Fourth Project for RayVin Enterprises

And so it begins again.  To review, RayVin is a partnership between Ray and Vince which so far has refubished three cars - a 1974 Triumph TR6, a 1964 MGB, and a 1958 MGA.  The first two were sold to others, Ray bought the MGA.

So we were made aware of another 1964 MGB which has been in storage for many decades.  It belonged to Tom and Jan, who have extensive history in autocrossing.  It had been wrecked many years ago, the last plates on it were from 1981.  Tom and Jan were very gracious in their price of the MGB, we look forward to them following the work we perform!

First, here's a picture of Jan saying goodbye to the car when we picked it up on February 19:

Then here's several photos that Tom had taken a couple of months ago to baseline the condition of the car:

Rust is not too bad, passenger side rear dog leg is the worst for corrosion.  Both doors have the "crack of doom" by the vent windows, very typical.  But the wreck damage is pretty significant.  The car was rear ended while it had a trailer hitch.  The rear sheet metal down low on the passenger side was shoved back about 1.5 inches, buckling the trunk floor.  Amazingly, the bumper and trunk lid were fine. 

First task was removing the fuel tank and radiator, very typical for bringing a dormant car back to life.  Both those pieces are now at Brown's Radiator to be cleaned, refurbished, and tank coated to prevent future corrosion.

Using a bottle jack, several big pieces of wood, and a hammer/dolly set we've been able to move the rear sheet metal back about 1.5 inches and gotten a lot of the buckle out of the trunk floor:

We removed the front valance and straightened out the bent sheet metal there:

I'd describe our sheet metal work so far as the rough stage, getting the metal back to within about 1/16 inch of where it should be.  We are convinced we won't need to replace any of this sheet metal, we can make the original stuff work.  Our challenge is we'd prefer not to repaint the car, so we'll need to be creative in how we repair many areas of the body.

After a little more hammering, we plan to start on the mechanical issues (brake/clutch hydraulics, bring engine back to life).  But so far, this car looks like it's definitely worth refurbishing!