Rebuilding the inner wheel well on the MG Midget S1E41

In this episode I patch the holes in the wheel well and replace a section of the inner quarter panel.

[@jimkirby3659]

It's a satisfying feeling to see new metal in place of old, rusty, rotten metal. You're doing it right, and you're doing a really good job.

[@robsrestorationgarage]

Thanks buddy. You notice how I keep dropping you in a mention.

[@jimkirby3659]

@@robsrestorationgarage Yeah, I do. Makes an old man smile. 😁

[@mypugsdad5366]

I have watched all 40 videos and you are a real artist - Your doing a great job and doing the correct way. good work.

[@robsrestorationgarage]

Wow! Thanks for those kind words. I am learning as I go but I am learning. New video coming soon.

[@lloydgreen4091]

4th of July week & getting a New phone made me "late to the Party" lol Again that rotisserie certainly makes that job look easier in thee upside down position. Sometimes the most simplest tool in the box is the most beneficial one we use. Don't have the welder yet but I did know about the Brass trick. Things are looking Great & another Big Thanks for making these videos for us.

[@robsrestorationgarage]

Lloyd I hope you had a great 4th and enjoying the new phone. Thanks for sticking with me this long.

[@mundanestuff]

Nice work. Good progress. I feel like Ian on Econobox Garage really develops a good technique with crushed copper pipe as the backing heatsink on welds. He develops it over a few months and you can really see how using that heat sink can benefit the welds. I, on the other hand, suck at it and my test welds look like poo.

[@robsrestorationgarage]

I was surprised at how effective it was. If I would have only known about 6 months ago, it would have saved me a lot of time.

[@EconoboxGarage]

@mundanestuff beat me to it. I used flattened copper plumbing pipe as a backer and it worked really well. I learned from Ash on the Heirloom Austin channel. I first used this method in episode 34 on my channel. You are definitely moving in the right direction... it's always nice to be putting stuff on the car rather than taking it off.

[@robsrestorationgarage]

I didn’t think about flattening out a copper pipe. Great idea.

[@mundanestuff]

Haha, sorry. Stealing your thunder or dropping names? :-) I tried welding a stretch of exhaust pipe a while back, and blew through every weld, but after watching you stitch welds with the pipe as the backer, I went back and fixed the blow throughs and it worked to close the holes. I went ludicrously slow. As heat built up, I stopped. and I stitched in a star pattern. But Shocked, it worked. I do need a better welder though. Back to checking engine #s to see if any of those I got out of the basement match my cars, lol.

[@robsrestorationgarage]

@@mundanestuff I would love to hear the story about how you got so many engine blocks and it looks like you have several cars too.

[@mundanestuff]

@@robsrestorationgarage yeah. Long story short, dad was a race car guy and used to skip school to attend races at Watkins Glen in the 50s, back when they raced on the streets of the village. Him and a buddy from their earliest days would drive from Binghamton to Watkins Glen whenever they could. (That buddy's son is now restoring his Mini Cooper S on Ahart's classic mini garage channel) as they grew up, got married (to each other's old girlfriends!) the families lived within a short drive of the track and of course joined the SCCA and raced their family cars. Dad got a Sprite mk2 in the early 60s and built it out for racing, the buddy got the cooper S and same thing. Dad raced H production. That car got retired and junked in the early 80s unfortunately. He bought the two Bugeyes I have now, restored one to H production and the other was going to get to a roadster, but fell and smashed his hip at work in the early 80s and was forced to retire from driving. He became crew chief for an F production midget racer, and flagged, and did administration work for the races but never raced the bugeye again. It sat in the back yard from then to about 8 years ago. The second one sat in the garage on its side until 3 years ago when he passed away and I inherited his spare parts and cars. He would fix / build engines and transmissions for people and would buy whatever spare parts he could find. So 18 engines, 15 generators, abd basically a dozen and a half of most everything except the one steel plate Ian needed for his bugeye lol

[@mundanestuff]

@@robsrestorationgarage if you find Ahart's classic mini garage channel you'll actually see old 8mm film of the two families at different events. Them ice racing, drag racing, autocrossing the Cooper S and us racing the Sprite.

[@eggybreadplease]

Really impressed with your work 👍 the rear wing looks a challenge, light at the end of the tunnel for the body work 🤔

[@robsrestorationgarage]

Thank you. I have had some busy stuff going on that has kept me out of the garage but I am back to working on it and making progress

[@eggybreadplease]

@@robsrestorationgarage good to hear you are back in the garage, keep chipping away at it 👍

[@matthewash8349]

This is great, surprised you haven't got more views. Your work is really neat and you haven't cut corners like some others, it's an enjoyable watch. Currently restoring my Sprite in the UK which has seen a few too many salty roads in winter so it's been good to look at yours for reference which appears to have been kept in fairly original spec, panel wise.

[@robsrestorationgarage]

Thanks @matthewash8349 ! I appreciate the kind words. If my videos help you in any way then they are worth doing. What year is your Sprite?

[@matthewash8349]

@@robsrestorationgarage I've already taken a couple of screenshots of bits that I can reference. As an example, I had 4 layers of varying shapes of sheet metal on the toe panel in the footwell of mine when there should have been 1! About 1 sheet for each 10 years of its life considering I've had it off the road for 7. Mine's a 1971 wire wheel model, looks almost identical to yours.

[@robsrestorationgarage]

@@matthewash8349 You might find like I did that the more you dig into it, the more you will find to repair. Luckily they are small cars!

[@matthewash8349]

@@robsrestorationgarage Yes! that's been the case the whole way through unfortunately. It is a good thing they're small and parts are easy to get hold of and cheap (at least here in the UK). I have another car part restored that I started first but panels for that are very hard to obtain and hugely expensive so making them takes days sometimes. I don't have the time for that anymore so the Sprite is proving much quicker and easier.

[@robsrestorationgarage]

@@matthewash8349 I have actually been surprised that you can pretty much buy all of the parts for these cars. Of course it helps that they didn’t change much over the years. I have found getting parts cars as not very helpful because they all rust in the same places. There are 2 Midgets for sale near me and the guy wants way too much money. I tried to help him understand the amount of work it will take to get them back where they should be but he still doesn’t see it. They will likely sit for a really long time and get worse.

[@cyrilstrain2387]

Do you use a rust inhibitor it’s very good at killing rust. My name is Cyril from Northern Ireland I’m doing up a morris minor traveller

[@robsrestorationgarage]

Yes I use a rust inhibitor and then use a primer that is supposed to contain the rust.

[@robsrestorationgarage]

Did you see the Morris Minor Traveller I almost bought? It was in a previous episode.