Mission impossible

Galvanised subframes look good and they weren’t too expensive. I paid £600 for a 2004 Sunstorm in Nightfire red but it needed a huge amount of work. Apart from the subframes and Bilsteins and subframes all new bushes, ball joints and brakes. The back sills were replaced with Mike Satur repair panels. The front sills need doing next ad a driers side front wing. The work will go on and on but I am retiring soon and will need a continuing project or two.

I trust you’ve allowed a portion of your pension pot as disposable or have a supplementary & parallel revenue stream to finance your motoring addiction.
The other calculation you might consider; if you have arranged your finances in an advantageous way, the longer you live & providing you have not been profligate the more you have available to squander later in life, unless you want to leave your nest egg for your beneficiary’s to squander.
Just a thought from someone who had the great good fortune to chuck in formal payed employment a long time ago.
M

Although my wife only worked part time she has quite a generous NHS pension (God bless the NHS pension) . As for myself I was blessed with good pensions advice over thirty years ago, so hopefully we should be okay. I work on a house building site where the last house was built in February and we are in the process of clearing the compound with an exit date of the end of August. Actually the retirement has already started, due to the incompetence of management there are four of us (the only workers left) sat doing nothing for most of the day while we wait for them to organise lorries to take surplus materials away. We have been waiting for nearly two months now to move enough surplus bricks to build fifteen houses and thermalite blocks for ten.
My plans are to get the TF on the road in the next week or two, it's only minor work left to be done. Then I have a MGB GT bodyshell that I want to sandblast and prime before the end of September ready for any repairs that are needed over winter. I bought one of those pressure pot sandblasters and thrown away everything but the pressure pot, I am hoping the You Tube videos give a true picture of how well these can work if modified.

It would be good to hear your experiences with the MGB GT. My 1979 B GT has been languishing for years after a reasonably good start replacing the front crossmember and steering gear from the PO's accident.
It runs and ive moved it around the drive under it's own steam but i got it to that point over 5 years ago. Last year I rebuilt the saggy seats with new foams and webbing and have repaired the front edge of the bonnet with new metal, thankfully this is the only rust damaged panel, The worst thing about that car now is the paint as it was repainted very badly as a short term measure following an otherwise good restoration job by the PO which ate up all their budget, pre their accident. The only answer to a car covered by microblisters is to rub almost the whole car down to bare metal. A daunting task that ive still not properly started on.

I'm just about ready to start putting the front end together :woohoo:
The last job was to replace the upper arm bearings and I didn't want to spend more ££ on tools so I made my own.
A filed down washer some 8mm all thread, 4 nuts, 1 large washer and a bit of tube from an old gazebo frame did the job 😀


The 1st 2 came out OK but I got bored so I just put the washer in and whacked the others out. 😇

I have been thinking about temporarily indvidualising the spheres (maybe permanently) when I put the front end back in.

I have seen a kit on ebay that would allow me to have that option but is it a good idea?

R40MGF wrote:

I'm just about ready to start putting the front end together :woohoo:
The last job was to replace the upper arm bearings and I didn't want to spend more ££ on tools so I made my own.
A filed down washer some 8mm all thread, 4 nuts, 1 large washer and a bit of tube from an old gazebo frame did the job 😀

The 1st 2 came out OK but I got bored so I just put the washer in and whacked the others out. 😇

Mike Satur sells an oval washer that slips in through the bearing then it rests against the bearing at the other end, you then insert an old pivot shaft and whack it with a hammer. It took less than five minute to remove four bearings.

Your picture of that bush pusher could be a picture of mine, right down to the cranked ring spanner. Made originally for bush whacking the leaf spring bushes out & into series Land Rover suspension, it developed into a can do most jobs within the capacity of the threaded rod, which frequently stripped.
It’s whereabouts now is a mystery but I seem to remember “I’m doing the job tomorrow so I’ll get it back on Monday”. This was a Saturday & I was told he was a good bloke. Good at excuses & not answering his phone, good at running a red light when he saw me coming.
Bastard Barry thanks a bunch, at least it wasn’t the big welder. I know your not Bastard Barry the scheming turd, he’s in prison & my bush whacker is most probably in his mates unit.
M

You’re starting to sound like me! :bust:

Ah, sphere individualization, the thinking MGf owners conundrum. I made a set of individualizing adapters & they're in a box in the Hydro' box in the MG department in the garage, along with other parts made to weld onto my spare spheres. that was all before I changed my mind. The point of the hydragas system is to allow pressure created in one part of the network to be transferred through the pipework to be compensated in its mating sphere. Put simply one wheel goes up, the other comes down, resulting in a smoother ride than a conventional system, the smoothing of the ride in a small car & the reduction in pitching being a revelation at the time.
If you isolate one sphere from its mate this advantage is lost & you end up with independent suspension using gas springs, you would however be able to set the system up with exact ride heights & this might give the competition car an advantage. Taking this to its logical conclusion, if you had schrader valves welded to your spheres, you could adjust the ride height at each corner & dispense with the pipework all together, with the net reduction in weight.
If you have tip top units & a pump, you can play with the system until your hearts content, choosing, at the end of the day which you prefer.
Did you get your spheres tested?
M

I'm waiting until the rear ones are out so that I can get them all done at the same time.
Indivualising them something that I may try in the future.

I have just had a look at the Mike Satur kit and I wish that I'd bought that instead of the one I got.

I can't see the new bearings lasting as long as the old ones did.

I’ve a pair of suspension arms with Satur lowering knuckles which I’m going to fit, along with the regassed spheres this back end, just to make it more difficult for my wife & I to enter & exit the car. I stripped them down expecting carnage as you couldn’t buy an ok single malt for what I payed for them & they were as fresh as the day our Black Country artisan built them.
There’s a similar roller bearing in the rear brake mech’ associated with the handbrake, I knew they would need modifying so thought I’d try with some eBay bits, one had fallen victim to a size 9, you could see the print on half of the Jiffy bag & the second fell victim to being picked up & inspected. I got a refund kept the rubbish & put the job in abeyance.
M

I have sent you a message, have you received it?

Notanumber wrote:

It would be good to hear your experiences with the MGB GT. My 1979 B GT has been languishing for years after a reasonably good start replacing the front crossmember and steering gear from the PO's accident.
It runs and ive moved it around the drive under it's own steam but i got it to that point over 5 years ago. Last year I rebuilt the saggy seats with new foams and webbing and have repaired the front edge of the bonnet with new metal, thankfully this is the only rust damaged panel, The worst thing about that car now is the paint as it was repainted very badly as a short term measure following an otherwise good restoration job by the PO which ate up all their budget, pre their accident. The only answer to a car covered by microblisters is to rub almost the whole car down to bare metal. A daunting task that ive still not properly started on.