Carter,
Rust is cancer, it's darn near unstoppable. Many moons ago I bought a rusty
Porsche 356, had cancer signs on the rockers and the floors. I figured I
could just replace them. I ended up having the floors, rockers and inner
rockers all replaced, and fortunately, because I was young and naive, I
found a guy that was willing to give it a shot at a decent price. He did
excellent work, and didn't take advantage of me when the work ended up
taking twice as many hours as he originally estimated. The work he did was
great, never had a problem, but even after replacing the entire bottom half
of the car, rust bubbles kept popping out in other places, higher up, and
finally I realized it had spread through much of the car. So even though my
bottom was sound, it would take much more work to chase down the rest of it.
Lots of folks spend big bucks "restoring" a car, fixing everything but the
rust, and thus the car is doomed to oblivion. In 20 more years, that rusty
car may be worth saving, but at the moment MGBs are not yet rare. I think
you can find other MGBs with a lot less rust, or even no rust for West Coast
cars. I have learned that you can always rebuild the mechanicals, but rust
is forever, so I look at the body structure first. If I came upon an
original Speedwell Sprite or MGA Twin Cam that was rusty, I'd give it a
shot.....but when I looked for a more common 1275 Spridget some years ago, a
rust free shell was my first priority. The other option is to get a new
body shell, I think they are making MGB shells as well as Midget shells, or
at least they were.
Coastie Bob
'74 Midget
/// unsubscribe/change address requests to majordomo@autox.team.net or try
/// http://www.team.net/mailman/listinfo
/// Archives at http://www.team.net/archive/spridgets
|