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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Shell Assembly Drawings

I spent the morning grinding off repair patches in the foot-well of my Sprite - there are still several to go at!.

The Sprite has a wonderful(!) collection of patches with patches on patches. A number of these patches are now disintegrating, hence all the grinding.

I know that, in the long run, I need take the car off the road, invest in a rotisserie and replace the floors and other rotten sections properly. For now, though, I just want to repair it sufficiently to make it usable and fully MoT worthy as some of the previous repairs have been done well with decent quality metal.

My question is: Is there a good drawing or collection of drawings available that show exactly how each panel is fitted and how it relates to its neighbours? The diagrams available on parts suppliers' sites are of limited use for the details that I'm after.

Some of the areas I'm working on are clearly supposed to be single-skinned but others are multi-layered or form part of a boxed in section. It's not always obvious whether the flange on a panel should fit on top of or beneath its neighbour. I would like a clear idea of what I should be aiming for so that it is as neat as I can make it given my level of welding ability (Last week I practised by welding a repair panel into the holey wheel barrow!).

The photos in the Restoration of an MG midget thread are incredibly useful but I would like drawings that I can study to help me devise my plan of attack for each section.

Just to finish - I am very good at blowing holes in thin metal when I'm welding, but I'm gradually improving! I know that spots being welded can be backed with a copper block to dissipate the heat and prevent hole blowing. These are a bit pricey but, while googling for one I found items about welding spoons so I set to work and made one using a flattened piece of 22mm copper pipe. I've not tried it yet, but can anyone tell me whether this will be useful or have I wasted my effort?

Thanks

Colin



C Mee

Colin
I use a flattened piece of copper pipe - very useful for pressing behind small holes you are welding up. I think welding on old body panels is tricky. I find the weld area must be very shiny (say using an angle grinder) to get a good weld. There's a very subtle difference between getting a good weld and making a mess I find. Much harder on the car than with two shiny parts on the bench.
Bill Bretherton

I also use bits of flattened copper pipe when welding up holes.
Dave O'Neill 2

Colin,

I fully understand with chasing holes whilst welding, been doing that all day today 😂 and yes the welding looks rough especially on those floor pans (patches) old to new. But they do clean up with a grinder as you know. I need to source some magnetic clamps to hold a copper strip in place for the butt welding, it would save a lot of agro and the welding would turn out decent.
Think I will make a couple of brackets for some round magnets and attach the copper strip to it, for the near side repairs.

The rotisserie is a good piece of kit. Mine is rather heavy duty ( bit ott ) and works well at any angle you want, saves crawling under to weld or do anything else. No doubt you have seen it in my thread that you mentioned.

I am happy that you are finding my photos helpful 👍🏻 The good and the bad 😂 it’s a learning curve for me too.

Take care out there guys and be safe.
Yojic

Dave,

You don't really need a copper backing strip in all circumstances, a piece of black steel strip can do just as well for butt welds as the mill scale and thermal mass will prevent fusion to the backing bar if the butt gap is small.
David Billington

Colin have you looked at James Paul's resto blog? Literally hundreds of detailed pics...
https://www.mgmidgetrestoration.com/p/gallery_9.html
David Smith

David

Thanks for the link, that's a superb record and shows me just the sort of thing I'm looking for.

Link now Bookmarked!

Many Thanks

Colin
C Mee

This thread was discussed between 15/07/2020 and 16/07/2020

MG Midget and Sprite Technical index

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