Cheap MG Midget gone wrong

[cheaproject]

Im trying to start a trend here. Everyone should have one: The wonderful MG Midget.

I'd been lucky with the car's I bought up till this point, so I thought it was easy and pid on an MG midget only 30 miles away in Glasgow. I won it and It was everything I didnt want in a Midget. Rubber bumpers, 1500 engine and square wheel arches. I now look back and wonder why I was so desperate to get it.



soon it turned into this



A cheap project at £360, but not a cheap rebuild.

That was last May. All Ive really managed to do is spend a lot of money, mainly on parts that I dont need yet.



Like a fibreglass front end.

Ive bought some usefull stuff too like:

A new shell
Rear lights
Front grille chromes
a steering wheel
heater box
replacement seats
a roll bar
a secondhand alternator
a hardtop
a 1275 front indicator
2 1275 damaged front grills
a full polybush kit from moss
and various front wishbones

So more than a grand later and the car now looks like this



Still not driveable, but atleast its rust free!

Anyway last December I took advantage of another highly sought after 1500 rubber bumper Midget that was on ebay. Surprisingly I was the only bidder and got it for £300 - basicly a running engine and a good soft top with a free shell!

However both of these commodities have let me down.
The big ends are needing replaced and one of the windows in the soft top is so brittle that it cracked as if it was made of glass.

Anyway never mind, my shed mate has been working on this car for the last month and a bit so now it has a new inner and outer sill and no more holes in the body.



So after a year of work, Ive cheated and should have a midget on the road next month!

[midgetbob]

Wow lots of good work going on there! I'm ashamed your project has overtaken mine...

[kieran07]

Great project. Getting that bodywork done looks like some hard graft, a year seems quite quick for what you've done there.

[Renrut]

So have you got 2 or 3 shells then?

I've only the room for one so I'm making do. It looked worse than the initial photos but it's much better than the 'body off' photos. How on earth has it managed to rust in those places?

Is it still going to be a rubber bumper car?

When you rolled it did you have doors on? Did you brace the door gaps at all? And was it straight when you turned it back over?

[Relentless Rob]

Did anyone else look at the second photo' and think...

"Hmmmm, GT4 powered Midget"

...?

There are nearly as many Midgets on here as there are Pandas.

[cheaproject]

There is a tenuous link between the Midget and the panda.
My dad's first 3 cars were Midgets and His Dad's last car was a Panda. So there you go!

Anyhow I've been happy enough with a GTfour powered GTfour for the last 2 years, that poor thing really needs some suspension attention.

Im glad you've considered that as an option Rob. I love Celica's and I really cant understand why most of the rest of the world doesn't see their briliance. The rev3 3S-GE and 3S-GTE engines are pretty much bomb proof in standard form and will do 200K miles with very little attention.


Look at it! 170bhp and it shouts "More!" every time you hit 7k rpm and change up, oh and the BEAMS, dont get me started.

Anyway Im getting a little caried away I think Im going to have to stick to the Triumph 1500 cause Im not that good a driver and I know it fits, however I might change my mind after driving the Orange car for a little while.

I should maybe put some more photos up of the yellow car from the strip down, it was in a really bad way



I only found out recently that its been off the road since 1993, not sure where its been stored since then but Im sure this is part of the reason for the rust everywhere.



I think its condition is also the result of some really bad restoration and patch up work down the years.

All the leaf spring mounts fell off and took bits of the floor with them.



Im gutted I didnt get a picture, but the transmition tunnel was fully detached along the passenger side and the drivers side sill was not correctly attached so it had sagged badly.

I added up the rough cost of repair panels and It wasnt cheap. So Im very lucky that ebay came up with a solution.



At this point Our shed only ever had 3 cars in it. The Volvo or Celica, the Midget and a Pulsar on its side. We were only ever meant to have 1 car each but now I have 3 (2 midgets and a Volvo) and my mate has the Pular.

The First Midget was flipped over with the help of 4 other people. We kept the doors on as the drivers side sill was dodgy, althought the 2nd Midget we flipped over didnt have the doors. Its not braced either. It was very solid, so I hope it's still straight when It goes back up the right way. Its supported by tyres on the A posts and tops of the rear wings. Its ready to turn over again but Im waitng till I have all the suspension bits. - Its costing me around £400 just for them!

This car is going to get de-bumpered and fitted with the Fibreglass front end and a hard top. I have a fibreglass bootlid skin too which I might attach to the frame from an old bootlid I have. So I need to add those bits you have under your rear lights. Im also going to add some internal crash bars for a bit of safety.

The orange Midget was going to donate its engine and hood but we thought it would be better to get it back on the road, try it out and then sell it, so the easyest option for this is to keep the bumpers.

[Renrut]

That looks very busy!

Did the old yellow shell get scrapped then? I can't see any panels on there worth having, except maybe the outer rear arches.

[cheaproject]

The rear arches did look quite good, until I discoverd that a large section of the passengers side, around the arch was just a flat sheet with loads of filler on top. That in its self is pretty poor, but I dont quite understand why becuase it had a replacement wing added over the top of the old one.

All of these discoveries made it easyer for me to get rid of the shell. I put it on ebay for £80, but as expected, nobody was interested.

Anyway Ive been up at the shed busy getting nowhere fiddling about with things. I wish I had more to show for the time I spent up there.

My towing eye brackets sum things up pretty well. Ive been painting them for nearly a month now. I thought I was done with them tonight until this happened.



So there you go, dont mix your paints.

Other parts like engine mounts and steering rack brackets have went better and I guess Im getting though most of it quite well.

Finally started on the wishbones too. I got these off ebay for about £20 each, they just needed some paint



Some chasis black for the top coat I think.

The orange car is doing better, but thats probably becuase Im only doing some of it. The pasenger side sill is looking much more solid, all we need to do now is refit the door.



And fix s front wing, and fit them, and sort out the wiring, and fix a hole in the roof, and change the big ends.............

Then refit the rubber bumper.



Nice eh?

The car now also has a full set of carpets and trim panels.
Most were kindly donated by the yellow car. Im trying to get away with glueing down as few sections as I can.



You can see the heavy rust lines caused by the seats, still atleast they were free.

[cheaproject]

Its nearly MOT time.

We tackled the "big job". And also put in new plugs, air filters oil and filter.



Old big end bearings, lightly scored, not sure if they actualy needed replaced, but the engine does sound better, although there's a small oil leak which looks as though its coming from the starter motor?? It cant be the source but its hard to see where the oil is coming from

Anyway we had the car out for a drive on sunday!



It was good fun, without a passenger door. Graeme was busy welding and painting the door and wing after the short run, I was doing some electrics

I also spent more time drilling out snapped bolts on the front bumper, which I finally got done tonight, it took ages and I hated it.

Anyway the car is pretty close to getting back on the road now, all I think we need is some clear plastic for the rear quarter window and brake light switch, unless the MOT man finds some problems.



I cant wait, just need some good weather.

As for the other car.....



Atleast its back up the right way.

[Renrut]

Awesome! It looks quite cool without the wings or bumper.

Did you have to overhaul much of the suspension? I've found most of it is perished / rotted so I'll be getting all new. Did you do anything with the Kingpins?

[cheaproject]

Awesome! It looks quite cool without the wings or bumper.

You know I think that's what some woman in her focus was thinking as she drove past us at the bottom of the farm road

The Suspension looks OK and it feels OK too. I'll only change it if the MOT man says ist knackered. After completely dismantlying 2 sets of front suspension, I decided I better leave this lot alone, unless its really bad. The Kingpins were actualy the main reason Ive not touched this car.
I found that 3 out of the 4 wishbone/kingpin setups I had suffered from the fulcrum pin being siezed to the king pin. This has cost me atleast £100 as Im now waiting on new reconditioned stub axles from moss europe, as well as needing replacement wishbones and basicly every other part that's needed for the front end. It should be worth it though, just doesnt rate well in the bhp per £ stakes.

[Renrut]

I've already dismantled my front suspension as the kingpins seemed to want to do all the suspension articulation by themselves. Reconned ones don't seem to be too dear though.

Waht did Moss want in return for the reconned kingpins? Did they want the lower wishbone too? Some of the places seem to want the whole setup.

[cheaproject]

Yes, I guess the reconditioned stub axle and kingpins are pretty cheap when you consider what they do. I after think running a £285 celica for a year really spoiled my sense of the value of car parts.

Like your's the 4 that I had were all pretty knackered and siezed together.
The refurbished parts I got from Moss consisted of a stub axle built up with the kingpin, new reamed in bushes, dust tubes, greese nipples and a trunion bolted together.
I also ordered some replacement shocks, after the exchange, the costs are about £50 for a stub axle and £25 for an armstrong shock.

I have put the old units back together as much as I could, but the trunions are still on my old shocks so I hope they're OK with that.

Atleast I saved a bit on the wishbones and Ive managed to get 2 fulcrum pins out of all the junk Ive accumulated so thats not so bad.

Oh and the wishbones now look a lot better



I cant wait to put all this nice clean stuff on the car, its going to look like a full size working model.

Anyway other good news is I now have an MOT'd Midget and heres a photo!

[Renrut]

Cool!

Are you going to make the front and rear wheels match?

I was wondering about the wishbones as currently my trunion bolts are siezed and getting them out might be a pain, if the whole lot was exchanged it would make it easier for me

[cheaproject]

Im not sure if MGOC spares or MGB hive take the units all in one piece, maybe I should have looked before I went to Moss. Could be worth a try, but I chopped though my siezed fulcrums pins to release the king pins from the wishbones. The top trunions just wouldnt move for me so I gave up.

I was thinking of photoshoping that pic to make the rostyle at the front look right!
The front wheel is one from my collection (18 roystyles ) I want to try and get some decent part worn tyres for the front, see if it makes any difference to the braking and steering.

Its on the road though