Thread: 51 MG restoration.

Originally Posted by MikeB52

Those reamers are hard to find over here.

Envious.

One of the shames of time is of losing those who not only had Vintage Equipment but knowledge to use them.

Our friend Benz was one. He rebuilt the old Ford Flathead V8's but conceded that his father was the one who could wring the Horsepower out of them.

When I was attending Auto Body Repair in Community College I was one of select few who got to spend a week at Lew Beesan's Alignment Shop. Lew had customers who would move hundreds of miles away but return to Walla Walla for Lew to do the alignment on their cars.

One day while at Lew's a friend of his brought in a '54 Chevy for help. The guy had misjudged a turn and hit the curb. Lew set the ramp up and did the turning side to side etc then got out a porta power and pushed a lower A-frame forward just a tad, then rechecked and finally made some adjustments and never ever looked in a book. He knew the specs by heart.

He also had the equipment and knowledge to bend 'Dropped Straight Axles' for roadsters etc.

One day a woman brought in her Cadillac for an alignment. Lew asked what the car was doing and she said that she'd had Goodyear put four new tires on it the day before and now it was pulling to the right. Lew wrote it all down and the woman left with her ride.

Lew had me jack the front of the car up and then remove the two front tires and swap them left to right and right to left. He said; "You're not supposed to do this". Then he took the car for a short drive.

Once back on the rack Lew said that the car now pulled to the left and had me change the tires back to their original position.

Lew called Goodyear and said that Mrs So and So would be bringing her car in for a replacement for her new Right Hand Front Tire as it was defective. There was a pause and Lew bellowed; Lew Bessan says so that's WHO! Then very calmly said, yes she'll be in tomorrow and hung up.

He was a workaholic. After his 5th heart attach he cut his hours of operation back from 7 AM to 6 Pm Monday through Saturday to only 8-5 Monday through Friday.

He was a joy to be around. He enjoyed sharing his knowledge. His shop was just up the block from our shop and if our instructor ran into something he was having problems with, he'd ask Lew to come down and he always came over.

Spindle pivots are being a bear. Hear they are prone to snapping if forced so taking them into the shop to apply some torch persuasion tomorrow.
Decided to jack her up parallel to the garage so I can dissemble and pull the pieces into the garage to work.
When I’m ready to blast and paint, will be easier to enclose the front bit.


And the tear down begins!

Funny, I never really looked at the spare before but how do you find one spare that will fit on either 4 of 5 bolt hubs, hehehe. Not this way ideally.

And got the rear valance if tonight to find my first frame issue.

Really quite happy I pulled the switch this season seeing this. Right now, everything is still straight and easily weldable. If the cross tube started to flex, it’d bugger the right frame and a lot more.
Kind of expected some damage at either end. Long as the middle, and suspension key components are still solid, no worries.

Oh man! Finding rust that heavy sucks! The spare tire is indeed 'Interesting'.

I'm wondering if the car at some time in it's life spent a majority of it close to salt water. I've never seen that kind of buildup and especially that color around our inland location. Just wondering

View from the other side of the left rear.

Think it will be easy enough to patch in stages.
As far as build up goes and decay, it looks like the rust started in the weld area to me and slowly worked back.
The frame surprisingly hasn’t flexed anywhere yet.
Car was bought in Southern Ontario and May have visited a coast but I don’t think ever for long Roy.
I already know the front frame nose is all bent in from removing the bumper as well. But again, if the damage is only on the ends, I’ll consider myself lucky for a car that lived in salted roads in the winter country it’s whole life.

I hadn't really thought about the Snow and Ice covered roads in the Great White North. I would suppose that they use a lot more salt/De-Icer than we do here in my area.

I'm just glad to hear that the damage is manageable and the car is structurally sound.

To me that looks like game over. But im not a metal man. Good luck fixing those up Mike. And aim glad you found them instead of finding them the hard way when something falls off.

Got the last of the lighting and supports off the wings, as well as the front valance safely removed this weekend.

I mentioned the front frame supports were mangled,

And it looks like they used some fiberglass on the left wing, which will have to go.

These areas of the frame were secondary, or dumb irons as they were called.
The main frame stops at the front cross member, so bad as this looks, it’s less scary than the left rear from a structural perspective.
So far, the rest of the undercarriage looks good. But more digging ensues after the wings and running boards are completely off.
The underside of the wings looks pretty solid still.

Made out if solid steel so once cleaned up, some metal banging and weld repairs ahead..

I stumbled across this youtuber a couple of months ago. Thought you might be interested and maybe find it helpful, along with folks following along. He's from one of my homes away from home (Newfoundland) and has some pretty ingenuous ways to fix car bodies:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6J...r3EvJnw/videos

Fitzie’s awesome!
Great body work guy. Would love to meeet him.
Thanks..