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MG MGA - Body panel drawings

One of the areas in MGA restoration where additional information (or any information!) would be very useful to have is the dimensions of the many body panels on the car. Apart from the odd drawing and a few measurements here and there in some books to my knowledge there doesn't appear to be any comprehensive treatise to be had.

Since I began my restoration I have made reasonably detailed drawings of a few small body parts and I wonder how many people out there have done the same.
If they were all collected together they could prove very useful for present and future restorers.

Recently I bought quite a lot of body panels and later this year in warmer weaher I'll be attempting to fit them. So I thought that while waiting and before they were fitted I could take some measurements on them. Of course they are not original panels but I'm sure that even measurements on repro. panels would be better than nothing. I've started with a couple
but I have been thinking that rather than using paper and pencil it would be a lot easier to have use of an engineering drawing package.

This brings me to my question:- Can anyone recommend a fairly simple 2D software package for this venture? Just the ability to draw straight lines,curves, holes etc. would be enough to start although it would be very nice to have a 3D facilty as well.

If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions......

Mike

m.j. moore

M.J. one of the most universal programs you could use for Cad drawings is AutoCadLT (autocad light). As far as dimensions of repro panels being better than nothing, based on experiance nothing may be better than many of the repro panels.
John H

Mike, I don't know what level of detail you want, but I've had pretty good results using MS Paint for simple line drawings. It's somewhat limited when doing curves, but with a little practice you can get pretty good results. A hint, when working on a drawing with repetitive forms make one and then copy that as many times as necessary. A sample of this can be found in my photo album on the Moss Pub web site. http://www.mossmotors.com/Forum/photos/bill_young/default.aspx
Bill Young

Hi Mike. I have a few drawings I can contribute, and would be very interested in obtaining digital copies of your drawings when they are available. I will dig through my computer files, and will send you my drawings when I can find them. I like your idea of a drawing "archive." With some MGA parts becoming very expensive, or unavailable, having such drawings could be very useful for people who want to fabricate their own parts. Cheers, Glenn. PS, Are you offering to become keeper of the drawings archive? ;-)
Glenn

Perhaps I could help. I am proficient in both 2D and 3D autocad and can supply the finished drawing in either .dwg form or .pdf which could be printed out in small size or enlarged to full size.

Having just recovered from a total hard drive failure, I still have a couple of MGA drafting projects to put together again, such as the floorboard project I started a while ago, but I should be able to help after that if you would like.
John DeWolf

>Recently I bought quite a lot of body panels and later this year in
>warmer weaher I'll be attempting to fit them. So I thought that while
>waiting and before they were fitted I could take some measurements
>on them. Of course they are not original panels but I'm sure that even
>measurements on repro. panels would be better than nothing.

What are you going to do with the drawings when they are finished? Use them to make reproduction panels from the drawings, based on measurements, taken from other reproduction panels, based on either measurements, or a mirror image mold, taken from decades old original panels, which were built largely by hand?
Del Rawlins

Thanks a lot for the comments folks - answering in order:-

John H: Autocad LT might be too good for the job and I'm sure would take me an age to master. Also I would need to double my computer RAM to a half GB and spend nearly as much on the package as I have on the body panels I've just bought but I'll keep a lookout on Ebay.

Bill: This might be nearer to what I'm looking for - I'll have a play with this at the weekend.

Glenn: Many thanks for the offers - send me what you can. I don't mind being a receptacle for all the useful drawings people have but eventually they would need to be computerized. Ultimately they would all be on CD ROM for anyone to copy.

John D: I knew there would be at least one MGA CAD expert out there! I've already noted your em address for some future date but in the meantime can you suggest a suitable CAD package? There appear to be hundreds to choose from.

Del: I think such a drawing archive would have been very useful to me before I took the plunge and bought a stack of panels. Looking at several of them now I'm sure I could have made them myself with my very limited experience of metalwork.

Another point is that after doing some preliminary inspection and fitting I think I'll have to do some moderate tweaking at least to get them to fit and perhaps even go as far as removing spot welds and cutting metal as well. If anyone is to go along this route I reckon it would be good to have the original dimensions to refer back to in case you go too far!

Of course it would be very nice to have original (factory) panels to measure but there aren't many of these around so we'll have to make do with what we have. At least we can do this now because there are several different MGA panel sources in the UK alone (I know of four outfits). However as the years go by and the number of MGAs diminishes these outfits will close one by one and enthusiasts in the future may not have the option of buying cheap but ill fitting panels.
Besides I don't see the harm in dimensioning repro panels because once the measurements are down in black and white they can always be altered and improved with peoples experience. Mike


m.j. moore

I think you underestimate the skill required to form body panels from scratch, particularly on a car like the MGA which is all curves.
Del Rawlins

And don't forget that at the factory the cars were assembled by hand and that, supposedly, they would have a stack of panels at hand and would keep trying different ones until they found one that fit pretty well! So maybe a NOS panel, never fitted, is not such a good idea. It could be a panel that didn't fit any of the cars at the factory!

Derek Nicholson

I thought CAD packages were primarily intended for engineering items that were machined with CNC lathes etc. in this sort of world. Not much point for something that's always going to be made by hand.
dominic clancy

Mike, I am interested in seeing what comes of your quest. I am on my last? resto (Mk.5) but will still maintain an interest - must maintain the breed!! My panel beater (magician) is making some panels at present using the old originals as a buck, so I can supply dimensions for some panels, but don't quite know what info you require. Can you post an example? Send something by email? We are happy to help.
Barry
BM Gannon

Barry, So far I've only spent an hour or two trying out a couple of small CAD packages so it's very early days! I've got plenty of panels to try out but I'll start with a simple one to see if it's going to be a worthwhile exercise. Many thanks for the offer. Perhaps you could ask your panel beater next time you see him whether it would be easier for him work from a drawing rather than an old example of the part you want.
I'm not really convinced that factory panels differed that much from one to another and that fitters had to select from a pile of examples to get one that fit. These items would have been pressed/punched out from sheet with moulds so consistency should have been very good It is possible, I suppose, that there was more than one panel supplier and moulds differed slightly or that some damage occurred in transport requiring a certain amount of metal bashing.
Also the wings will have been made from more than one pressed section and this may have caused some variation but there would have been tremendous pressure from assembly line managers on the body shop to get things spot on. It would be interesting to speak to someone who actually worked on these lines before they all disappear. I was talking to a guy last Friday who used to work on the upholstery side at the Jaguar Coventry works in the 1950s and I asked him if he ever witnessed the body assembly side. He said there was a separate panel/body shop and the guys who worked there were called 'tinnies': none 'tinnies' rarely went in because the noise was so bad! Clearly then a fair bit of metal bashing must have been done. Mike
m.j. moore

Mike,
I have restored two MGA's and in the process I have found that the dimensions varied more than you would imagine. I have found front fenders that varied in total length by 3/8" and rear wings that the left and right did not match each other very well at all. As has been mentioned they were had made! Have a good day!

John
John Progess

This thread was discussed between 13/02/2007 and 20/02/2007

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