MGB V8 Roadster restoration project Report 136

Transcription

1 20 th May CARPET & TRIM FITTING continued I carried on with fitting the sill carpets first. The upstand that the door seal rubber fits to is just the height of the seal. Therefore, there is not a lot of room to fit the carpet under the inside of the rubber seal. Pushing the carpet as near as I could to the seal it still produced a gap, which may or may not be covered by the footwell side trim pad board. Laying the carpet in its correct position with the masking tape on the retainer also lined up I was able to locate the screw holes for the self tappers with the point of a scriber. I cut about ¼ off the area where the carpet touched the side of the door shut seal. Previously, marking the positions with some bits of masking tape. Working from the centre outwards, the fixing screws were fitted. V8 Register MG Car Club V8-restoration-Mike-Macartney-Report-136 1

2 The stabbing with a scriber method was also used to find the hole for the seat belt LH anchorage point. Marking round the scriber, for the seat belt hole, with Tailors chalk again, stolen from Jane s sewing box. It s a good job she doesn t read any of these reports! First section of the carpet fitted. Using a ¾ hole punch to cut the hole in the carpet for the position where the seat belt mounting bolt fits. V8 Register MG Car Club V8-restoration-Mike-Macartney-Report-136 2

3 Rather than take the sill carpet out to punch the hole I placed some wood blocks on the floor to spread the load. The sound proofing made hitting the punch rather bouncy! On the RH sill the rubber door seal needed some persuasion to fit onto the panel join upstand. The reason being that a new sill had been fitted on this side and the sill join had been seam welded along the top of the join. The hard rubber mallet did the job of seating the seal. It always surprises me how I can make so much mess is such a short period of time. I think it is time for a clear up before I start the other side. Excess carpet was removed with a pair of scissors where the carpet had been sewn together. V8 Register MG Car Club V8-restoration-Mike-Macartney-Report-136 3

4 After fitting the two sill carpets I needed a break from the trimming work. A NUMBER PLATE INTERLUDE! The number plate cuts were welded up on the reverse side. On the front face the weld penetration needed to be removed with a grinder. When I cleaned up the number plate backing in the blast cabinet I left the three scribed lines as I hoped it would help the lining up when I came to attach the backing to the brackets on the car. I used the 8 bench grinder to remove the worst of the weld nuggets. I do like these photos of sparks as regular readers may have noticed. It is actually quite difficult to take photos of this sort of thing, on your own, it would help a great deal if I had three hands. The top edge had distorted a little with the welding and grinding and needed some filler. I can hear some people asking why I am bothering with all this work to the front number plate backing. Why don t I just screw the number plate to the front valance? My reason is that the fixings would need to be at the top of the number plate, because of the curve of the front panel. In addition, the front valance is made out of glass fibre. This grass fibre front valance is likely to crack where the fixings would be. Just try putting your hand out of the car window at 70 mph and you will see that the aerodynamic loading on the front number plate is very high. Your hand is probably three or four times smaller than the surface area of the front number plate. I know a job like this is very time consuming, but I enjoy doing little jobs like this, which is the main reason for doing the rebuild myself in the first place. V8 Register MG Car Club V8-restoration-Mike-Macartney-Report-136 4

5 Anyway, enough of aerodynamics, let s get back to some trimming while the filler goes off. X marks the spot for the centre of the hole. The tunnel carpet, in the set I bought from Moss, came with no hole for the gearstick. I needed to measure where the hole should be cut. As an aside, you can see the state of the sound proofing material on the transmission tunnel after working inside the car for a few months. If I was doing the job again I would leave soundproofing all the floors and the tunnel areas until just before I fitted the carpets. Two small cuts were made in the tunnel carpet to allow the gearstick to pass through. The centre console and lower dash panel were positioned and the hole for the gearstick was marked with chalk that I had used before on the sill carpets. Note, that I removed the handbrake to make it easier to fit the tunnel carpet. V8 Register MG Car Club V8-restoration-Mike-Macartney-Report-136 5

6 I am hoping that the carpet material that I swopped with Moss s supplier for the carpet section that they supplied for the rear floor above the battery may give me a spare potion to glue behind the handbrake, in the gap of the tunnel carpet section. In this photo, you will see that I have marked the position of the fixing for the centre box and arm rest. Where the rear of the centre arm rest screws to the transmission tunnel I will cut out, or punch out, a section of carpet. Never try to drill through carpet or vinyl as it will often wrinkle up the vinyl or twist the threads of the carpet around the drill bit. I ve been there, done that in the past. I think I can cut out even more carpet here, as the centre plastic section will cover this area. At the front of the transmission tunnel I have a problem. As the previous owner had hammered up the tunnel in this area to accommodate the 5-speed gearbox the gap for the centre console seems to short. I have removed all my sound proofing under the console to help, but the holes in the plastic do not match up with the holes in the metal behind. It is all these niggerley little problems that take a lot longer than you think to sort out. V8 Register MG Car Club V8-restoration-Mike-Macartney-Report-136 6

7 I found that this scalpel seemed to be the best tool for cutting out the hole for the gearstick aperture. I used it more like a saw than a knife. There you go the battery cut off switch can hide behind this flap and no one will know it has a cut off switch, as a long as you don t tell anybody! Sometimes you can have a bit of luck! The part of the carpet that the arrow is pointing to should tuck in at right angles across the front of the transmission tunnel. I have just noticed in this photo that I have missed a bit of cleaning on the black plastic. I have said before, writing these reports and taking lots of photos has been a great help with this rebuild. I would recommend it. Now it s time to tackle the carpet at the rear. First I better try and fit the hood and the tonneau cover so that I can locate the correct positions of the four pegs that hold down the tonneau cover when you are using it as a hood cover. V8 Register MG Car Club V8-restoration-Mike-Macartney-Report-136 7

8 Before I removed the alloy bars for drilling and tapping I marked them as to which side they were and where the top was. Jane marking the position of the pegs for holding the tonneau cover down. Marking the position for the tonneau cover stud plates. Fitting the hood frame is not the easiest job in the world! With one person holding the hood up the other person can fit the three long 7/16 UNF countersunk screws. I have used socket cap countersunk screws that can be done up with an Allen key. Sorry no photos of the hood fitting as we had no hands left to hold the camera. Tapping 4mm x 0.7 pitch threads into the alloy bar. V8 Register MG Car Club V8-restoration-Mike-Macartney-Report-136 8

9 The first stud plate fixed in position with M5 stainless steel countersunk Allen headed set screws. I mentioned previously that I will report on the highs and lows of this rebuild. I suppose you can call this mistake a low point. I attempted, with no success, to try and turn the broken taps out with a centre punch. A phone call to Tracy Tools Ltd ( ) and I ordered a set of three high speed steel taps, taper, intermediate and plug taps. Play stopped while I waited for them to arrive so I got on with a bit more work on the front number plate. ANOTHER NUMBER PLATE INTERLUDE! This is what you don t want to do. Shear off the tap in the hole. I lost concentration, did not use any lubrication and used too larger tap holder. I forgot that my set of metric taps were fairly cheap carbon steel ones that I had purchased as a set from Machine Mart, over fourteen years ago. It is the first tap I have broken since my retirement and I managed to break two of them. Dam and Blast! I needed something to weld to the number backing to strengthen it where the brackets would weld onto. I cut a couple of short lengths of 1/8 x ¾ mild steel bar to weld to the backing plate. The black part at the top of the number plate is some rubber to protect the front valence from getting damaged while I stick the number plate on the front valance and sort out the brackets that will fit to the underside of the bodyshell. V8 Register MG Car Club V8-restoration-Mike-Macartney-Report-136 9

10 That should be enough welds to hold them in place. Let s hope I have not got too much heat distortion on the number plate backing. The position of these strengthening bars is quite critical. I had a centre line scribed, but needed a couple of scribed lines each side so that when I was welding I could see where the bar should be. Bars blasted, clamped and ready to weld. These brackets will weld to the strengthening bars on the number plate backing and will bolt with the ears onto the brackets that I made, what seems ages ago, that are already bolted to the underside of the body front crossmember. This week I have been concentrating on getting the carpet and interior finished. Then all I have left to do is: fit the doors, fit up the doors, fit the steering wheel, attach the heater control cables, (mind you, I haven t a clue how to get to the back of the control knobs to fit the cables), take off the front suspension, paint the suspension crossmember, fit the front brake pipes, refit front suspension, etc. etc. You can me at: mikemacartney@btconnect.com with any hints or tips you have, which may help me, or other V8 Register members. 22nd May V8 Register MG Car Club V8-restoration-Mike-Macartney-Report