Beck TD, Part 21: Safety Fast! (Belts and Bars)

Safety Fast! was the official MG car slogan from as early as the 1930's, and it was intended to invoke the safety of driving a nimble, agile car that could avoid danger by simply driving around it. Of course, our modern idea of safety as cruising in a heavy tank lined with airbags simply didn't exist. In 1952, Beck's birth year, even seatbelts were a thing of the future.

It has become a common modification to add seatbelts to older cars, and I wanted to add some to Beck TD. I found some plans in the excellent book The Complete MG TD Restoration Manual by Horst Schach. This tome is out of print, and goes for serious money on the used market. I just checked, and Amazon has one used volume, for $997! But that's a scalper's price. I paid $85 for mine, including shipping, on eBay. I made the brackets to Schach's specifications:

These are to be completed by welding nuts on the straight pieces, and then welding them onto the frame crossmember. The angled ones bolt on using an existing body bolt location.

In addition to seatbelts, I also wanted to do something about Beck's roll bar. More correctly, it should be called a "show bar," because it was for display only and would actually be dangerous in a rollover accident because it was not adequately anchored. In fact, it was held in place by a single 1/4-20 bolt on each side, mounted through the heavy gauge sheet metal of the rear floorpan. To give context, a normal adult male's body weight can easily bend a 1/4-20 bolt, and possibly break it. I wanted to find a better way to anchor this bar, or failing that, to remove it.

Today, Troy Nace and I scheduled a whole day in the shop. In preparation, I did some practice welding on material similar to the brackets above. My friend Phil Biechler, a professional welder, helped me pick the Vulcan MigMax 215 welder I bought from Harbor Freight a couple of months ago. I haven't had a lot of time to practice due to the subsequent arrival of the Index milling machine and Logan lathe in the shop, but I had determined that my ugly welds were still quite strong. However, I looked at my practice piece, and thought, "I'm not ready for prime time on this welding stuff yet." I swallowed my pride and called Phil, and he agreed to join us. I said to Troy, "Quick! If we finish disassembling the back of the car, maybe Phil will help us on the roll bar too!" Stuck bolts kept us from completing that work before Phil arrived, but he helped us finish up.

Phil made quick work of welding the nuts on the inner brackets:

Later in the afternoon, he welded the brackets into position. 

The roll bar actually wasn't mounted to the frame at all, so we needed to add some reinforcement. We elected to add steel plate to the body frame, and tack it to the separate chassis to make it stronger:

Once that was welded in place, Phil used an angle grinder to dress the welds flat:

After that hot work cooled down, we began the laborious process of drilling big holes in multiple steps per hole. Instead of a wimpy 1/4" bolt, I had bought six 1/2" bolts with integral washers, Grade 5 for strength. We drilled the holes in the roll bar, then marked and drilled the plate to match:

We had a variety of problems with that operation due to the difficulty of exactly marking the hole locations, but we prevailed. We then drilled matching holes in the floor pan. It took all three of us to hold that in place at the drill press, so there was no one to take a picture....

To make the roll bar easy to install and remove at will, Phil also welded the nuts in place underneath the body. Troy is holding a powerful shop light to help illuminate the work.

Finally it was all done, and the bar was solidly mounted. It is not to SCCA competition standards, but it is solid enough that I think it would actually help in a rollover accident, rather than decapitate me!

There is a good bit more to be done on this little project, but the heavy lifting is done after a long shop day. Many thanks to Phil and Troy - this very literally couldn't have been done without you!

Continue on to Part 22...