At the end of Part 58, after rebuilding the driver's door hinges, I included this picture and noted that it was the first time I had ever driven Beck TD with the top up. But there's something I didn't tell you...
The thing I kept to myself at the end of that celebratory post is that after the drive, the rear edge of the top was no longer attached to the car! The wooden Rear Top Rail, to which the top attaches with screws, was dry-rotted and wouldn't hold the screws anymore.
I sadly removed the top and the interior I had just reinstalled to uncover the top rail. The damage is obvious in the photo below. You can see I first tried to sink dowels into the rail to hold the screws, with abysmal results.
I did some research, and was surprised to see that various instructions to replace that rail start with Step 1: remove body from frame. What?? But further examination showed why. The wooden frame of the bodywork is screwed to a superstructure called the Main Side Rails. This detail is hard to read, but shows the problem. The wooden top rails on the back and side are screwed to the Main Side Rails, which are welded together in a single continuous piece:
OK, so if I'm not going to do a full restoration, how do I proceed? I asked my friends on the Volvo-Engined MG Group, and Jake R. responded with the solution I had already decided: cut the wooden rear top rail out, and make a new one in two pieces to reinstall. Now, Jake is an incredible craftsman, and his implementation included carefully fit pieces with a long "scarf joint" that was meticulously glued together. As you'll see, my implementation stays in two pieces, and is screwed together...
But first, I needed to get the old rail out. There were eight screws on each side (although I probably didn't need to remove the ones to the side rails), and they were the rusty originals. Worse yet, they were slotted screws, which are the easiest to strip out when trying to remove. I found a close-fitting screwdriver, and pounded it into each screw with 5 or 6 hard hammer blows. That shocked the screw, loosening the rust, and I'm please to say I got all 16 out with no mishaps. I took it as a good omen!
Next, I needed to extricate the nails that attached the metal body to the wooden rails. Turns out a small nail puller in my woodworking gear was the perfect tool:
I used a Japanese pull saw to cut the rail on each side, at the spots where the bodywork joins together. And then there was another problem - the rail was screwed through the lower back board, from the outside! The long center part was rotten enough that it pulled away easily, but I had to sneak a flexible blade in a reciprocating saw behind the short end pieces to cut the final screws to that they could be slid out of place. Here's the final chunks - still solid enough to use as a pattern for a new one.
That rail has a mildly complex profile on the back side, but I got lucky. I was able to glue it up out of pieces I already had planed. The original, according to the web, was made of ash but I used oak because that's what I had. Jake used walnut - furniture grade work, on furniture grade wood, in a piece never to be seen again without disassembling the car! Anyway, there was a pair of vertical grooves for clearance of a bodywork seam, and I used an appropriately sized drill bit to get that spacing right while gluing.
Once everything was glued up and dry, there was one more wrinkle. Each end of the rail had a long curve to match the bodywork. I marked them from the original pieces, and then used a band saw to rough them out, and a belt sander to refine the profile:
When that was done, it looked exactly like the original, and I realized... that's the way they did it in 1952 also! MG didn't have some fancy CNC machine to make those pieces. Some apprentice stood at a belt sander and worked those pieces until they were shaped right. And that explains something I had noticed earlier: the two sides of the original didn't exactly match. Of course not, they were made by hand!
As I said earlier, the rail was in two pieces so it could be reinstalled. Jake glued his, but I got lucky again and found a scrap piece of aluminum plate that was exactly the same width as the rail. I drilled a dozen holes in it on the milling machine, and used it to join the rail in place. Then I could mark for the four large bolts that hold the spare tire holder in place, and remove the rail and drill those holes. Finally, I could install the pieces for the last time, and use new screws and nails to reattach to the side rails and bodywork.
On the Aamco top I had, there were wooden rails also that mated to the the rear and side rails with screws. To make fitting easy, I removed them from the top (they were held by nails) and then fitted those pieces to my new rear rail and the existing side rails. After that, I reinstalled the top frame, and carefully found a few of the original nail holes to align everything. I put plenty more nails in new spots, and the top was back on the car!
Because I used existing holes to realign the top, the fit was exactly as before - not perfect, but adequate. It even folds correctly. IMPORTANT UPDATE! The top is NOT folded correctly in the photo below - look to the end of the post for instructions!
Of course, moments after taking those pictures, I removed the top again so I could reinstall the interior. I have a few more small repairs to make, but this has been a good result! I don't plan to use the top regularly, but having one that is solid and usable will allow me to venture forth without worry.
Utterly amazing! Bravo!!
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