Orange 1973 MGB rust repair

  • Installing the new floorboards

    It’s time to fit the floorboards into this MGB. These floorboards are from Heritage and are of excellent quality and have the added bonus of the seat rail capture nuts pre-installed in the proper locations. There is still some light trimming to do however, so each is laid down and minor tweaks are made so…

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  • Prepping for floorboard installation

    Before we can install the floorboards we need to make some repairs to the rear corners above the spring perches. The right side needed some sheetmetal fabrication to repair a large rust hole. We cut out the damaged area, made a template, fabricated a repair piece and welded it in place.   On the driver’s…

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  • Fitting the rockers

    The Steelcraft rockers we were provided don’t fit as nicely as the Heritage ones (which are still acceptable, but getting worse as the tooling wears out) so some extra adjustments were needed when fitting these to the car. We carefully fit and adjusted both rockers  to match up with the doors and fenders.   Once…

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  • Fitting the passenger castle and membrane

    With the front section of the inner sill repaired we continued the rest of the repairs. We needed to carefully chisel out the rear section of the outer rocker and remove the remains of the castle on the portion of the inner rocker we left in place. Once everything had been cleaned up it was…

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  • Inner sill repairs on passenger side

    The front section of the inner sill is too badly rusted to work with. The rear section is fine, there is heavy pitting and significant damage from the jack support forward. We’ll be cutting this portion completely from the car and replacing it. We measured from the front to a point where the metal was…

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  • Uncovering the passenger side damage

    With the driver’s side stabilized we started on the passenger side. Double-sills was the order of the day again and we found significantly more damage on this die. The car slipped on a jack at some point, which is why the bottom of the rocker and castle are caved in upwards. This is very common…

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  • Fitting the castle and membrane

    We chiseled the remains of the old castle section off of the inner sill before fitting the new castle. We clamped the castle in place and made sure it lined up before welding into place. Some trimming of the membrane is necessary for fitting properly, and this is done with the castle welded in place…

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  • Repairing the driver’s inner sill

    The inner sill provides strength to the chassis as part of the double box section that makes up the rocker assembly on an MGB. The driver’s side inner rocker was fairly solid except for the front 10 inches or so and right at the jack mount brace. Rather than cut out the entire rocker and…

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  • Left side rocker damage

    We knew there was significant rust in both rockers and opted to start on the driver’s side. After starting to cut damaged metal away we discovered a fairly common sin in MGBs – someone installed new rocker panels directly over old, rusty panels. It was a cheap fix but the rust quickly migrates to the…

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  • Arrival and inspection

    This 1973 MGB from the Kalamazoo, MI area came to us with some severe rust in the floorboards and rockers. The owner had begun repairs and felt he was getting in over his head, so he’s passing it along to us to finish. He has provided the parts already, although we may need to source…

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