Home
Diary
Background
About Us
Schedule
Archive
Feedback
Links

Body Off at Last

It has taken me four years to get the cars body to a state of strength where I could lift the body off the chassis without fear of it distorting in any way. I could not have done it though without a lot of help from my sons Tom & Sam. The boss (she who must be obeyed) also joined in to supervise the actual lift off. I picked August because I knew my sons would both be home from university and be availble to assist in the lift which definitely not a one man operation. We picked the hottest August that the UK had experienced since 1850 and on the day of the lift the temperature hit 40C. Car restorers never do things in an easy way do they.

More Inner Wing Work

	Whilst waiting for my engine hoist to arrive I busied myself with completing some work on the inner wing. This mainly involved removing the remaining old underseal and applying liberal coats of rust converter to all the inner surfaces followed by a coat of Hammerite paint that is made to cover previously rusted areas.

Engine Compartment Preparation

	On the left is the poor old engine. Still seized and refusing to turn. I am looking forward to doing something mechanical after all this body work for the last four years. Prior top lifting the body we had to clear the engine compartment of anything that might catch on the inner wheel arches as we lifted the body up. The pictures show the sequence of This left us with plenty of room around the engine.

1) Carburettors off.

2) Inlet manifold out

3) Exhaust manifold and what was left of the old exhaust pipe out.

Body Lifting Frame

	In order to lift the body you need to fabricate a lifting frame in order to spread the load and stresses of lifting to those areas that are strong enough to take the loads. Now I could only find examples of lifting a coupe body equally at four points using a vehical hoist. I was going to be using a single point lift using an engine hoist ( more later ) and hence the need for a frame. It is made from 1 inch square tube and is clamped to the body under the rear parcel shelf and is bolted under the vertical engine compartment bulkhead. {see pictures). Thanks go to my son Tom who did most of the welding on it and helped fit it.
	It uses a standard lifting eye bolt that can slide backwards and forwards between the double main bearers. This allows you to adjust the position of the lifting point along the length of the car to get the body balanced correctly. I included cross pieces to tie the two main bears together and to prevent any tendency to spread apart or flex independently. If anybody would like further details / dimensions please email me using the website email address.
	Finally the car was rolled outside and put back on axle stands ready for the lift. Why the axle stands? (see later). A last minute check was made to make sure that all the chassis bolts had been removed. Remember there are 31 bolts in total !

Body Removal

	This is my latest toy, a 1 tonne hydraulic hoist. As you can see from the picture, dealing with a coupe body poses a lot more problems than a roadster. We had hoped that the hoist would roll its legs under the car and that the end of the jib would reach the central lifting - Nope. The jib on maximum extension hit the roof line before it was any where near the lifting eye. The solution was to reach in through the windscreen but then the jib hit the dash board before it got to the eyebolt. The solution was to raise the car up as high as possible the made the angle of the jib less thus letting it go further into the car and reach the eyebolt.
	Fearing that it was all going pear shaped It was at this point that I declared my real preference was to to build chopper motor bikes and pointed out that I was wearing my Orange County Choppers tee shirt (God Bless Paul Snr.). As you can see people were not listening..........as usual. So retaking the MGA restorers oath of lunacy we went ahead with the lift.....................eventually.
	Here is the boss (she who must be obeyed) declaring that this MGA body was ready to be seperated from its chassis. She had checked that everything was ok and gave us the ok to carry on.
	As the hydraulic hoist took the load the lifting frame started bowing. It was obvious we were still connected to the chassis some where and that we were starting to lift the whole car. After a check round the car showed that the body was still stuck on the passenger side somewhere. I had done a lot of welding around the area of the vertical chassis post and at first thought I had somehow welded the body to the chassis on that side.
	Fearing the worse I used a pry bar between the body and the chassis from the inside. It was actually very easy to release the body and after 15 seconds of levering the body sprang free & upwards about 6 inches accompanied by the sound of tearing from the old mounting rubber and cork. So After 47 years the body final came off the chassis.
	My guess at the point of balance was too far forward and the body was tail heavy but as it was easy to hold horizontal so we continued. With the body free we then had to lower the chassis to get the necessary clearance under the body. We had the axle stands on the highest setting and when we started jacking the chassis up to release them the whole chassis rolled off the stands. This woke every one up and luckily nobody got caught by the chassis as it dropped to the ground. Remember the a hydraulic jack lifts in an arc not straight up. It was the arc that effectively pushed the chassis off the stands. Keep out from loads on a jack.
	You can see the the arm of the jib was horizontal before we cleared the chassis and we rolled the hydraulic hoist and the body out from under the chassis . You can see the stands on their side where they had fallen over.
	The chassis was rolled back into the workshop but the body had to wait until its wheeled trolley was ready.
	The trolley frame for the body was made up from two modified scaffolding support frames that I bought more cheaply than I could have made them for. They were also adjustable for height that matched my needs. One was initially placed directly under the boot/chassis bolt holes that are toward the cockpit (see picture) . The second stand went under the chassis mounting bolts in the engine area (see pictures below).

This is not a strong area of the body despite it being a major mounting area. As such you will see that I included a temporary 1 inch box tube that when clamped sandwiched the body between it and the stand beneath. The two stands were then tied together using lengths of 3/4 inch box tube . I have left the lifting frame in place to give added rigidity to the body. The trolley was completed with four castor wheels that makes it easy to move the body around. The body will remain on the frame now until it is finish painted. Thanks to my son Sam who did all the welding on the trolley frame in record time. The picture shows us getting ready to lift the back end to fix the castor wheels on.

Engine Compartment Tidy Up



Having got the body into the workshop on its new trolley I attacked the engine compartment from the inside to complete the repair welding that was not previously accessible. From left to right we have the area after its first go at stripping off the old paint that shows those areas that required welding and dressing. The middle one shows the same areas after welding and dressing and the last picture after rust conversion and priming. This is a satisfying site for us all. Another word of warning - I have wasted a lot of time grinding / hacksawing and grinding off self tapping screws that I had failed to remove from the outside. Some were easy to grind off but other are inaccessible and I am still trying to think of a way to remove them.

and Finally..........

On the left is the chassis newly exposed again after four years of having the car. On the right is one of the first pictures we took four years ago of the same area having pulled off a door sill that was screwed to the chassis!

You can see that he rust has got worse in this area and this will be the next area to attack as I move away from the body and focus on the chassis and its problems. For those for wondering what the material is in my hand, I pulled it out of the hole in the chassis. It is roof insulation material that was stuffed in the chassis during manufacture in order to deaden road noise from being amplified by a hollow chassis member. Reality is that as soon as moisture got it through a small rust hole, the material soaked up water like a sponge, retained it very efficiently and accelerated the rusting process dramatically. I expect it was a good idea at the time. The restored car however will not have this original feature.

All stuff on this site Copyright the Barbers, September, 2006 .
For problems or questions regarding this web contact mga1600@btopenworld.com
Last updated: 04/09/2006 .