Beck TD, Part 61: A Great eBay Find!

Part 60 was all about replacing the wooden rail to which Beck TD's convertible top attaches, and once that was successfully completed, I wanted to complete the effect with an addition called a "tonneau cover." I'll start with the end of the story, photographically. It's installed here - the black canvas cover behind the seat, covering the open "trunk" of the car.

I've known the term "tonneau cover" for decades, but never thought about why it was called that. It's pretty obvious in retrospect - the "tonneau" is the part of the open car with the seats. Interestingly, in modern times the term "tonneau cover" is used more for a cover over the bed of a pickup truck.

Tonneau covers come in two styles, "full" and "half," and the distinction is exactly what you'd expect. The full cover reaches all the way up to the windshield, and covers the entire passenger compartment. The half cover is what you see above - it stops at the front seat. I actually have a full tonneau cover and have used it for a couple of years, but it is so old and rotten that it ripped open. Even black Gorilla Tape wasn't good enough to fix it...

The post title says I had a great eBay find, and I really did. This cover is of a premium material called "Stayfast canvas" and it retails on Moss Motors for $380. This one is pristine, and I paid $180. Even better, I bought it from an important person - a member of the administration of the NAMGAR - the North American MGA Register. The MGA is a beautiful MG car that succeeded the T-series like Beck TD.

In the last post, I included the instructions to fold the hood after Charlie Baldwin informed me that I did it wrong! It's tricky, and Charlie sent me some photos to illustrate. I'm including two here so they won't be lost to posterity. The trick is to pull most of the top back before folding the frame down, and then fold it diagonally back over the frame.

You can see that Charlie's top fits all the way down inside the body. No matter how I tried, Beck's would not. It's a combination of the very cheap vinyl top, which is probably twice as thick as Charlie's, and of the way my top is mounted, which rides higher than Charlie's. Here's the best I could get it, and the variance bit me later...

There was one more thing I had to handle before starting to mount the new tonneau cover. Way back in Part 20, I installed a third center mounted brake light for safely. At the time, Beck had no top and no tonneau, so I mounted it very close to the body. It was clear that I needed to move it out, so I made a pair of mounts:

I was just sure those should be called "stanchions," but the dictionary insists that stanchions are vertical supports. Let's settle on horizontal posts instead. Here's the brake light in its new location:

Once the tonneau cover arrived, I was very pleased by the quality and condition. I was not surprised to see that the snap mounts didn't match my mounting studs, because it was obvious from the photos in the auction. I was prepared to deal with that. Also, when Moss sells you a new one, they state, "We do not install this hardware so that you can match the existing stud placement on your car." Sure enough, there were 12 studs, and they matched in exactly zero of the locations. I filled the old holes with low-profile, black screws. They are obscured by the cover anyway.

So, the only problem was to align the new studs with the existing snaps on the cover. For that, I used a gift from my wife - a partial bottle of fingernail polish. After carefully centering the cover on the car, I started. I painted the two center snaps with fingernail polish, and then pressed them against the car, marking the points where the studs should be installed.

I center punched the location, drilled it, and then used a strong stainless steel screw to create threads in the location. After that, I could tread the stud in place. That extra step with the stainless screw came after I stripped all the threads off the first of the cheap Chinese studs, trying to thread it in place! Once the center ones were done, I used the same technique to work my way around both sides.

And it's done, and it fits well enough. You can see how the poorly-fitted top causes it to buckle. On Charlie's car, the tonneau cover is flat. No matter - this gives me a cover over the "truck" and cleans up the back of the car. I'm happy to have it! There's one more step - I need to make a front rail for it to attach to. Usually that attaches to the seat, but I think I'll make it part of the roll bar instead. 

Continue on to Part 62....