Background on the 1959 MGA

Here is what I am aiming for after all is said and done, maybe a year from now - summer '06?

Here is a picture of my 1959 MGA 1500 sitting in my brother's garage in Conway, Arkansas, a couple of years ago. I bought it from an older gentleman (and I don't mean my age!) who had done some work on it, but stalled in the restoration process. The car was disassembled, except for the engine, transmission, and heater, which had all been professionally rebuilt. What we had was a rolling chassis, a disassembled body, and parts loose, in boxes, and bins. The car appeared to be in fairly good shape -all exterior body panels were sound with no rust through at all. Even the fenders were great. The body tub appeared sound from what we could see (more later on what lurked in the sill areas unbeknownst to us).

Here is a picture of the front of the body tub up on saw horses in the barn.






And another picture of the rolling chassis. Supposedly the chassis had been sandblasted, primed, and painted and was in good shape (Wow, was that wrong, but it looked good!).






The engine is an early 3-main MGB. Here are the shop bills (3 pages) for the engine and tran rebuilds, so you can see that they were both thorough and expensive. These were 1997 prices too! I have not turned the engine, and will probably at least pull the pan and a bearing cap to check the work, but other than that and a repaint, it is ready to install. I may replace the valve springs because they may have taken a "set."

You can see that the engine received a proper rebuild with new bronze valve guides, hardened valve seats, even a new rocker assembly and a new cam!

The transmission received an overhaul kit.

The car sat at Clay's house for about a year after I bought it, and we picked it up at Christmas to trailer it down to my home in The Woodlands, Texas, just north of Houston. This was accomplished safely, although it was, as most adventures involving MG's, an "experience." The only car that I had available at the time to do the towing was our 1994 Nissan Altima. This is a good car, but powered by a 4-cylinder and fairly light. The only trailer I could get from U-Haul was a car carrier with dual wheels, side rails, etc. The U-Haul guy looked at the Nissan and expressed concern about safety, etc., but I told him I was just going to be local, so no big deal. Best to keep from him that we were going to haul the trailer about 950 miles round trip behind that car. Actually things went smoothly going up - I just ran about 65 mph with the O/D off. Coming back we held it to about 55 because the trailer was a little too light in front, and wouldn't track if we went too fast.

Loading the car onto the trailer was a challenge because the tailgate was too narrow to fit the car through. So we had to ramp it up and over the rear trailer rails, then down into the trailer. Always being in a hurry and going too fast, we nailed together a couple of flimsy 2X6 ramps and with my 3 brothers' assistance and a come-along, got it loaded. Here we are in Conway, Ark, with, from left, Clay, Josh (Mike's son), Paul, Jim, Mike, and my daughter, Emily. My son, Charles, and I hoisted the engine up under a handy tree limb, and lowered it into the cockpit area of the car, sitting on the trailer floor.

At home unloading. We had to basically jack the car up until we could rest it on a "platform" of lumber above thr trailer rails, then back it off using the familiar 2x6 ramps. I was very happy that this was accomplished with no damage to car or people!