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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Cross member mods - 5 speed conversion

When the cross member is cut out for installing a Type 9 gearbox, what have people done to blank off the open ends.

Les
Les Robinson

Lots of people have welded blanking plates of steel over the ends, I believe.
Rich Amos (1330cc Blaze Red '72)

The FL kit includes a couple of short pieces of square tube that are a tight fit into the ends of the x-member (so it doesn't collapse when a bolt is tightened through it to the 'box mounting plat below); as Rich says, you can weld it to the orig x-member end, although this is not essential.

Each tube has one closed end, that faces outwards, BTW.

A
Anthony

I call this pic "healed up and sealed up" it shows the repairs to the crossmember box and tunnel sidewall (badly) that were needed after I atacked the poor wee beastie with an errant angle grinder.

I hadn't realised that the real crossmember was weak enough for an ornery hacksaw to cut it though so easily

Next time...


I followed James Mather's advice and cut nine lengths of 20mm tube (for each side) and welded them together to make the crossmember stiffener.


Bill

Like this

You can see what a bog-up I made of hacking the tunnel and crossmember about, hence about three hours of extra unnecessary plating and welding to make amends to my little baby

this is the driver's side of course
passenger side wasn't much different :-(


Bill

Hi Les,

like Bill, I put another box section into the cut off original section, I also added smalle section tubing inside this in order to add extra strength and also to aid when bolting my crossmember up through the orignal crossmember.

I did take some pics which I put up at;

http://www.photobox.co.uk/album/1923827

Of course with hindsight, I should have taken more!

Hope they are of some use,

John
John Collins

Hi Les,

Not being an able welder, I took advice (on this board I believe) when I did my conversion - and used some liquid weld from a can (or tube, I forget which).

As long as you get the faces clean, there is no need to weld the plates on - after all, they're not structural - the plates are just the to stop crud getting into the cross-members.

Martin
Martin

I did mine differently. I have 4mm thick channel section inserts inside the severed cross member. These have nuts welded to them so that the bolts that hold the new cross member/ gearbox mount screw up into these captive nuts. Therefore they do no go right through to the top of the cross member and there is no danger of over tightening and compressing the tube. It also means I can just tighten the bolts from underneath with no problems of having to reach up inside the car with long arms to put the nuts on!

The open ends of the box section are closed with plastic plugs - sort of oversized versions of the plugs used on steel framed furniture. Keeps the muck and damp out, but easy to remove for waxoyling.

Guy
Guy Weller

60mm square tube 6 inches long with 2mm wall thickness.
Weld plate,on end,to seal.
Tap complete unit into cut off box section and position as suits.
Weld in if you want or pass a bolt through chassis box and this box. Weld in tube to guide your drill and add support when tightening through bolt.
Alan Anstead

This thread was discussed between 14/04/2008 and 16/04/2008

MG Midget and Sprite Technical index

This thread is from the archive. The Live MG Midget and Sprite Technical BBS is active now.