Jim

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Mike (A.K.A. Dai Pen-Mawr) asked me to scan the rest of the pictures I have on the restoration of my 78 US spec MGB. So, I did. They're here don't worry. First some background information, I think. In October of 1997 I bought this car after shopping for several months on the internet for a B. The car came from North Carolina and was in a semi-unusual state of rusting away, but mechanically sound. I bought it without a visual inspection, other than some rather poor quality black and white photos. It was my plan to have the body restored by a good specialist garage over the winter and then do the mechanical and interior restoration work myself after that. In December the head decided to crack and I had to advance the timetable on that portion of the mechanical work. In February this year I took a job working for a major avionics company in England. The move over also sapped my meager resources. But, the garage I chose for the body restoration said that they'd take my B into their shop and start on it when I could send them money. Before you start moaning about the risks. This garage, actually it's 2 under one roof, came highly recommended to me by several MG owners in the Cedar Rapids and surrounding area of Iowa. I stopped in several times to check the place and their work out. When I first went, they had 1 Triumph (TR6), 2 MGB's, 2 MGA's, 1 Mini and a couple of American makes in the shop area. The Triumph was a nearly completed restoration for a customer and looked very good. One B was in for an engine problem, one was in for some minor rust removal, both A's were in for body off restorations and were at different stages. I was able to look at just about all stages of work on cars, meet and talk with the guys and go through some scrap books of old projects they'd worked on. All in all I was impressed by the level of expertise displayed by these guys and after talking with some of the people who had had work done there I felt safe in letting them work on my B. Just for the record the garages are called Strong's Restorations and River Side Sports Cars. They're located in Swisher Iowa and I'd recommend them without reservation. Okay, enough of the commercial plugs. Let's look at the pictures.

Editor's (!) Note:- Jim has supplied so many pictures for this page you would be waiting forever for them to load if I left them full size (I'm not complaining though!) so most of them are thumbnails, click on them for the larger version.

This first picture is one of the pictures sent to me by the guy I bought her from. If you look carefully you can see the rust on the boot lid, rear quarter panel and on the door.

And here are the latest shots of the restoration work. These were all taken at the beginning of August 1998.

In these two pictures above you can see the front end has basically been removed. On top you can see the new floor pans in the picture on the left and the new rocker covers in the picture on the right. Before I left the US I also got a new bonnet, new boot lid, 2 front splashes and a new door skin for the right side door. These were the body panels that were the most obviously gone.

These three pictures show the fender wells. You can see where a DPO just hacked into the well for a couple of speakers. But you can also see how little rust there is on the interior of the fender areas. Of course I have no idea what that stuff is on the floor in the upper right hand picture.

Here are the left and right hand rocker covers. You can see that both were starting to show rust through spots.

The 3 pics above show the floor pans. These were really the worst of the body panels. The car was a real flintstonemobile when I bought her. Painful to look at, isn't it.

These next 4 shots are of the same floor pan area after the old panels were removed and the area was prepped for the new pan. Starting to look better?

And finally we see the driver side floor pan in with a close up on a repair done to the transmission tunnel.

This is a shot of both doors removed. The right hand door skin had the inevitable crack where the mirror was, so I had them reskin that door. They're also putting plates on the inside of each door under the mirror to strengthen that area and hopefully prevent cracking again.

And these are the two front fenders, ready to be cleaned up and painted.

Here's the next group of photos I've received on the restoration of my B. These photos stretch from November 1998 to mid January 1999, except for the first one obviously. Nothing too exciting in these photos. Mostly they just show the numerous pin hole rust spots that had to be removed as they worked on the body. I'll try to describe the photos as best I can, but some of them I've got no clue where they're located.

First off. A before shot This was how she looked when I dropped her off before heading out for England.

These next shots are the pin holes. Mostly before shots, but there are a couple of shots showing work in progress and after shots.

These next 6 were all taken late October, early November.

This shows the rust on the seam between the right rear quarter panel and the rear of the car.

Rust through spot Pin hole rust through. This time between the rear quarter panel and the cockpit bay.

Pin holes More rust spots found.

And again More again.

And again Right rear area between the cockpit and the boot lip, with some of the quarter panel joint rust visible.

This shows a tear out on the lip around the engine bay.

These next series were taken December/January. They are mostly work in progress pictures.

These next were taken after Christmas and show more of the same.

These next couple are all the same area. This shows the passenger side floor pan and the repairs done to the toe in front of the floor pan and the transmission tunnel next to the floor pan.

This is the drivers side floor.


Remember those holes cut for speakers in the front wings?


These are more rust repairs.

One of the snags that they ran into was the right hand door. Originally they thought that they would just have to replace the skin on it. But when they took the skin off they found too much rust to make it worth while. So, they found a good used door assembly. This shot shows the plate they welded to the inside under the wing mirror. That should prevent the dreaded door crack that is so common. By the way, does anybody need a brand new OEM door skin?

These next shots almost make it all worth the wait. These were all taken in January 1999.

These next 3 shots and the one above were taken during my mechanics "thumb" period.

You might recognise this door as the door assembly shown above. The one we replaced the old one with.

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� J Garber, except for the design and layout, if you don't like it blame Dai!

This web site is a combined effort and all contributions have been supplied by the people named on this site. All the bits are got together, chewed up, fiddled with and eventually published by Dai Pen-Mawr. It is copyright all of us and thieving bits off it isn't very nice and we would get all upset. Unless of course you put a great big eye catching link back to here next to the bits you nicked!

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