Additionally, I decided to remove the spot lights, and associated wiring. It was a bit mental down there. It looks like the spots were piggybacked from the horns, and the install was not done too well, from what I could see

So, it all came out, and i got it back to the original wiring, with no spots installed at all.

Old horns first:

Spots next:

As you can see, a new fitting kit is ready to re-install, but i want to remove, and change the wiring on the spots themselves first!

Luckily, most of the original wiring was in decent nick, so i tested it and the new horns just needed bolting and plugging in, and they worked perfectly

And, all installed:

Some of the removed "aftermarket" wiring.

Next part I will hopefully detail how I adjusted the poorly fitting driver's side door, and fixed the faulty locking/unlocking mechanisms.
I also want to get some new door cards as the ones I re-trimmed did not work too well

Malt_Vinegar · 14 Jul 2013 at 18:15

I have decided to change thw door mirrors next. I have a pair of bullet mirrors to do the job. Need to drill some holes in the doors though to make them fit. But they should hopefully be a lot less wobbly than the 40 year old originals!

Malt_Vinegar · 22 Jul 2013 at 23:02

The rear seats were still brown and loose, so I took them out..

You can see part of the new covers in this pic. Really easy to do, pull out the staples, slide in, staple up:

Then you should end up with something like this:

Attach the rear carpet panel (part of the full interior i fitted before) and some of the brightwork:

Then do the same with the seat-base and you end up with something like this!

Malt_Vinegar · 22 Jul 2013 at 23:23

Last year I removed and re-trimmed most of the interior panels, found the pics I took just now.

Some of the larger panels were easy, Ones like this were just a case of removing, covering, and screwing back into place:

Opposite side, done

Looks slightly better, and more in keeping with the rest of the darker interior now!

Then came the tougher interior panels, and these needed some dismantling first:

Then some re-covering, seen in progress here:

From the back, it will end up looking something like this...

Refit the brightwork and other stuff:

Rinse and repeat a few more times....

Done

Ready to be re-fitted!

Maccapacca · 23 Jul 2013 at 02:11

Awesome

Pics of de spotlights please

Unluckyalf · 23 Jul 2013 at 04:42

I do sometimes cringe a little at these kind of threads. With classic cars like the MGB GT it seems a shame to pull out the original stuff and putting more modern stuff in to replace it.
It would have been nicer as a proper restoration project, but i do appreciate that restorations are invariably more expensive than fitting cheaper, more readily available parts.

1973 - MGB - Long term project :)

Tea Drinker