Journal Entry

No regrets! That's become the philosphy of this restoration. Since Joe has access to some great donor shells, we're leaving no "while we're at it" left undone. The end result will be a car at least as good if not better than when it rolled out of the factory at Abingdon in 1965.

Unfortunately, all the previous work that was done by Bryce Mack in White Rock BC has turned out to be done so poorly as to be incompetent at best, and a serious safety issue. As such I would like to publicly apologize to anyone that used his services based on my recommendation. Check out especially the pictures of the trumpet sections, doglegs, rear sills and floor pans. The metal that the new pieces were welded to previously were either too deteriorated, not cleaned properly or not welded well, so they're all being redone - that's the sound of many thousands of dollars being flushed down the toilet! Live and learn, I guess. A lot of the welds you can pop apart with a screwdriver, as Joe keeps telling me "it's a good thing you weren't in an accident with it like this". Over the last year I have been contacted by several other people that have had the same experience - after getting the car back it was one of the worst repair jobs they had ever seen - some have been able to get partial refunds, but I have not pursued that option yet.

One of these customers who had poor work done on his MG wrote an article on his experience which is currently being distributed to all MG clubs in North America. He emailed it to me and asked me to post it on my site. It is titled [url=/misc/mg-too-far.html]An MG Too Far[/url] and you can read it by clicking on the link.

The sandblasted shell is really lovely and makes for a good starting point to build up the car RIGHT. You'll also notice that the engine bay is shiny compared to the rest of the car, it's already had a coat of POR-15 laid down. Extensive anti-rust treatment will be applied to the car as it comes back together.

With the new "might as well" fabrication, deciding to go over all the welding, and a few other odds and ends (like filling in the 6x9 speaker holes), the revised start-painting date is Feb 1st. Suprisingly, the additional cost is not that much - NOW is the time to do these things, when the car is 100% apart and bare metal. Joe has built a paint booth at the back of the shop and the results on the "test car", which was done in black, look superb.