THE SAGA OF THE MG VA RESTORATION By Ed Temple

First of all, what exactly is a 1938 MG VA car?

Let us compare it, quite seriously, with a 1938 coal lorry.I should imagine that a 1938 coal lorry would weigh about two tons.A 1938 MG VA car weighs about two tons.A 1938 coal lorry will travel at 45 m p h.A1938 MG VA will travel at 45 mph [sensibly].A1938 coal lorry will carry 2 tons of coal plus driver and passenger.A1938 MG VA will carry four passengers and no luggageA coal lorry has a comfortable cab, with wind up windows that can be raised and lowered as required as the weather alters.The MG VA has a canvas type hood, which is cunningly fastened to a finger trapping telescopic metal frame which can all be dismantled and stored, believe it or not, in a space behind the rear seats, which is just about big enough for a normal sized tom cat to sleep in. The operation of putting up the hood is quite simple. All it needs is three strong men with long arms each side of the car, all equipped with cast iron fingernails for operating the dreaded “lift the dot” fasteners. To take it down, the frame has to be concertina closed at the same time as the hood is folded. This can be the source of new profanities, and should only be carried out in an isolated area.Of course, erecting the hood is only undertaken in wet weather, and the added hazard of sorting the side screens comes into play. To compare the two above vehicles, the MG VA is basically a coal lorry with a hood on, and looking at the advantages of the cab and luggage space, the coal lorry would be the most sensible thing to own. As there are not a lot of preserved coal lorries around, as opposed to numerous MG tourers of different categories, this is obviously not the case, and any kind of comfort does not come into the equation.

I have tried many times to remember when my affection for the MG marque started, but so far I have not managed to do so. I suppose it could be the sweeping wings that go on forever, or even the sporty cut-away doors, those two magic letters MG, or perhaps that I always wanted an MG but never a coal lorry.

On leaving school at the age of fourteen, I managed to get an apprenticeship at the largest garage in the local town. We worked on every type of car apart from M G and Morris so it did not start there! Daimlers, SS Jaguars. Lanchesters, Wolesleys, Standard,Riley etc. all came through the workshop, but to me, even then, they were just another car. We seldom saw any M G cars, as there was a Morris main agent nearby.Perhaps it was the war time films that gave the M G its popularity, as all the Air Force films featured officers always using them, usually accompanied with a pretty girl. It maybe started in 1966, when I was 43. By this time I had been working as a development engineer in the local tin box factory since 1948, and my children, Linda and Michael were well into their teens. Cash flow in the family had eased off a little bit, and the thought of a hobby became feasible. (I am sure the same situation prevails in families to this day)

A young ex-apprentice toolmaker came rolling in to work one day in a rather tatty MG TA. Wherever it parked it left a pool of black oil. He thought the world of it, but it was very worn, and its days were definitely numbered These were the days when so many treasures of all kinds, such as railway locomotives, were scrapped as they had at the time, no value whatsoever. The TA that the apprentice bought cost his Dad £120, and I immediately saw this particular car through rose coloured glasses, and realized that, what with my four years on motors as an apprentice after leaving school, followed by five wartime years in the R A F on transport, I should be able to restore a car in that condition, and I would do my utmost to get one. The trouble was that I could only afford ten pounds to buy a car, which was what I was earning per week at the time, so hope seemed to have faded of getting one and seeing what I could do.

Luck favoured me not long afterwards however. My wife and I were driving through the outskirts of town, when we passed a rather scruffy looking house, and amazingly there was this derelict MG resting in the front garden, more or less covered in vegetation; and looking very sorry for itself.I was soon out of the car and knocking at the front door, and before many minutes had passed, I was being shown round this pile of utter rubbish. A deal was quickly done, with me getting my wife to rummage in her handbag to see if she could find ten pounds.

I HAD GOT AN MG!!

At first I was rather disappointed that this car had a sloping rear body panel with the spare wheel fastened to it, instead of the two seater model with the slab tank at the rear. It was many years later that I discovered that the value of the VA vastly outstripped any of the T type models

The chap I bought the car from turned out to be a member of well known local Italian ice-cream making firm, who, strangely, ran a car scrap yard in town as well! Strange partners, to say the leastThe ice-cream part of the business came in quite handy, as the MG was towed up to my house on the back of one of his fancy ice- cream vans. I often wonder if he rang the bell on his way up.

My garage at the time was a 16feet x 8feet asbestos one which, when the VA was installed, did not leave much room for anything else, but if that is all you have got, it was no good worrying about it. In fact, in those days you were lucky to have a garage, let alone an old MG.

Being an engineer, the first job I tackled at the start of this saga was the front axle- assembly, mainly because it was going to be straightforward, and secondly because it was easy to get at. There was a third reason of course, and that was ----now that I have got this thing round my neck, where the hell do I start! For the first time, there is a strange feeling of doubt just nudging the back of my mind.However, the doubts soon went away and the axle was duly stripped down. Even if spare parts had been available, I could not have afforded them, and was rather lucky at the time that I was working in the Development Department of the factory, which gave us good access to the tool room .One or two developing machines at work suddenly needed parts shaped like king-pins, thrust washers. Spring- shackle-pins and side plates!

All the front brakes were stripped down and duly fitted with new liners and hydraulic rubbers, the latter being available and cheap, as they were used non various Morris models.

For some unknown reason, I painted the front axle white when it was first completed, and there is a very early picture on my son’s web site showing this. I have since wondered what nutter would ever want the underneath of a car white!I think at this point I decided to remove the engine. The carbs had been taken off and dismantled, but were there, so there was no point in messing about with the engine, as it certainly would not be needed for a while. What was left of the hood was removed and stored, and this proved to be a very wise move, as some 36 years later I restored the frame and the old seams on the old hood, now in tatters, were used as a guide to successfully making a new hood. But more of that laterWhat remained of the floorboards were then removed, and this inevitably led to a very rotten gearbox tunnel. None of these would be a problem, but it was a good job that I had got somewhere to keep these things. I wonder if a lot of restorations fail because of the lack of a shedThe engine and gearbox were duly removed. I have racked my brains to try and remember how I got that engine out, as I had no lifting tackle, and even if I had, I had no place to hang it from in a wooden garage.

The removal of the engine suddenly showed up the enormous strength of the MG chassis .On an engineering course for the Ordinary National Certificate I took in my younger days, we were told that a Safety Factor of six was right. I reckon the chap who designed the VA chassis misread his text book and put sixteen on his slide rule. Hence my description “coal lorry”. There was one thing certain, the VA chassis would not rot away.

What was left of the seats were stored away, and these also never saw the light of day for 36 years.The rear foot well was totally rotten, and there again, being on Development at work, I had access to not only sheet metal, but all the equipment needed, such as guillotines, rollers, benders, spot welders, and gas welding. It was not long before a new foot well appeared.

The doors were taken off and stored.

Onto the rear axle. By looking at the prop-shaft, one would think you were working on one of the present day thirty foot lorries. It is of huge diameter, and I feel sure that some stresses and strains calculations were made after a night on the booze.

The first sign of a crisis came when I removed the rear near-side wheel. As to be expected on a neglected car, the hub splines were worn out, but at the time, replacing them, was out of the question for financial reasons. What I saw when I removed the half shaft made me wish that, instead of deciding to restore an MG as a hobby, I had taken up Morris Dancing, or Flower Arranging,-----anything that did not hurt.Someone at some time must have been unable to get the large nut, which holds the hub in place, back on. It is a left-hand thread, which makes it even more painful. On leaving the nut off, this wonderful person had then cut a piece of tube, placed it over the axle casing and then hammered the end of the axle casing over. Alleluja!!

The first job was to get the hub off, and this meant hours of very careful filing so that the piece of tube would slide off the axle casing. With what spare time that I had left after work and the usual chores at home which take up so much time, I reckon that “little” job took me about six weeks.

The next problem was to restore the thread, and it is at times like these that working in a factory definitely has its advantages, as there are numerous trades all together, as they are all needed to keep the place going. It is also like a large village where everybody knows one another.

My first port of call was to a pal in the plumbers’ shop, where all the different large pipe screw-cutting dies were kept. Between us we found a split die of the right diameter, but the wrong thread, but at least I had got a die holder. The next port of call was the tool room, where a couple of quid (a lot of money in those days) to another pal finally resulted in a split die to fit the plumbers die holder. This was then fitted onto the good thread on the axle casing and wound outwards, increasing the cut very gradually. A nut was made to suit and hey presto, job done------- well, not exactly, because it took weeks and weeks to do.I have the greatest admiration for non-trades people who manage to complete a car restoration, because if I have struggles, living with engineering all my life, I wonder just how on earth they do it

With the bog basics of the chassis done, and at least looking a bit more respectable, I decided to look at the bodywork, which, a that time, was a complete mystery. One side door, front wing, and running board were taken off, and then what was left of the front quarter panel. Underneath this was just rotten wood, which would need replacing. The wood, of course, was ash, which at the time was just not available, and even if it had been, I could not afford it. I was always short of a quid in those days.

We used a lot of angle iron at work at the time, and am sure our factory was held together by it, so after some deliberation, I decided to fabricate all the compound curved shaped pieces of timber out of one inch by one eighth angle iron, and cover with quarter inch plywood, as this could be bent to shape. I had previously bought a small electric welding machine, so it seemed very feasible. The door pillar would be the same, with plates let in to take drilled and tapped holes for the door hinges. I duly completed one complete body side in which the door fits, and it was most successful

I would now like to continue and say that I carried on and finished the rest of the frame work, but alas, nothing else seemed to happen, and work came to an abrupt end.Sitting here typing this some 42 years later, I cannot think what the reason was, but I am sure it would have been a question of priorities somewhere and the car stayed in the garage until around 1971 or 1972.It was in 1972 that I purchased my MGA Coupe, (I still have it), and with having some work to do on this car, I decided to sell the VA. I was quite pleased when my son, Mike, who was now in his early twenties, showed a big interest in having a go at continuing the restoration, and it was soon installed in his garage at Dartford in Kent, where he now lived after being in College near there.

By now the supply position of spare parts, power tools, wood, compressors and spraying equipment etc were on the market which made everything easier. Also, my son had a super stroke of luck by getting to know a chap (Graham Ross) who owned a furniture factory, which used a lot of ash, and to compound his good fortune, this delightful gentleman was also restoring an MG VA, and made us all the timbers that were needed. The old angle iron frame I had made was hastily discarded. How lucky can you get!

Mike carried on working on the car whenever he could, removing the rear and bulkhead parts of the body, after which, ages were spent on scraping, wire bushing, de-rusting the, and finally painting the chassis. The woodwork on the rear body, apart from the door pillar was OK, and all the metal too, apart from the large rear panel across the back of the car. Replacing this was easier said than done, but after many, many hours, of shaping, cutting and Mig welding, patience was rewarded, and the job completed. Mike spent many hours doing this.

As garages are notoriously damp, that panel and all the rest of the rear body was etch – primed and primer coated as a preservative.A lot of work followed fitting all the different timbers, and on a few occasions, my wife and I went to visit them, when Mike and I used to work together sorting things out.Things carried on for a while, and although I have no recollection of any time scale, things inevitably came to a halt again, but at least the wood work was all fitted, and the doors hung, so there had definitely been some progress made. As Mike was living some 150 miles from me, there was so much work he did that I was not aware of.

Mike became a father in 1982, so history started repeating itself again, and he was in the same position as I was years earlier. Car restoration had absolutely no priority in family life at all, or more to the point, there was just no time for it.The car lay dormant again, inevitably gathering dust again, and slowly the work that had been done was showing signs of fading, but there it stayed.I was lucky enough to get early retirement in 1986, and prior to that had managed to build a good sized, well-equipped workshop, in which, whilst at work I had been restoring my MGA. This had been going on for some six years, and it was great to be able to work on it daily, and it was soon completed. Retirement is great, but you have got to keep active and believe it or not, finding something to do every day is not easy... Well, I could not carry on doing nothing, and without going into details, I spent the next umpteen years restoring two classic cars. When these were eventually finished, it was a bit of an anti-climax, as again, I had got nothing to do.I started going to Water Colour painting classes, but when the walls at home started getting full of the pictures that I had painted, and I was painting pictures to put in a drawer, the interest in that hobby began to fade, and I just could not figure out what to do next.It was then that someone in the family mentioned the VA in conversation, and at last it was talked about bringing it to life again for the third time. You must agree, we are a persistent lot!

The VA was duly transported by trailer back North up the M11, and this time put over a pit in my 20 feet x 20 feet well equipped brick garage, instead of a 16 feet x 8feet asbestos one.

It was twenty eight years since it had left my old asbestos garage on its way south to Bexley.

THE FINAL REBUILD

Started 3rd September 2000

Most rebuilds follow a familiar pattern, so I do not intend to go into great detail from hereon, but just a general chat on things that stick in my mindThe first thing I noticed, on stripping the front axle down, was how everything had deteriorated during the years it had been laid up. All brake rubbers had perished, brake drums rusted up again, and most paint that you had lovingly put on all those years ago had now turned to a lovely shade of rust!

At this time, I was running a 1936 Morris Eight Saloon which I had restored, and the Morris Register held their National Rally at Thoresby Hall, in Nottinghamshire, just a few miles from where I live, and this was a rally I attended for many years.Many MG parts are from the original Morris cars, and this Rally can be a source of many elusive spare parts, even newly manufactured ones.For instance, there was a firm with a stall there trading under the name of Wyvern, who I think were based at Southampton, who supplied me with all brand new brake wheel cylinders. These were not old stock, but newly manufactured.

Woolies of Peterborough and Paul Beck of Norwich have also a wealth of stock that you just cannot do without.I live in a district that although is not greatly populated, has seemingly, every cottage industry you want.Chromium plating, radiator re-coring, upholstery, spray paint supplies, hood-making for the VA, crankshaft grinding, white metalling, cylinder boring, have all been found a few miles from where I liveThe gearbox for the VA was overhauled by a local one man business who specialized in automatic gearboxes. He was really thrilled to work on something old, and reeled off all the names of all the old cars that these kind of boxes were fitted toThe dynamo was another experience. Any modern car electrician will give you a blank look if you show him a two brush dynamo, as he would have been reared on alternators.However, quite near to where I live is a little trading estate containing small units. Advertised outside one of these units was a sign advertising the repair of alternators. Without much hope, I went inside to be met by two typical “Last of the summer wine,” old lads. They did not overhaul two brush dynamos, but not only did they know all about them, they knew a one man business in a nearby village who overhauled them. Off I went to find this place, to discover a virtual Aladdin’s cave, which contained every prewar car electric unit you would ever need. He not only sorted the dynamo out, but the regulator and cutout unit as well. I have lived within a ten minute car ride of this village all my life, but I had never heard of him.

The radiator chromium plated surround of the VA was badly dented around the bottom, and I just had no idea where to get it sorted out. I was at one of our regular car rallies one weekend, and one of the attractions in the ring was a display by a falconer. He had all sorts of birds and gave a super display with them. As was my habit at these shows, I parked my MGA in a line with the other show cars, and at the rear of the car set up the tables and chairs, and that was our picnic spot for the day. Many people came to look at the cars during the day, and you met many nice folks.

One of the chaps who came looking round my car was the falconer, and for some reason the conversation got round to the VA, and the problem with the radiator surround. “No problem “He said, “I can sort it out for you”, --and he did. When I took the surround up to his place, which was a 17th century cottage, it not only had a building for birds, but also a huge workshop full of equipment. He showed me a full sized replica Bugatti he had made, it was superb, with the only thing not original copy was the engine, as they are not available, or if you have not got Arab money, are not possible to manufacture. He also made Bugatti chassis, so I suppose a little thing like a VA radiator was no problem.The point in writing these things I remember during the final eight years of work taken to complete the VA, is that restoring an old car is not all about welding, struggling, spraying, etc. You come meet all sorts of people, and get to places you would not normally go to

The engine was another good luck story. In the nineteen sixties, when I first bought the car, I wanted to get the engine sorted out, but even in those days, I could not find any one to do the white metal bearings. I finished up just having new sleeves and pistons, but at the time, I never could find anyone to do the white metal bearings. The engine block was then greased and wrapped up, and it actually did not get the bearings completed until a few years ago. It had remained wrapped up for some 38 years!

The success in getting the bearings done only came about by a casual remark by a friend who mentioned that someone he knew was having an old Morgan engine done. My ears pricked up straight away, and by a bit of chasing about, this led me to a little Derbyshire village that I had always known about, but never visited. In fact my grandparents, my mothers’ parents, were born and bred there.The small engineering shop that I found there had all the right machines, which were quite old, but as there were various engine overhauls in progress, including Rolls Royce. You straightaway knew they did a good job. The place was run by father and son, and was hidden at the end of a pot-holed road. None of these people have any need to advertise as they have got work coming out of their ears, so you can really count yourself lucky when you hear of them. Also you go to places you would never normally have reason to visit.

Another occasion that always brings a smile, and amazes me, is when it got round to being ready to get the hood made. A friend told me about a lady who lived about a couple of miles from me who did upholstered chairs and three piece suites, and occasionally car seats. It was only a long shot, but I thought I might as well see if she could help with a sports car hood, as I had got nothing to lose.It turned out that this wonderful lady not only did three piece suites, but anything to do with cars. She had also made a couple of hoods, so I was in luck.She came to see the car, and said that it would be no problem to do, and would start in a couple of days.

She duly came, carrying a large roll of flowered green furnishing fabric, and said she would first of all make a sample. I had already restored the hood frame, and it was in position ready to start. After checking the seams on the remnants of the old hood, she started and with the aid of countless pins and clips, soon had a hood in place, in glorious green with large flowers! After three or four hours, she rolled it up and took it home, saying she would be back

in a couple of days. On return she refitted the hood, which had now been sewn up, made odd chalk marks here and there. It was quite strange to see this old MG standing there with a flowery green hood on. We took pictures of it of course, and I would like to bet that there are not many more pictures like it! Anyway, off she went again home with this green bundle of fabric under her arm, to return a few days later with the hood, made out of black duck material, three parts made. After fitting it to the frame again and a short time putting a few chalk marks here and there, off she went with bundle again, to return the next day with the completed hood, which fitted perfectly. She also did the side screens, the frames of which I had made earlier. She was brilliant, and I did not have to rob a bank to pay the bill either.

The same could be said for the upholstery

I first met this wonderful chap in the 1980’s, when he upholstered my MGA, and has been a friend ever since. He was, until retirement, the upholsterer for the local main bus company, so what he does not know about upholstery is not worth knowing, Mike had got two new front seats which I had assembled, but the rear seat was completely rotten, although the springs, after de-rusting and painting, were OK. When my friend had re-upholstered them, the end result was superb. The same could be said for the door panels the carpets. He did all this as a hobby in a small 10x6 shed in his garden, with his innocuous looking professional sewing machine on his bench. I called round once to see how he was going on, and in the course of conversation asked if he was keeping busy. He said that he was, as a chap he knew had just finished restoring a 72 seater bus and wanted the seats doing!

Again, wherever you are restoring a car, these wonderful people are there, but finding them is a god send.

That finishes my story of the saga. But always remember when you are restoring a car, never mind about the things that always go wrong, think about all the people you have met, and places you have chased off to in search of parts. Places you would never have gone to. Even if you get fed up with working on your one time dream for whatever reason, the faithful old beast will still be there for you if ever you want to start on it again------ours was. Our VA is now looking like new, and should last for ever. It took 42 years to do, but the end result is worth it.

On the other hand if you have not got that much patience, there is always Morris Dancing or Flower Arranging.

Ed. Temple 2008