Part of the charm of these old British cars is that there is wood involved. The popular imagination has decided that they have wooden frames, but that's not right - the frame, as you'll see in the first photo below, is a hefty steel structure. The wood is used as a framework for the body, with the metal of the body literally bent around the wooden frame. Very evocative of the period, until the wood rots!
I am fortunate that Beck TD had very solid woodwork, with only a few problems. In Part 60 I described a repair that I was very proud of, to the rear top rail where the convertible top (the "hood" in British-speak) attaches. There were only two other places where the woodwork needed repair, and I just completed both of them.
I have a long list of winter projects for 2021, including the wood, and I decided to start there because I wanted to get it over with. And I started by making a BIG hole, removing the wooden floor boards, the center metalwork, and the driveshaft. This allows me to stand up inside the car while it's on the lift, making a very comfortable work environment. Here's a photo of the big hole, showing those hefty steel frame rails:
The first rot I tackled was the trim panel under the passenger door. This is a picture of the driver's side, which is perfectly solid:
By comparison, the passenger side was a wrinkled piece of vinyl that was clearly not solid. Once I removed it and disassembled it (over 60 staples in that vinyl!) I found the wooden core was almost non-existent:
Even worse, the wood behind that trim piece was totally missing also - just a hole where it should be:
All of this woodwork is still available from Moss Motors, but it is expensive. Here's a detail from the Moss website. The missing piece is #4, and it costs around $70 for that one stick. Worse yet, there's no way to install it without removing the body, so it would have to be cut up anyway. I resolved to make my own.
But first, let's fix that trim panel. I wanted to reuse the vinyl to retain Beck's "patina," so I made a template from the good panel on the driver's side, and used that to make a new plywood inner panel:
Once I stretched the vinyl over the core and added about 60 new staples, it was not bad:
That was the easy part. Now, to fill that hole. I knew I couldn't totally fill it, but I could make something that would provide a solid backing for the trim panel. I started with the same template I used for the trim, and then whittled on it until it would slip in place:
That one stick took me about three hours of trial and fit - it curves in every direction, as this front and top view shows:
I added a stiffener to the back side, and then drilled a pocket hole to allow me to attach it to the rest of the body frame. I also added nails at the same points that were originally used, pre-drilling with a tiny #55 bit:
Once done, it looks like I was never there, which was the goal. It's not as structurally sound as the original design, but it's not bad, and worlds better than previously.
The only other rot I've found was under the dash, dead center in the bit called "front top rail, outer." It's only 40 bucks from Moss, but again, you have to remove the entire body to put it in! This is actually an important spot, because the back edge of the bonnet hinge (the part we call the "hood") attaches here. When I discovered it was rotten, I actually made a temporary fix involving long screws and a metal plate, but now it was time to fix it for real while I have good access.
At first, I tried chiseling the rotten wood, but there was still plenty of non-rotten wood also, and that 70-year-old wood was as hard as granite. I tried a few things, but this is what worked - a spiral bit tool usually sold as a drywall saw. I already owned it because of some prior drywall work.
Maybe it was intended for drywall, but that high-speed bit melted through the solid wood without complaint. I had removed the two center bolts for the body tub, and picked spots far enough down that the wood was solid.
With a bit more fussing with a chisel and saw blade from underneath, I was able to gently tap the rotten center down into the car. There was, however, one more trial before I could do that - dead center, there was a heavy nail or stud that was driven from the outer rail into the inner rail, before the body was installed. I had to cut it in two from underneath with a Dremel tool, and then after this photo was taken, I removed the rest from above with an angle grinder. Yes, the inner top rail has some rot at that spot also, but I'm just going to live with it - the inside face of that member is very solid.
I found the perfect piece of tight-grained oak for the patch, and temporarily installed it to mark the curves (like the door, in two planes) and also the hole locations for the big body bolts that would hold it in place. A bit of whittling, and it fits nicely:
Here's the view from underneath - quite a difference from the rot that you saw previously:
There are actually two more holes to drill, once the bonnet is back in place. I'll get everything aligned, and only then drill for the permanent screws that hold that bonnet in place. That tight-grained oak will be perfect to securely hold it.
The body-off restoration crowd will turn up their noses at this sort of field repair, but I'll bet the majority of T-series MGs actually have patches like this. I'm feeling pretty good about it, myself.
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