With the help of dad. The accelerator he has on the internet connection was set on high which I guess changed the resolution of the picture as it uploaded. All the bad pics that were loaded since I've been here have been changed. Enjoy.
That big supercharger (blower) stuck on the side of the engine gives Blown TC her name. 
Almost looks like Christmas! So many packages.
Sans fenders and running boards (gives more room) sitting in front of my TD. Notice the shops paint? Slowly you’ll see the shop changing to a new paint scheme and more organization.
Note: Dad was beat up today by an Austin Healey Sprite’s electrical wiring harness! He got most of it solved but he's a bit sore. LOLOL
The TD racer (at least we think it was) that came to the shop a few months ago, complete with a family of mice , had the wrong carbs (larger ones for racing) has gotten a rebuilt set of original carbs. There was low compression on two cylinders so we pulled the head and did some valve work which solved that problem. After fixing a few minor problems with the distributor etc and a new fuel line and pump she was purring like a kitten. The missing radiator brace (removed for bigger air cleaners) was replaced. Brakes are done. Gas tank will be back on soon after the inside is coated.
The "New" old carbs
Work is being planned on getting the “racer” dash out and an original one pulled together. The scavenger hunt has begun for the center panel guages, the horn button etc. And she’s going to get a new interior.
"racer" dash (wiper motor wires are interesting)
The supercharged TC, “Blown” TC (I’m trying to give each project car a name), is in the parts gathering stage. This week I will pull the shocks and get them sent out with another set to get rebuilt. And somewhere I’m hoping to do a little something to my car. I’d really like to have something to take out on the road this year.
Just a Quick post to let people know I'm still around. I'll be heading up to NH Saturday to spend Christmas with my parents and begin working at the shop. Hopefully I'll have a bit of time to work on MY car too and have it ready for the road by summer. Wouldn't that be great! I'll have to see what GOF is near by and use it to set a goal for completion. As I work in the shop I hope customers will allow me to post pics of the cars I'm working on to show the work I'm doing. Maybe I can put a check off box on the bill. Just kidding! I should be at work starting on the 26th or there abouts. I'll post what I'm up to then.
Have a great Holiday Season.
Chuck
It's been a while since my last post. Yesterday at work the separation dates were posted, mine is 1/1/07. Which means with the Christmas holidays figured in, my last day of work will be the 22nd of December. Soon after I will head up to NH and spend the holidays with my parents and start working at the shop.
I was able to get up there a couple weeks ago and work a bit on the shop. Yes ON the shop. With my mom being ill and dad having to spend more time around the house taking care of things the shop hasn't been getting the attention it needs other than a sweep now and then. Dad has been waiting for one of us (6 sons) to take an interest in the shop. Up until now no one has had the desire or the flexibility to do so. With the buyout from Ford (mainly my early retirement) I have the opportunity and the medical benefits that I needed to move up there and work in the shop. Yeah I've been going up and working on my car during vacations and layoffs but to actually move and become a part of the shop is something else. I think dad has been wanting to slow down a bit and relax a bit (yeah right!) and enjoy life. There was a rumble or two about selling the shop but I don't think that would have been what my dad wanted. He's a tinkerer by heart and he loves to work on the old MG's so I didn't think he'd give up that easily.
So with a new start at the shop we decided to spruce things up a bit and began painting. Dad has been trying to do that for a couple years now. I was able to get him to slow down a bit to do some spackeling and painting. (Then he was off for a southern trip with mom and the camper.) Well when he was gone I got the "clean room" pretty much done and got started on the back wall, which I would like to make the engine area. Heck there are 3 sitting on that wall now that are rebuilt, I just went with the flow. Next we hope to paint the paint booth (is that redundant?) then move on to some more of the main shop.
I'll keep you posted. If anyone is actually reading this Blog!
Well D-day is here, I have until midnight tomorrow to pull my buyout papers. At this point I do think I'll take the buyout and retire. I will keep my house in Buffalo. I love the house and It's just not in the condition I would like it to be to sell it. It would just cost too much to get all the work done at once. And I prefer to do most of the work myself. It's just a hassle to find someone to do work on it that actually shows up and isn't trying to rip me off. So for the time being I will keep the house and go to NH. Come back every couple of weeks to tend to the house and get work done. I will move to NH for a few years and see if I like enough to invest in a place there and stay permanently. Right now that's about all I'm willing to commit to.
I mentioned earlier that I worked for Ford Motor Co and as most of you know they are currently restructuring the company. They have offered some good buyouts and one in particular that I qualify for I may take. There is a special early retirement package that basically gives you your retirement package that you have accrued without any penalties. Well when I told my dad this he decided to put a "bug" in my ear and offered me the opportunity to come up and work in the shop. It is basically the same deal he received years ago when the Ford plant he was (actually we both were) working in closed in 1980. So before November 27th I have to make up my mind on whether to go up and work with my dad, stay with Ford or take the deal and stay in Buffalo and find something else to make a bit of money. Decisions, decisions. I'm kind of leaning on going up to NH and work for a bit then come back to Buffalo for a week, then back to NH. I don't want to sell my house here it took a while to find one and I love it. Great neighborhood, lots to do in the city. Where the shop is in NH is literally a mile from the end of pavement! Certainly not much night life there. I guess you could find culture if you looked. (I know it's hard to tell whether I'm trying to talk myself into it or out of it.) I do like to restore things, lord knows I love to buy these old houses and work on them. The two houses I've owned one in PA was build around 1837 (lived there 16 years) and the one I bought in buffalo was built around 1880 (been here 3.) So bottom line I have my paperwork in at Ford to take a buyout and I have until November 27 to change my mind and pull my paperwork out!
After this post you are pretty much up to date. With the car that is. There are some pretty interesting things brewing up with Ford, the shop and all. More on that in my next post.
It's hard to believe that this is what it did look like!
And this is where it is now. (the side and top rails will get painted out!)
Before and After Engine
You can see the new wiring harness here and there. Now everything you do you can see it. It makes a big difference. Well that brings this saga up to date. Yeah there is a lot that I left out to try and keep it short. I didn't want to get into too much detail. If you have a comment or would like to see some specific picture if I have it I would be happy to post it.
Here the tub is already bolted onto the frame and the firewall is on. There was a bit of work to mate the firewall back on with the new wood but using the old wood as a template I was able to succeed. 
It looked great sitting there in black. Now it had to sit and cure until next trip so I could sand it down for the next coats. BTW she got 8 coats this time!
The initial results look real nice. 
You find all the flaws once you get into paint. But now was the time to fix them.
At the end of this trip the body tub and doors were in primer and I really did feel like big progress was being made. When you are able to see your progress in front of you it makes a big difference. By this I mean I did spend weeks wire brushing and cleaning up all matter of parts and nuts and bolts...then packed them away until they were needed. When I left for home there wasn't anything to look at but a bunch of tote storage bins. Being able to see the chassis in 2004 and the body tub in primer in 2005 were big steps.
In 2005 work began on the body tub. It was moved out of a tool shed at my dad's house and brought down to the shop to be put on the jig. Moving down to the shop on the bucket of a tractor was a trip in itself! My car didn't have the best "wood." Most owners of the old MG's know about their timbers. In these older cars the body tub frame is made out of wood and the body metal is wrapped around the frame and tacked into the wood. It's the rare car that has both good wood and good metal. Unfortunately mine had the later. I had great sheet metal but the wood in my car was pretty shot. And as with these cars there had been some hacking in the past.
One of my door bottoms had a 2x4 hacked to fit in replacement of the original wood. So here we are, my dad and me, going down the road with my body tub creaking and moaning to the shop. I thought at any moment it was going to bust in half and make more of a project than I already had. (sorry no pic on this one I was truly occupied)
You can see in this door pic the way the body metal is wrapped around the wood and tacked into the body timbers. As you can see in the following pics most of the timbers in my TD had to be replaced. Some there was just no hope for. The main beam in this door pic was one (it is just below the door opening.) Most of these pics were taken when i was preparing the body tub for primer. I'll post the pics and hope for the best....Well it seems as though I can't post pics the way I would like and have the text to explain them. Anyway the following pictures are just of the woodwork in the car showing the pieces that were replaced (like most of them!) 
sheeeesh! It seems that using The Blogger composer and trying to incorporate pictures isn't set up all that well. Composing and previewing doesn't mean anything. Once you publish your post, the size of your blog page and composer doesn't match up and wrapping text messes up the post. It's driving me crazy. I may have to just put larger pictures in the center and be done with it. I'm off to bed now, I'm going to try to relax. The rolling chassis entry will have to be edited another time. 'nite........
Rolling chassis entry redone...(read next post) yeah I went back and changed the format of the post with larger pics in the center and not trying to right and left justify smaller pics as in the past posts and it made posting much easier. (11/19)
The chassis hung from the ceiling for a couple of years on hooks. In the summer of 2003 it was taken down and set on car jack stands in the clean room and dusted off for the beginning of assembly. It was a great day!!!
Over the 2003-04 winter one of the guys at my dad's shop gave my chassis a big "boost" forward. After I got most of the parts cleaned, sandblasted and painted for the chassis over the summer, he assembled a good part of the chassis suspension over the winter making my progress all that much faster in 2004. 
July of 2004 I finally have a rolling chassis!!! I wish I had used the camera's date and time function. I have a ton of pictures (does that equate anymore with digital pics?) with no frame reference other than the label I gave the file when I downloaded the pics into my computer. I guess I could look and see when the file was created but that would mean I would have had to put the pictures into the computer in a timely fashion. UMMM... Anyway I believe my next trip was in July of '01 when I began taking apart the engine and trans to see what I needed to order to rebuild them. I also sandblasted the frame and got it painted. This is when I give thanks that my dad was around to look over my shoulder. Without him around the rebuild may have been less than perfect. I'll take the engine first. 
Once I got 50 years of grime and dirt scrapped off it was off to the engine shop to get boiled and cleaned. Everything was magnafluxed and got a clean bill of health. The block was then bored out, the head got new valves and the crank shaft 
was balanced. Etc. Etc. Most everything once taken apart sat until the following year to get put back together. So to take a lot of typing and detail out of the blog...the time I had in 2002 was mostly devoted to getting the engine and trans back together. Most everything going back into the engine was new. Everything that was original and went back on or into was cleaned and wire brushed etc.
At this point I should mention that I'm going broke!!! You really do this for the love of the car. 
In March of '03 I got the carbs finished.
Tearing a car down...what can I say it's a bit traumatic. I just had a car, now it's in pieces. It took about a day and a half to take the car apart. The body was completely disassembled. The engine, trans and axle remained sat off to the side. Everything was put into plastic zip lock bags and labeled so i could find them later (yeah right!) Working on the car sporadically once or twice a year pulling parts containers out of a storage shed, going through them, putting them back at the end of the visit just made a parts nightmare. But at this point I think I'm through the worst of it. 
The fenders, running boards, gas tank etc. all went off to the stripper to be taken down to bare metal. They still are up in the attic waiting for paint and the final assembly ( perhaps in a year or so.)
