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Doors, Latches & Bodywork Fairing

Having finally completed the major body and panel repairs and welding, the time had finally come to get everything to line up with the correct gaps and to obtain the overall good looks of the MGA lines from the headlamps through to the tips of the rear wings. This included fitting the rear door closure plates and making the door catches work correctly. But first, as promised last update some hints on how to easily braze aluminium.

Repairing Door Skin Cracks

	This is the passenger side door and it has an aluminium skin. On my car this has suffered in the area of the top rear edge where it is subject to continual flexing when the door latch is operated. This movement resulted in a crack where the skin is folded to form the vertical that had to be fixed.
	This is a close up of the affected area from the front. As I worked on the area it became obvious the complete corner had a stress crack from one edge to the other. The picture shows how I have had to replace the complete corner with new aluminium.
	This is the same area viewed from the rear showing the generous overlap I allowed to reinforced the older aluminium. This increased thickness in this area does not affect the operation of the car in any way.
	The method I used to braze in the new piece of aluminium is very simple. You can now get a rod that uses a lower than normal temperature (732degF) i.e. an ordinary propane/butane or oxy-acetylene torch The steps are to brush the area using a stainless steel brush, to carefully heat the area and then to rub the welding rod on the joint area. The weld area must be cleaned using only a stainless steel brush. For a lap or butt joint rubbing the rod on the heated joint produces the weld metal as a solder like run . It is important that the heat that melts the rod comes from the metal and not the torch. I was always wary of brazing aluminium but with this rod even I could do it after a little practice. The same rod can be used do build up and casting repairs to zinc based metals as well as brazing aluminium. It must not be used on magnesium. (Rod supplier is www.easyweld.com)

Doors & Latches

	The passenger side work on the door is a continuation from the last update. Having fitted the door closure plate I made the welding good and ground everything smooth and opened out the slot for the rubber buffer at the bottom of the rear door post area. The next step was to refit the door handle/latch mechanism back into the door and to adjust the door hinge spacers in order to get the door gaps even both sides. This was easier said then done in my case because I had replaced both front and rear pillars. When I came to close the door I found that the door catch struck the mechanism on the door post. It became obvious that my door gap was too narrow due to the pillars being welded in too tightly. Because the door was fixed in size my only option was to slim down the rear door post latch mechanism and after much grinding I was able to reduce its thickness by a third (5mm) and got the door closing. After a couple of try's I adjusted the latch and got it to catch the door latch smoothly on both the partially and fully closed positions. I then noticed that the door could be pulled back out from the closed position by 4 to 5 mm and suddenly realised that I had not put the rubber buffer in place. This effectively kept the pressure on the door after closing it and takes up the 'slack' I initially found. It seems an insignificant item but to the functioning of the door it is very important. Not how much the reproduction closure plate had to be reworked to make it fit. The fitting of the drivers side latches went like a dream compared to the passenger side so I had the door opening correct on this side. The over impact of fitting the latches on both doors was that my previous efforts to match wings to doors was incorrect with the doors now being proud compared to my previously aligned wings. Note that I refitted the window frames on a temporary basis in order to check that it would fit the aperture with the door set in the final position. Full fitting will be covered later. Lesson learned is to always fully fit your doors and latches before trying to make them match the wings.

Wing Adjustment & Alignment

	I have included this shot for information as its one you don't always see. Its taken looking through the headlamp opening. The inner front wheel arch is on the left and the wing wheel arch on the right. The rectangular bracket upper center carries the inner mud guard and in the center background is the wing mounting bracket that takes the bolts that are accessed from inside the cockpit. I have included this to show how important it is that this bracket fits snugly to the body. This is sets up the alignment of the wing close by the front edge of the door and is important to getting that clean smooth look of front wing, door, rear wing look. Having set the doors I then had to redo all the work to make the wing edges match the new door locations. This involved redoing some metal work and making use of filler to match body panels. The passenger side panels were also relatively free of dents and creases and little extra work was required to get the door and front wing edge to match. As usual the rear wing gave the most problems and required some new metalwork to match the rear edges. Again I made use of filler to achieve the final matching. Part of the matching process includes getting the lower door sill edge to align with the bottom edge of the door and the lower edges of both the front and rear wings. This is again not an easy job but an important one as the way the body wraps under gives the MGA part of its classic shape.

Turn Around Time

Having got the passenger side to what I call stage 1 of body work it was time to turn the car around and repeat it all again for the drivers side. It was an opportunity to see the car on its wheel and to be able to stand back and look at. Bottom edges of wings and under door were not finished when the picture was taken.

It was noticeable that one of the old rear shock absorbers was sticking compared to the other and that this was giving the car a strange high tail and slightly lopsided look.

I am looking at the body work in 4 stages.

	Stage 1 is to get all rust/metalwork and rough fairing done
	Stage 2 is to get all panels to aligned and smooth rough sanding being done using grade 40 - 80
	Stage 3 is similar to 2 but using a light body skim of filler and sanding using grade 80 to 120
	Stage 4 is getting ready for painting again using a light body filler but using grade 240

Passenger side is at Stage 1. The following pictures show the drivers side getting to Stage 2. Be prepared to redo body work a number of times. You are lucky if you get away with once. Note our other old car in the background under the car port - a 1968 Bermuda Blue Morris Minor.

Wing Preparation & Priming

	Having turned the car around I worked on the drivers side. In this picture you can see the old aerial hole that I welded up and also where I had to put filler in order to fair in the top edge of the wing with the door. In general the drivers side wings and doors were in a much worse state than the passengers side. Both wings had numerous dents and excessive rust compared to the other side.
	Here are three stages that the wing went through. Initially the front wing was sanded and the area around the headlamp given some more attention, paying attention to the need to match it with the passenger side headlamp. Areas needing filling are marked
	Here is the same wing after filling and sanding. What I normally do is to fill and sand and then spray the wing in a contrasting colour. This lets me see how much material I am removing in order to prevent over sanding.
	A word of advice is to always use a rigid sanding block and not rely on using your hand and paper on their own. Using a block stops you from simply following every undulation (and there will be many) and allows you to take out the high spots until you match the low spots. Its hard work but worth it. Second tip is to not rely on machine sanding too much. Only use machines to remove obvious high spots. Always finish your sanding by hand.
	I had major problems with the rear wing and the three pictures show the transition from major dents (knocked out with a slightly domed body hammer and dolly the other side of the wing) to about four goes before I finally caught all the highs and lows of the wing.
	This picture shows one of the attempts to catch all the ins and outs of the wing and illustrates how bad my rear wing was.
	Here is the same wing after finishing with an etch primer. Smooth at last but still needing two more goes in order to achieve pre body painting standard. Note that even the priming process highlights the smallest surface dents and creases that will require filling.
	As part of the fairing process I carried out all the initial smoothing work needed on the door pillars and roof. The black appearance of the roof is due to the rust inhibitor I used (Kurust) to kill all roof rust which was only surface and not structural.
	Here is the same area after treatment, filling, sanding and priming. Note the continuation of the overall body lines from the front wing, through the door area to the rear wing.
	As part of the process I carried on around the rear edge to balance up the bottom edges of the rear wings and to finally get the boot edges sorted out. Always feel your work with the flat of your hand. It will tell you exactly where the high and low points are. If it feels smooth it will be ok visually. Rely on your hands not your eyes.

This update does not appear to show any dramatic changes from the previous update but that is the nature of restoring an old car. You must be prepared to redo the same restoration areas over and over again and expect to undo and redo your work in order to get it right. An old car is like a layer cake where you have to get the bottom layer right in order for the top layer to be correct. Be patient and don't be afraid to get things wrong. You learn more from your mistakes than by trying to follow instructions in a book.

August 2002

December 2005

All the photos up to May 2006 can be found here.

All stuff on this site Copyright the Barbers, May, 2006 .
For problems or questions regarding this web contact mga1600@btopenworld.com
Last updated: 31/05/2006 .