Footwell End Panel Repair

Whilst waiting for the paint to dry on the A-Post I started to prepare the footwell end panel ready for welding. Just the same with all the other repairs I drill holes on the welding contact points, spray with weld-through primer and add a couple of coats of chassis paint on those areas that will be hidden forever.

There were a couple of signs of rust on the original metal chassis so I wired brushed that all back to clean bare metal and applied a coat of rust converter. Once dry I will prepare for welding in the normal way.

A-Post Repair Continued

The next step is to prepare the outer A-Post repair panel ready for welding into position. This involves drilling more holes and spraying a coat of weld-through primer on the contact points, but applying chassis paint to those parts that will be covered up for evermore.

One of the issues that I had with this panel was when I test fitted it for the first time the door gap increased near the top as you can see below:

 

There was something not quite right and I took me a good while to work out the the panel had not been bent in the correct place. The photo below shows the panel after I had flattened out the flap and re-bent the flap in the correct place with the red line showing the old crease. The door gap is now correct. Panic over!

A-Post Repair

I am sure that I remember saying some years ago that one of the most important parts of restoring an MG Midget was to make sure that the doors fitted. Everything has now come down to this point. Did the chassis bend and twist when I removed all of that rusted metal? Or by some chance of luck did it all go according to plan. Welding in the door hinge repair would answer that question.

I cannot remember how many times I fitted the door whilst attached to the hinge repair, but it must have been a lot. I took my starting point from the top part of the repair against the original A-post as you can hopefully see from the second photo. I then made sure the repair was vertical and tacked a couple of small welds to hold it in place, then test fitted the door again to make sure all was lining up as it should and finished welding it in.

This left a small custom repair job that took no time at all to sort out. I do love making these.

I had to fix another rust patch around the windscreen support hole which also turned out very nice.

This now only leaves the outer skin of the A-post to fit and if the test fitting is anything to go by we are looking ok to crack on with it. 

There is some adapting to do to get the line correct on the top left of the repair to ensure the gap is consistent, but I am confident it will work out.

So looking forward to finishing this front side.