1950 MGTD Restoration

Welcome to my restorations website.(click here for the MGB GT web site) I have included a small number of the pictures taken as the project progressed even though I tried to take pictures at every stage to ensure that the restoration was fully documented. If you are in need of a picture to assist in your restoration I may have one that could help. You can email me at "btsmith at island dot net"

On February 1st, 1999 a new MG made its way into the Smith's garage.
Car #3376 had been sitting in various storage locations since 1976 but from all indications had not had an easy life up to that point. Pictures make it look a lot better than it was! It rolled, but just barely.

Taking it apart was easy as most of the wood was rotted out, there was lots of rust and finally, indications that it had been hit very hard in the right front early in its life. The right front suspension was bent and twisted and sat about 1" further back than the left side. This was just the beginning, the frame required a great deal of work on a frame machine as it was "bent every way possible".

Glad I started with lots of enthusiasm! At least there was enough metal that we knew what it was supposed to look like. The only piece of the original wood framing to survive was the piece in the cowl below the mirror (see the black piece in picture below).

This picture shows the black piece of wood joining the cowl to the front frame section. This was the only survivor from 1950. Thankfully the new wood framing was easy to put together as wood work is not one of my strong points!

There was enough of the wheel well left that I could make patterns. Both sides had to be rebuilt like this.

Test fitting all of the body bits! This was done over and over until everything fit as required.

Doors were rebuilt first and then the body sides built to fit the doors. Somehow the metal in the doors had resisted the tin worm although they had been dented and banged a lot. The drivers door (just visible on the left of picture) showed evidence that it had swung open at speed and met the rear fender with all of the resulting dings and wrinkles.

After preparing the metal and getting some high solids primer on, it was time to fit everything up again. This process seemed to be never-ending but it paid off in the long run.

Body tub finally in paint!!!! In all of the rust and sawdust there was enough of the original car to determine that it came from the factory in black with red leather interior, the grille even had traces of the original red paint that showed up when the grille and shell were stripped apart. Somehow the car had remained black through the years as I was able to count 8 coats of black going back to the original coat. Stripping the vinyl off the seats revealed some of the original red leather used to cover the seats. An interesting observation was that the metal seat back frame was fastened to the plywood with little pieces of leather that were obviously left over when installing other covers as some were red leather and others were green leather, folded over the frame and tacked to the plywood.

Body fastened to the frame once again, it is now slowly going back together but this time the running gear is in place.

Front fenders being prepared. These and the front and rear pans are the last pieces to finish before final assembly.

Done! The engine runs, everything works and now its ready to insure. A minor setback just prior to this was the rear axle snapping while testing it up and down the driveway. I had not pulled the axles to check them and from the looks of the axle it was ready to go in about three places. A guess is that it broke due to a combination of a previous owners rough driving and the frame being so twisted that the rear end was actually way out of true.

Hard not to see the smiles. This picture was taken on one of the maiden voyages out and about visiting friends. We tried to get some miles on the car as just after this picture was taken we took it on a three day tour. We put on many miles and it got us there and back with no problems!

We took part in a "Tour to Tofino" on Vancouver Island. There were 26 cars (49 people) representing the Campbell River British Car Club and the Vancouver pre56 MG Unclub touring together over a span of 4 days. Only two minor breakdowns that were quickly rectified and everyone went home under their own power! Hard to see the variety of cars in this picture but we covered MG TC, TD, TF, MGA, MGB, MG YT, Triumph TR3, TR4, TR6, TR7, Jaguar (E type and XJ6), Morgan and Bentley